Coaching: The usage of different pitch shapes in football training

In football coaching, many variables can provoke certain solutions and therewith impact the training effect. Besides the number of players, the pitch size and other rules, coaches can use different pitch shapes to indirectly affect the player behaviour.

This training analysis depicts different pitch shapes and their influence on the decision-making and the utilised tactics of the team.

Obviously, there are endless options of adjusting the shape. However, we will take a closer look at the most common ones which have already been proven to be useful in football practice.

Diamond shape

The most popular alternative shape to the square is the diamond. Instead of having straight sidelines, the sidelines are diagonal.

That does not only make the pitch more narrow but also forces both defence and attack to focus on the goal near areas. Instead of putting in crosses, the attacking team will have to use more through passes in central areas. Therefore, this shape can be perfectly used when trying to implement a centrally focused attacking phase and the basics of through passes such as diagonal pass into a straight run or straight pass into a diagonal run.

But the teams will also learn to sustain possession by providing width in the middle third in order to prepare a penetration in the final third of the pitch. Due to the narrow area near to the goal, the defenders need to find rather direct ways of playing into midfield. As this also disables simple square passes from the centre-backs to the wide defenders, the diamond shape will enforce the central defenders to play diagonal passes into midfield. This might increase their vision and confidence in playing out from the back.