Coaching Defending In Wide Areas – Tactical Theory

This tactical analysis presents a set of practices designed to enhance a teams ability to defend effectively in wide areas.

This session will initially focus on how we should approach defending the width of the pitch using our full-backs and wingers working in tandem.

It will provide plenty of opportunities for them to develop their understanding of working as a pair and understanding the key principles of defending on the wings.

We want them to move across at speed and delay the opponent, and prevent them from being able to access the space behind them in the wide channel.

We will then progress this to allow them to see this in the context of a developed defensive phase.

However, the focus will still be on gaining repetitions in a relatively restricted practice, not quite moving into a phase of play.

Can the central-midfielder closest to them drop into the backline if necessary to protect the space between the full-back and centre-back and prevent any through passes into this area, and track a run of any attacking midfielders into this space?

Equally, we will focus on ensuring that the backline drops back and adequately protects different spaces in front of their own goal.

However, the final practice will then move this on so the entire team can see how to apply these exercises to a game situation, where the attacking team will have the freedom to attack as they please and make their own decisions.

The defence will then look to adjust their shape and make their own decisions to deal with this.

Defending In Wide Areas  Exercise 1

To introduce the topic, we can put our players into 2v2s.

Up to 8 pairs can be present per channel, with one pair attacking and the next set of pairs ready to attack from the opposite end as soon as the previous repetition finishes.

It isn’t overly important how this one is organised, but it does need to represent a full-back and a winger attacking against a winger and a full-back, and the players need to be aware of this context.

A simple channel can be used like the one below.

If you are coaching by yourself, it makes sense to have the channels near each other so you can easily coach both groups.

However, if you have a coaching team, placing both channels on either side of the pitch would be pertinent, giving the players the appropriate context of the situation through pitch geography.

There should be small end zones at either end, and the coach should vary how they play the pass in, either to the full-back or winger, and move around to provide different pass angles.

We can see this shown below.

The two defenders should start outside the grid, goal-side if using both wings, replicating a winger and full-back starting in a narrow, compact position before shifting into these wider areas to defend.

The attacking team aims to combine to advance possession into the end zone, preferably.