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Basic Guide to Formations & Positional Training: 1: Define Winning - Focus - Basic Positioning

Most teams (and new coaches) are thrown into games after just a few practices, often before the coach has had a real chance to teach the players anything. Thus, new coaches often feel intense pressure to “win”, and may take early losses personally. This can lead them to worry excessively about where to put their players to maximize their “wins” when they really should be worrying about giving their young charges valuable experience in all parts of the field. These same fears of “failure” (i.e., not winning) can also cause some youth coaches to focus on a few stars and relegate the rest to the bench or supporting roles. When this happens, most of the players don’t learn anything or have any fun, and even the development of the “stars” can be harmed in the long run.

How You Define “Winning” Will Affect All You Do

It is important to let players and parents know what the coach defines as “winning” at the start of the season. In their developmental years, kids really do “win” at soccer or, for that matter, any other sport if they have fun with their friends; learn enough about the game to become a fan; and get some healthy exercise. Numerous studies show that while kids certainly enjoy winning contests, their short attention span allows them to quickly forget the score in the last game, at least until some adult makes a big deal out of it. In addition, because kids are naturally more focused on their own performance than on the performance of the group, kids can be perfectly happy if they had a great game themselves even if the team lost in a blow-out.

Because kids have these wonderfully short memories and an ingrained focus on “me”, any coach can have a “winning” season by setting the kids up to succeed at some task in every game and praising them for this accomplishment. Of course, a good coach also wants to teach them to work together and to whittle down the “me” focus a bit. Therefore, good coaches will include some team objectives that encourage the kids to work together (e.g., “Let’s see if we can get 3 passes in a row in each quarter”). So, don’t be afraid to use a long-term focus and to define “winning” in a way that gives everyone a fair chance to succeed.

Develop a Long-Term Focus

The first few games simply show the skills that any prior coaches taught your players and give you an idea of their natural athletic talent. So, the last thing on the mind of a new coach should be worries about winning the early games. Instead, the focus properly should be on long-term skill development. When this happens, the wins ultimately will start coming to your team as they become one of the more skilled teams on the field. This can take up to a year or more, so be sure to let everyone know in advance that you do not intend to worry at all about the short-term won/loss record.

How does a new coach who knows nothing about soccer get these kids trained and organized, so that they will be the most skilled? It is not very hard, as long as you keep it simple.

Basic Soccer Positioning Is Easy

Soccer is a very simple game. It has only 3 basic positions that are used in attacking, and only 3 basic positions that are used in defending. This is why many soccer clubs are moving towards 3v3 and 4v4 games at the younger age levels, so that players get a good foundation in this basic positioning. In addition, by playing 3v3 or 4v4 soccer, younger players end up with substantially more contact with the ball, which improves their skill level and makes things more fun.

Basic Defensive Positioning in a Nutshell

The 3 basic positions of players on defense are best described by the acronym “PCB” (Pressure-Cover-Balance). The person closest to the ball is called the First Defender, and his job is to provide PRESSURE on the ball.

The second-closest person who is goal-side of the ball (meaning closer to his team’s goal than the opponent) is called the Second Defender. His job is to provide COVER. That is, to be in a position to immediately become the pressure person if the attacker gets by the First Defender. In addition, the Second Defender will frequently have the additional job of guarding (called “marking”) another off-ball attacker to whom the ball might be passed for a shot. The Second Defender will normally chose to take up a position ball-side of his mark if possible, but will mark goal-side if the ball-side position makes it impossible for him to provide support for the First Defender. Goal-side marking is also used if a defender knows that his mark is much faster than he is, as it gives him the lead that he needs to keep from being beaten.

The defender who is in the deepest position (closest to goal) if a line were to be drawn directly from the attacker to the goal is called the Third Defender. His job is to provide BALANCE to the defense. In essence, he is providing additional cover for the two primary defenders, and also watching out for additional incoming attackers making runs towards the center or far post areas of the goal.

All players should be taught these basic principles, and how to apply them in a game setting. It’s also very important that players understand their supporting duties to those players who are immediately around them. For example, someone who is a midfielder must know that they must automatically and immediately assume the role of the “pressuring defender” if they’re the closest player to the ball. Additionally, they must understand that they need to loop around to provide cover for the defender behind them and pick up his mark if they’re initially beaten by the attacker. Sometimes, young players mistakenly believe that, unless they have been given the job title of “defender”, they do not have defensive duties. Indeed, some coaches refuse to even use the label of “defender” in order to avoid this confusion, and just refer to the players at the back of the group as “backs”, in order to reinforce the idea that everyone is a “defender” when their team does not have the ball.

It is normally easier for players to learn this basic positioning in terms of “Pressure-Cover-Balance”, rather than using terms like First Defender. Thus, all that a young player needs to know is that the closest player to the ball is the Pressure player and to know what the job of the Pressure player is. Ditto for the Cover player and the Balance player.

Basic Offensive Positioning in a Nutshell

There are also 3 basic positions in the attack. The person with the ball is called the First Attacker. His job is to retain possession while getting the ball as close to goal as possible by dribbling, passing or shooting.

The player(s) within an easy ground pass of the First Attacker are called Second Attackers. Up until the time when the ball is advanced to within scoring range of the goal, the primary role of the Second Attacker(s) is to prevent loss of possession, while still allowing the ball to be advanced forward if at all possible. Prior to getting into scoring range, a single Second Attacker typically will position himself so as to allow short relay passes between himself and the First Attacker in order to move the ball around the defenders). Of course, the goal of the attackers is to get the ball past all of the defenders into unobstructed space within scoring range of the goal and then, ultimately, into the goal itself.

Therefore, as the ball moves into scoring range, the role of the single Second Attacker switches from a “safety-first” orientation of keeping possession, which may even involve moving the ball away from the goal in order to keep it. Instead of “safety”, the Second Attacker’s role is to set up a shot on goal for himself or the First Attacker.

At this point, the Second Attacker’s needs to move into a position that will allow the First Attacker to pass the ball into “scoring space” behind or to the side of the defenders, i.e., space from which an immediate shot can be taken. The positioning of the single Second Attacker will depend on the number of defenders to be beaten. Normally, however, a single Second Attacker will position himself on the far side of the defenders and set up within scoring range of the far post area. This allows him to distract and/or pull one defender away from the central goal area or, if unobserved, to sneak in the “back door” while everyone is watching the attacker with the ball.

Where there are two Second Attackers (i.e. close supporters) available, they will position themselves to form a moving triangle with their on-ball teammate, by moving into space between or to the side of the defenders so that the ball always has a clear path to their feet. As the ball is moved into scoring range, one of these players will often abandon his close support role and will become a Third Attacker although this job also may be taken up by any other off-ball teammate who can fulfill the duties.

The Third Attacker’s job is to unbalance the defense by making deep runs, usually to the far side of the goal. By doing this, the Third Attacker pulls defenders away from the goal mouth; distracts the keeper and defenders in front of the goal; and opens up space in front of the goal which can be exploited by incoming teammates.

All players need to be taught these basic principles of attacking support. In particular, they need to learn the concepts of setting support triangles (basic keepaway) and how to move to create basic 2-man and 3-man attacking support, because these tools are essential weapons used by all soccer players to maintain possession in tight spaces and create scoring chances.

Applying These Basic Positioning Principles in Games

Ideally, your players would not be required to play any games before they acquired some basic ball skills and learned some a bit of soccer positioning. In truth, most clubs probably would be better off if they held skills contests like races to see which team could dribble around all of the cones in the shortest amount of time instead of games for beginning players. However, many clubs throw the kids into games before they are remotely ready to play, which causes coaches to pull their hair out as they try to figure out ways to organize the kids so that they have fun and put their skills to some use.

Part of the puzzle can be solved by making some preliminary decisions about the “style of play” which your team will use on attacks and defensively. Because attacking is harder to learn than defense, it can often be helpful to pay more attention to defensive skills at the outset. This can serve to hold down the scores against your team while your kids are learning the basics. Also, narrow losses can help to keep parental morale up, especially if the kids clearly are having fun and getting praised for their work.

[source:  Soccer-Coach-L manual.  Updated 6 April 1999. 
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