Principles
The chain
Three of them, free to read in full. If the thinking does not convince you, the sessions will not either.
The chain
Three principles, nine sub-principles, and nothing else. A model with thirty principles is a model nobody on the pitch can hold in their head at 3–2 down.
In possession
Break the first line, then find the free man
Almost every academy says it wants to play out. Almost none of them train the specific moment it breaks down, which is not the first pass — it is the second one, after the press has arrived and the receiver is facing the wrong way.
- Nobody receives facing their own goal
- The third man is the outlet, not the pass
- The full-back releases, the centre-back invites
Out of possession
The first defender decides, the rest obey
Pressing fails as a collective long before it fails as a sprint. The usual cause is not fitness and not desire: it is that three players each decided independently that this was the moment.
- The trigger is the backward pass, not the whistle
- Cover arrives from inside, never from behind
- Six seconds, then we reset — we do not chase
Preparing the transition
Prepare to lose it before you lose it
The most under-coached moment in youth football. Everything a team does in the four seconds after losing possession was decided in the ten seconds before, by where the players already were — and almost nobody trains those ten seconds.
- Two behind the ball before the cross, always
- The counter-press is a shape, not a sprint
- When we cannot press, we delay and drop together