Name: 7v7 Soccer — Setting Up the 2-3-1 (Where Do They Go?) - Roles, Roads & the Rubber Band Rule
Uploaded: 2026-03-05
Duration: 12 min 31 s
Channel: Coach KW
Description: In this video I break down the 2-3-1 formation position by position — where each player goes, what their job is, and how to explain it to them in one or…

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Part of the series: 7v7 Topics, 7v7 Soccer - the 2026 edition

About this video

In this video I break down the 2-3-1 formation position by position — where each player goes, what their job is, and how to explain it to them in one or two sentences. I cover the channels (roads), the rubber band rule for team shape, the three most common mistakes, and a positional rondo drill you can run on day one. Part 2 of the 7v7 Soccer series. 0:00 Kick-off 1:21 Keeper - 1 2:12 Centerbacks - 4 & 5 2:47 Wide Midfielders - 7/11 3:43 Central Midfielder - 8 (or 6 or 10!) 4:54 Center Forward - 9 6:26 Three Common Mistakes 7:43 Move like a Rubber Band 8:27 Positional Rondo 10:35 Take-a-ways 11:12 Ropes as Lines 12:00 Full Time Full Channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCHQkkm5iE_Xld9p49k7dlog?sub_confirmation=1 Buy an AI camera that doesn’t break the bank - and help out my town program at the same time! https://partner.reeplayer.com/soccercoachkw Amazon Coaching Items: Insta360 Ace Pro https://amzn.to/3Uj0diZ GoPro Tripod Mount - https://amzn.to/3JCtcJO 20’ Tripod - https://amzn.to/4bdSWI1 16’ tripod - https://amzn.to/4aTOi23 Tripod Weights - https://amzn.to/48z81WI GoPro Hero 12 - https://amzn.to/4aJfGzT GoPro Volta External Battery Handle - https://amzn.to/4aJfGzT 256Gb Micro Memory card - https://amzn.to/44gCNPY Insta360 X4 - https://amzn.to/4df7MQs Kwik Goal Digital Ball Pump: https://amzn.to/4blZmoK Small Tactics Board: https://amzn.to/48Ug0tP Small Magnets (Light): https://amzn.to/43iHk3S Small Magnets (Dark): https://amzn.to/3wUh6bM Big White Board: https://amzn.to/3x0NBoU Large Soccer Tactics Board: https://amzn.to/3VhzO7d Large Magnets: https://amzn.to/48RGiNv Large Magnets: https://amzn.to/3VfQxIc Waterproof Stickers: https://amzn.to/3Vfhn3b Folding Goals - High Quality: https://amzn.to/3AEITP7 Books: https://amzn.to/4jNrsOC - How to Coach Girls - Are you coaching a girls team? This little book is invaluable to understanding the different mindset and dynamics within a girls/women's team, especially if you've only coached boys - written by 2 women coaches for all to understand the subtle differences and best motivational tactics to try. Coaching younger players? Give this a look for some innovative ideas: https://amzn.to/40RI9j7 Scoreboard Soccer: Creating the Environment to Develop Young Players https://amzn.to/40MuPNb - Soccer Starts at Home General Coaching or Soccer/Football Books: https://amzn.to/4hGf1BP The Coach’s Guide to Teaching: What great classroom teachers do is relevant to coaches in profound ways. After all, coaches are at their core teachers. Lemov knows that coaches face many of the same challenges found in the classroom, so the science of learning applies equally to them. https://amzn.to/4odNpIo - Two Versus One - I like how this book really takes a look at how you can break down attacking moves into focusing on creating and winning 2v1 situations - a great way to break down the concept for both novice and experienced players, with lots of drill set ups to consider. Most Dan Blank's Books are worth it for at least ideas to incorporate: https://amzn.to/3CwNKUd - Soccer iQ Presents... POSSESSION: Teaching Your Team to Keep the Darn Ball https://amzn.to/4hSlpGV - Soccer IQ: Things That Smart Players Do, Vol. 1 https://amzn.to/4gxhOwE - Everything Your Coach Never Told You Because You're a Girl: and other truths about winning Lastly - really interesting concept - having 10 or so standard layouts for a practice sessions, and then dozens of different drills that use the same setups (Amazon UK only): https://amzn.to/4hKGxyy Essential Practices for Player Development: The Ultimate Program for an Entire Season of Training soccer strategies and tactics, coaching soccer formations and tactics, best soccer formations, how to teach offside in soccer, best 7v7 soccer formations, best 9v9 soccer formations, football tactics for beginners As a memeber of the Amazon Affiliate program, I earn a small commission off items you may buy off these links. Thank you!

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Transcript

Transcript from the video’s captions. Click a time to jump there.

Well, hello, coaches. Welcome back. Coach KW here.

Hope you're well. This is the second video in our Refresh 77 series.

If you missed the first one, I kind of went over basically why I think the 2-3-1 is the one formation or structure to rule them all.

In this video, we're going to talk about the positions, their roles, and their responsibilities.

And hopefully we'll give you something within a sentence or two for each of your players.

You can communicate what their job is on the field because that's really what it's about, not the numbers or the shape on the field.

And you can start playing this formation right after a practice of two.

We'll also start blending the technical and tactical together.

And I'll give you a tool that you can start with your teams right away once you put them into a shape to stop them practicing with the ball and getting used

to playing in this shape while being able to focus on those technical skills that will need to be successful.

So let's get into it. Please, if you haven't subscribed, hit the subscription button there.

The bell if you want to get notified for next videos.

Thumbs up if you like this one.

And please, a lot of you share with your fellow coaches.

I love that. You're just helping other coaches get better.

And that's what we're all about here.

So let's get into the video.

Let's look at those positions, those roles, their responsibilities, and then we'll take it from there.

So let's start at the back with our positions.

Obviously, our goalkeeper number one job obviously is keeping the ball out of the net.

But also, it's really important to understand that just because the keeper has the gloves on doesn't mean their feet stop working.

And especially you tend this player is playing out in the field at least half of the game and most practices, etc, etc.

So it's important even early on to start to use them as an extra field player and to let them be part of the process of keeping the ball and moving the ball by

playing back to them whenever that makes sense.

So whenever a center back has their back to goal and that the halfway line and they're under pressure, it's an easy pass backwards to a keeper who's wide open

that has 20 yards of space to keep the ball and now move it forward.

So once we move on from the keeper being in that back line, the next part, of course, is our two center backs.

And it's really important. This is the beginning of learning how to play with a partner.

So they're always connected. And that's what we're trying to understand, get them to understand pretty quickly as they have a partner, they need to keep track of their partner.

And as they move up and down the field, they work together to keep each other connected.

The job obviously is to protect the front of the net.

That's part of the primary job, right?

But again, it's really important. Part of the job of the center backs is to make sure they know where their partner is at all time.

Our next two positions are our wide players.

And as we talked about in the video, players learning how to work on the outside is an important skill to learn into the 11 v 11 game because that

sideline presents both a challenge and an opportunity for them to challenge.

When they're attacking and it's an opportunity when they're defending to push players into that space.

One of the things that is really helpful for them is to understand that those wide channels are their roads or their paths.

And that's where they should be operating.

They're trying to attack one v one and defend one v one.

So their job is really to make sure they stay out there and keep the width of the game as they get closer to the 18 yard box.

It's sometimes easy to say, hey, whether they're learning, the only way I want you to get into the 18 is to come in through the side walls.

That's a good way to keep them to keep their width going when they're learning how to play.

Now, let's talk about our central player, the eight or when we are trying to be more defensive, the six or when we're trying to be more offensive, the 10.

This is kind of that magical role that can change.

But what's important here is their job is to help her.

They have the helper position in the field.

They have a connection to every other position on the field.

You can see they have a direct relationship even all the way back to the keeper, but they're connected to all the players all around them at any one time.

They're always in relation to that.

So they're always there to support the other players.

Now, one of the common things that happens a lot of times is that eight will get too close to the nine into the same space.

And one of the things we like to say to them is to try to stay behind the ball as long as the center backs don't have it so

that they can become that help or that outlet.

Because when they when they come into that space, you can see now they're all in the same line.

There's no place to move or pass that ball.

And it becomes very congested. So being able to keep that space behind the ball just allows them to be more of a helper all the way around.

Now, let's talk about our friend the striker, the number nine.

Yes, the job is to put the ball in the back of the net, but they actually have many other roles that are important at seven B seven ninety

nine and eleven B eleven. Right.

The first job here when they're playing is they're marking the center backs when we don't have the ball.

As you can see here, they're in a position now that if this ball goes out to the wide player and they don't have any place to go, the easy pass would be

to turn around and play back to that center back behind the ball.

But if you're nine is doing the job, which is marking those center backs, it makes that pass that much more dangerous because if they win it, they're now going

one B one against that center back going the other way.

So that is one of the jobs.

The other job is let's say our eleven wins the ball here.

They need to be that outlet where they're going to get the ball so that they can get the pressure out of your zone and start moving up the field.

If you're nine sags back too far, you have no place to go.

And then lastly, they also need the press like, for example, here on a goal kick when this ball gets played out to the center back on the right.

The striker's job here now is to curve their run to cut the field in half, making the play go to one side.

And now you've set your team up to keep the play on one side, hopefully now making it harder for that team to play out.

So they have defensive roles in addition to just trying to put the ball in the back of the net.

Let's review the three common mistakes that happen or traps that happen with players at this age in any formation.

But we'll look at it here.

But the first one is that the game ends up getting played within the width of the eighteen.

It gets extremely narrow because our players don't stay in their roads and everything happens in the middle.

And it's incredibly congested. So many seven seven games I see in referee that happens all the time just by spreading out makes the whole picture easier for your team.

The second thing I see, too, which is a misguided conception, I think, by some coaches is they never let the defenders and keepers move off the top of the eighteen.

What that does is leave a giant space for the other team to operate in with no worry about being offside.

So when that ball comes over the top, they have a free run of 10 or 15 yards at your center backs and keeper.

It's a recipe for disaster. And the last one we talked about is if your striker doesn't stay up high to mark those center backs when your team wins

the ball, they have no place to go with it.

There's no outlet. The pressure is right in front of your net and there's nobody there.

So you just kick the ball along.

Those center backs get it and put it right back at you again.

One of the phrases you might use with your kids is to say to them, hey, we are all connected by a rubber band.

So when the whole team will forward when the ball moves forward, we all move forward together.

That's an important concept because, again, you want from all the way to your keeper, all the way to the front line to move together and keep the

gaps between each of the lines.

Keeper defenders, midfield and striker to never get stretched.

If you can do that, you maintain that structure and shape so that you have all sorts of options.

When you're defending, you can become compact.

And when you're attacking, you have options right, left, forward and backwards at any one time.

So you've got your team out in this shape.

You've started to understand what the numbers are, the positions, how can you get them used to staying in those positions?

But now getting your technical reps and getting your players to pass and receive and move in a little bit more of a game like thing.

Well, my favorite exercise to do that you can do right away once you've got them in shapes is called positional rondo.

And it's simply you put your team in your shape in a position.

In this case, we're going to do it in our half the field.

So we have our keeper involved and then we're going to add pressure.

We're going to pass the ball around and we're going to send somebody in from the green team to try and steal it.

And as they get better, we'll send another player and another player until a certain point, you'll be able to play this six or seven versus four or five or even six.

And you'll be amazed how quickly your team can learn to keep the ball in a half of a field with that much pressure going on.

So in this quick animation, you can see we've got one player in there.

They're chasing around. We'll throw another player in.

We've got those channels in there for wide players start coming in too much.

If we need to, we can throw another player in another player in.

I'll throw in here a video clip of me doing this with my team as a warm up.

And then I'll show you another one where we're just doing a little bit of a practice.

But again, this positional war, this positional run though, does so many things that lets you get your team comfortable with the relationships between each other and their roles or

responsibilities to help each other. And it also lets you then marry that technical component of how do we pass?

How do we receive? How do we take our first touch?

How do we move and play?

How do we dribble? When do we dribble?

When do we pass all those things?

But you're doing it in their shape.

So they start to connect those two things.

Oh, I have to work better on my passing or receiving.

And if I can get better at it, it makes it easier for me to do this thing with my teammate.

That's the marriage of the two pieces together.

Well, okay, coaches, I hope you found that useful.

I hope that you've come away from that with a couple of sentences for each of the roles on your team.

So you can get your team into this shape and playing right away.

It really can happen in a practice or two between giving them those roles and responsibilities, showing them those channels and doing that positional Rondo.

You can really start to get them to understand it very quickly.

And you're marrying the technical attack together, which is one of the most important tenants that I believe.

As I mentioned before, those ropes, I have a whole pile here.

This is one of these hundred foot ropes you can pick up at any home center.

I'll put a link to maybe one or two in the description if you just like to order it online.

But players that age have a hard time imagining a straight line between two things.

So even if you say, hey, imagine a line between this 18 and that 18, they really have a hard time cognitively doing that.

This solves it better than laying out 15, 20 cones to make a solid straight line.

These are quick, easy, fast to put down.

You don't have to stake them down.

The kids will see them and stay away from them.

When I first brought these out eight, 10 years ago, within a week or two, I had other coaches texting me.

Can I come by the house and borrow them?

Like they're not that expensive. I told them to go to go to Home Depot and pick some up.

Super handy to have around for this sort of thing.

So now you've got a quick primer of how to set them up, where they should go, what their basic jobs are on the field and a way to start

practicing that right away. In the next video, what we're going to do is start working on the thing that's probably the most important skill to start working on.

That's playing out of the back.

I don't believe in punting ball almost until the second year of nine V nine because playing out of the back is so