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0:00 Hello, coaches. Welcome back. Coach K W here. I hope you're all well. We're in our seventh video here of the refresh 7v7. And as I hinted at the end of
0:09 episode six with the defensive roles, we're going to talk about pressing.
0:12 For some reason, teaching pressing in 7v7 at U9 U10 seems to be sometimes controversial. Cuz a lot of teams, the way they do it is they just rush you
0:22 with as many players as possible. Cuz we all know the players are inexperienced, and the odds go up that if you can just swarm that player with the ball,
0:30 then you have a good chance of getting a turnover and scoring a goal and going up. The problem with that concept is it doesn't prepare those players for what
0:38 it's really need to be like, once again, 9v9 and 11v11. That technique doesn't work, and that results in teams just booting the ball, kids chasing it, and
0:47 then nobody learns anything. And if there's anything you've taken from any of my videos so far, that is the antithesis of what I want people to be
0:55 doing. Because again, we're not trying to win games at U10. We're trying to learn winning soccer. And pressing is an organized process by which our team knows, once again, roles and
1:07 responsibilities. Imagine that. When the time to press the ball, to do it as an organized unit, so that it becomes effective when you get it on the bigger
1:15 fields, with more space and more time, and how you can do it right. So, we're going to take a look at a bunch of different scenarios from goal kicks to
1:23 keeper collection/saves to counter pressing in these video examples. So, if you haven't yet, subscribe, like, give me a thumbs up, share with your fellow coaches. You do that a lot. Means the
1:34 world to me. And let's get into it.
1:38 Okay, let's talk about the first thing we talked about, which is the charge of the light brigade, as I like to call. So often, teams, whether the build-out line
1:45 is the halfway line or closer in, it's the first inclination is to basically just send as many players as you can to wherever the ball has been
1:54 kicked, in the hopes that you'll force a turnover from inexperienced players to score a goal. And if your goal is to win soccer games, and that's all you're
2:01 worried about at U10, go on with it, because that's basically all you're doing is you're just charging. You're basically doing U8 soccer, as I like to call where it's
2:08 basically everybody chases the ball. And so, while you have a good likelihood of scoring, you're not really teaching your kids what to do. And if you play a
2:16 decent team, even in this situation, two passes and we're going to cut half of this team out of the equation. So, don't do this, okay? Do not play this sort of
2:26 game because again, we're preparing our kids for 11v11.
2:30 So, instead, we're going to take a look at our first level of structured press.
2:34 So, this is a positional structured press with basically everybody's role is defined by the the position they're playing. I'm going to let this play through for a second. Uh we're going to
2:43 play a goal kick. We're playing against another decent team, so we're going to assume some quality on both sides of the ball, but this works in any direction,
2:50 as you'll see. So, ball's going to get played out. We've got a curved run in, and then we're going to pause it right there, and we're going to talk about the
2:57 different pieces and parts of this, all right? So, everybody in this structured press has a job. And we're going to talk about those one at a time.
3:06 So, our first job is here.
3:08 As we've talked about in both the attacking and defending, our wingers' job, our wide players, their job is their opposite number, their opposite wide player. So, for these presses, and
3:18 this is might be one of the most important pieces, your wingers stay on the other team's wingers. They don't chase the ball, they mark the player.
3:26 So, if that player stands at the halfway line, then your player stands with them.
3:30 The idea here is you're trying to take away the easy wide option. So, that's the first piece of this is wide players handle their wide players, just like we
3:39 talked about in all the previous videos.
3:41 The second part of this is one of those structural elements that's for all defending players, whether they're pressing or not, and that is the concept of a curved run when going after a
3:50 player. Running straight at a player, as we've looked at before, gives that player options to basically go left or right of the player. A curved run is
3:59 more structured and thoughtful because basically what you're doing is you're trying to herd that player to the direction you want to go. So, if this nine makes that curved run, their idea
4:08 here is to show that player, "Hey, I'm coming in from that player's left side or the right side of the nine." It's going to give them a sense of, "Well,
4:16 the easy place to escape is to go off to the left side of this field, which in effect pins them to one side of the field. So, the curved run
4:25 idea is to cut the field in half and force play to one side of the field. The next piece here, we'll talk about the middle of the field, if you will. So,
4:33 first, our eight, our center mid, their job is to occupy that space in the middle of the field and to be close to their opposition middle of the field
4:42 player, if they have one, but the idea is they're occupying space, they're trying to take up the space in the middle to make it harder for them to try
4:49 and kick cross field into space or into somebody running because that player is occupying that space. Ideally, the other team, if they have a central midfielder, you're
4:59 keeping an eye on them, but you're not man marking, you're marking the space that's in that area.
5:05 For your center backs, they're doing the same thing. Wherever those opposition striker is, your center backs are flanking them.
5:13 Ideally, one's going a little tighter to kind of man mark them and one is dropping behind to cover the space in case the ball goes behind. But, the idea
5:21 here again is they're occupying the middle of the field, making it difficult for them to just boot this ball into the middle and hope for a good bounce.
5:28 Lastly, once again, let's talk about our keeper that we talked about the defensive thing. They should not be on their goal line. They should be at least
5:34 at the top of their box and further because if this team does try to play a long ball and it bounces past your defenders and their center back,
5:43 standing here means it's a couple of steps before they can put their foot on it and put it back into play or even out of bounds. If they're back on their goal
5:50 line, they will not win that foot race and more times than not, now they're your center backs are facing their own goal, chasing a ball, the striker is
5:58 trying to bust through them to try and get a poke at the ball. It's never a good scene. So, again, keeper is part of the press because
6:05 their positioning, as we've talked about before, is vital to cover that back space. Now, once your team has kind of mastered that sort of positional press where each position has a
6:17 it can be time for you, as you get along, to do a slightly more advanced press where now at least two of your players now have to make a decision. And
6:25 the two players in question here are our nine and our eight right in the middle of the field here. You can see if we go back to our structured press, our eight
6:32 and nine are kind of standing in the middle of the field. And the reason for that is we're plugging them in a central spot to make whatever run they need to
6:39 make to get to where the ball is going to go the shortest possible. However, if we look at the advanced press, we can actually make that run even shorter if
6:47 now, instead of the nine and the eight having a dedicated job, they now have to make a decision. By splitting your nine and eight to either side of the center
6:56 circle, now your players can take an even shorter path because now that line, instead of from the center to this player, is now more of a direct shot. It
7:06 actually does cut time and space down.
7:08 The key to this now is for these players to understand that they are going to swap depending on which way the ball goes. So, in this scenario here, you can
7:18 see our nine and our eight, nine's on the left, eight's on the right. When the ball goes to this side of the field, it's the nine that makes that curved run
7:25 and the eight comes in and covers the space, just like we saw in the structured beginning press. It's positional. Nine went for the ball, eight took the space. However,
7:38 if we rewind this here and now the ball goes to the other side, instead of the nine making that curved run, now it's our eight. So now we're having our
7:46 players make a decision based on which way the ball goes. So now from this point forward, basically the nine and the eight have swapped jobs. So now the
7:55 eight is the striker and the nine is the center mid until at such point during the run of play, it ends up usually swapping back. But you could see once
8:04 again, [clears throat] now the eight has made the curved run, the nine has come to handle the middle of the field.
8:11 Now, let's play say we're playing a really good team, right? Our player's in a good position cuz we've made that, but now the ball has come back to the keeper
8:20 for example. We're still in great shape. It's more difficult now because our the other team is confident with the ball, they're moving the ball, right? They play back
8:28 to the keeper. That's a good team. But now our eight and our nine and everybody else is still in good positions. So no matter what happens here,
8:36 we're in a good situation. Let's say keeper has the ball. Here's a bunch of their options. A lot of time the ball is rolling to them. What are they going to
8:45 do? They're just going to boot at that ball and ship it out. If they do do that, wherever that ball goes, we've got cover all the way across the field. Our
8:54 wingers are still marked our wide players. We've got our nine that's still covering the middle of the field. We've got both of our center backs keeping an
9:01 eye on that striker and our keeper is up the top of the field. So if they just boot it wirelessly and it's that's rolling down the field,
9:08 we're in good shape no matter what If this team is really good, right? Our eight is going to come in and impress.
9:15 They play the next short pass and we stop here. Again, we're still in really good position. All the players on the field have somebody close to them making
9:23 the next pass difficult. And now that eight, because they've took that take that run across the box, they kind of really force that player to either play
9:32 a very, very dangerous pass back to the keeper, try to dribble out of that situation, maybe knock it into open You don't get to cover every single one
9:42 because again, as we've learned in the playing out of the back series, you're always going to have at least a numbers up advantage when you have the ball, but
9:49 you could see with the structured press, we're cutting the choices down to things that are not so easy.
9:56 When we look at this, there's one other option that might happen if we rewind this back, and that's maybe that this center back plays the ball straight over
10:03 to the other center back. Still, once again, with that eight still now following in, everybody's in a good position no matter what happens with this next ball, that their choices are
10:13 limited and your team is in good position with most of the other players in front of your defenders ready to protect the other end of the field. Now,
10:21 let's take a look at what happens commonly in this in these games, and that is, let's say our nine takes a shot on net and the keeper picks up the ball.
10:30 What happens a lot of times is because of just habit from having a build out line, is your team starts to back up.
10:36 And this is where you've really got to start to train them to kind of break that habit because this is not a goal kick. They are not obligated in almost
10:44 every league to have to back up. So, what you've got to get them to do is to not do this, to not back up, and instead find their shape. So, as the other team
10:54 starts to get ready to go out and attack, and hopefully they're trying to make the field big cuz we've talked about that in our attacking videos, you
11:02 now have players in position to at least keep the play in front and if the ball goes short, have players available to press the ball once it gets down into
11:11 play. One of the common things that sometimes happens is the keeper will put the ball down with thinking it's a goal kick, you've got to train your strikers
11:18 as soon as the keeper puts that ball down, if it was a save, that ball's live. Get in there and press that keeper because they don't have any
11:27 protection at that point. Once they put the ball on the ground, they can't pick it up again. It's not a goal kick. Get in there and put pressure on the ball.
11:34 You might be able to pick up an early goal that way. The last sort of pressing that we want to talk about is the counter press. Counter pressing is when
11:41 we're trying to win the ball back in the opposition half because we've just lost it. So, let's say in this play here, our winger is here with the ball. They're
11:49 attacking down the side and maybe they try and have a shot or a pass and it ends up with that center back. Well, because our players were in a good
11:56 attacking formation, our eight was supporting the seven and the 11 and nine. Our center back number four was behind the 11.
12:05 All our players are now in a great position to cover the other team and try and win the ball back. That nine now has a great opportunity to try and jump on
12:14 that ball. And that's what counter pressing is. It's not just one player doing it. It's a whole team organized press to try and win the ball back. Now,
12:23 there are situations where the ball gets lost and you have nobody around it. Your team shouldn't be willy-nilly charging.
12:29 Again, charging like a light brigade out of position to try and get that ball. At that point, again, your striker is the one that we've talked about. Their role
12:36 in defensive is to try and hunt the ball down in the other half. But the rest of the team should be remembering their defensive responsibilities, finding the
12:43 players that they should be marking, and getting ready to delay whatever attack might be coming from losing the ball.
12:49 But here as you can see, we're in a good shape. And as we go forward, we have ability to put pressure on the ball, to mark other players' movements. Now, the
12:57 nine is counter pressing, getting up on that player. Yes, the other team has two players that are open, but now it requires a good team to have that
13:05 confidence to play the ball back. And as you can see across the rest of the field, your team is now back and in a good defensive position to make sure
13:14 that there's no outnumbered counter attacks coming your way. So, again, as we talked about in attack and defensive roles and shapes, being in a good shape for attacking can naturally keep your
13:25 team in a good shape to defend a counter attack. So coaches, I hope you realize from this that pressing is not chasing.
13:32 It's a structure, just like everything else we've talked about. We're putting our players into a structure to understand their roles and responsibilities, because learning it now is only going to help them when they
13:41 get to the larger field games of 9 v 9 and 11 v 11. Pressing is more like hurting. We want to make play predictable by getting the play to be
13:49 cut into one part of the field so that it limits the number of options the other team has. And then from there, your players then execute those
13:57 technical skills of 1 v 1 and 2 v 2 and 3 v 3 defending to keep the play in front of them until they can win the
14:04 ball back. So, I hope you can find this helpful. I hope you can see that teaching pressing at U10 isn't a negative thing if you do it right. You again, getting
14:15 your players ready for the next level, and that's what we're trying to do here.
14:18 I'm not quite sure what we're going to do in the next video, but we're going to talk a little bit more about practice structures and things like that to help
14:24 you get a across these sort of concepts in your groups. So, drop me a line in the comments if there's something you want me to specifically counter, but
14:33 really this group of seven videos talks about the high-level understanding of the basic concepts in 7 v 7 and how it applies for the larger game so that you
14:43 can start that process of educating our players to ultimately get to the full-size game when they get older. I really appreciate your help and patience with these videos. I've been sick going
14:51 in off getting past pneumonia right now.
14:54 So, uh a like, subscribe, and a share really helps out. Get in the comments section if there's something else you want to see. And until next time, thanks so
15:02 much. See you on the fields. Bye-bye.
