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0:00 Hello coaches. Coach KW here. Today we're going to work on developing a session based on a Reddit post on how to work with the offside law. So we're
0:08 going to look at a couple of different session concepts and design it real time on the screen to work on how to work with defenders to work on the offside
0:15 law and get their field awareness. But then we're going to take the same exact setup once we're done with it and we're going to show you how we can use it for
0:21 two different attacking principles for other weeks. We're going to show you how we can take this one big picture thing, break it down into a smaller chunks, and
0:28 so then we can have an entire session from practice warm-up game to full scrimmage at the end. And then we'll also talk about the benefits of being
0:37 able to use one setup in multiple weeks to just speed the learning for you and your players. And now you have a whole macro cycle of three plus weeks in this
0:45 one drill setup. So, let's go. Hello coaches. Welcome back. Coach KW here.
0:50 Hope you're all well. After a couple weeks of uh recuperation at the end of the season, I'm back. Uh it was a great end of the season after feeling slightly
0:58 depressed about how things are going. My kids turned it around the last three weeks in practices and games. Uh maybe we'll do a video review. If you'd like
1:05 to see that, uh get down in the comments. It help. But today, what I'm going to do is I'm going to do something I'm not that great at, which is session
1:13 design. Now, I'm not great at it in the traditional US Soccer grid style. If you've ever taken the course, there's a ton of detail like how many minutes, how
1:20 much rest. I I'm not great at that, but I am pretty good at the big picture. If you've watched any of my videos, you probably know that's where my brain goes
1:28 is the big picture and not the details.
1:29 And that's what we're going to look at today. I uh participate pretty heavily in a subreddit uh soccer coaching resources. We'll pull it up here. And one of the users who I've uh blacked out
1:39 here asked a question that I thought, hey, I could help them with. And the question was they're looking for a drill to work on the defensive side of the
1:47 game with dealing with the offside line for their defenders. Now, interestingly, then in the next sentence, they say, "But I'd also like to work with the attackers to do this to work on passing
1:57 and breaking the line." So, let's talk about that first when we're looking at this. So, my first comment to you and for this person, I said when I wrote
2:04 back was when coaching, you only coach one side of the ball. If your session is about defense, coach only defense because all the players on the field,
2:12 especially at the youth level, are going to be defenders at some point, whether in the drill or in games. And so, you do not want to mix your messages once going
2:20 on. Resist the temptation to have yourself or an assistant coach work with the attackers to try to defeat the thing you're trying to coach success in on the
2:28 defensive side of the ball. vice versa.
2:31 When we go the other way, if you're going teaching attacking, do not mix messages with your players and say, "Okay, this is how you can defeat this
2:38 as defenders." It just confuses them and it actually works against your favor.
2:43 So, as strong as that, sometimes that urge can be resist. So, step one, work one side of the ball. Second, the ideas I wrote down for him and which we're
2:53 going to demonstrate can work on both sides of the ball. So, what we're going to do is I'm going to show you my thought process of what I did and what I
2:59 wrote out to him. I gave him one idea and I thought of a second idea. I'm going to show you how we can work that in the defensive side. And then after
3:07 that, we'll talk about how we can then use it in subsequent weeks to work on two different attacking principles. So, that's in this video as well. And
3:15 lastly, because I always go to the big picture, I'm going to show you how I designed the big uh picture concept first. And then I could take that and
3:23 break it down to a smaller smaller sided game. And now from those two pieces, I have an entire session. I can have a welcome game when they show up. I can do
3:31 the smallsided games to introduce the concept. I can do the large format game to get the concept across in a bigger field. and then we can just run a
3:38 scrimmage at the end to see if those things that we ran in the session get actually used in the actual drill. So, I'm going to cover all that in this
3:46 video. We're going to go to the tactics board and we'll go from there. Let's go.
3:49 Okay. So, when I think of session design, uh, for better or worse, I go straight to the big picture, the large format game, because I first think about
3:59 how the big picture goes. If you've watched any of my videos, you're probably not surprised in any way, shape, or form that that's the way I think because that's just natural how I
4:07 go. So, I tend to go to the big picture and then shrink it down. So, that's what we're going to do here. So, if I'm going to start thinking about lines, I'm going
4:14 to think about grids because offside line is an imaginary line. And so, if I'm developing a training game, my mind first went to can I create some
4:24 artificial grids on the field that we can use to help train our players to step up. So, my first thing here, as you can see, I've got those six cones spaced
4:32 out across the field. I'm going to use these to create these artificial zones.
4:36 I'm going to make basically splitting the field into four sections, uh, four equal sections. Now, you'll see later on that we can make those sections unequal.
4:45 You can also see I've got this set up for the big picture, 7v7. So, let's say you have a 9v9 or 11v1 team. This is probably how you could set up your
4:54 players if enough players showed up. You can also make this with smaller numbers or bigger numbers, but you get the idea behind it. But now that we have lines,
5:02 we're now going to look at how do we then manipulate the team with these constraints to get the desired outcome we want. And so now my thought process
5:11 is how can I get my defensive line to step up to make sure they are not hanging back when the play goes forward.
5:17 So my first set of restrictions that I think about here is simply just a modification to the game. And that's what we're doing is we're putting constraints on the players to
5:26 artificially change their behavior to help them condition to the cues and such that will get them to do this when the constraints are removed. And so my first
5:35 constraint here is I'm now saying that in order for a goal to count, everyone but the goalkeeper needs to be on be beyond this last zone, this zone at the
5:47 end here. So, what this does is now it forces the defense to take a position to move up the field when we're in possession to get them out of the habit
5:56 of perhaps standing statically in the back once they've played the ball forward. We've all seen teams and players that once the ball moves forward, the defenders just kind of hang
6:05 out in the back. Some coaches inexplicably I've played teams as recently as a couple weeks ago where they basically told the defenders never leave the top of the box. That's
6:15 absolute suicide. I'm sorry to say.
6:17 Let's condition our players to feel like, hey, when the ball goes forward, we also have to go forward. Perhaps once you've done that for a little while, you
6:25 can even get to the point where you either move these zones closer in or even for that matter just use the halfway line. So now you can say, "Hey,
6:36 now a goal doesn't count until everyone including the defenders is over the halfway line." So that makes it a much more difficult proposition for your team to get a winning goal if you come across
6:48 uh if you don't get all your players up there. But the condition it does is it starts to get your players to get pushed forward once the ball goes forward. Now
6:56 when the ball turns over, natural offside is in play because we're not going to have goal hanging even with these lines. Although I understand at 77 with some leagues with the buildout
7:05 line, the buildout line becomes the place where offside goes. If that's the rule you're in, then maybe you can mimic that. I like the build outline for the
7:14 purpose of of giving teams the ability to learn how to build out without going immediately to just long ball all the time. I don't love it to be the offside.
7:21 But however your rule works, if that's the case, then you also then are training your defenders to be like, hey, when the team loses the ball, you need
7:29 to find where that forward is and make sure you track back. So when you have this rule in place, let's say we're playing with a natural offside rule.
7:39 Now, one of your coaching points for your defenders on learning to learn how to play with an offside line or offside trap is when to keep your line or step
7:49 and when is it you have to drop. And the usual wisdom for this is, is there pressure on the ball? If this player has no pressure on the ball and you've got
7:58 runners, players like this, this player has plenty of time and space to pick their head up and pick out a pass. And now maybe they're playing this ball over
8:06 the top and a good run is beyond. So your coaching point now is for again teaching players how to deal with the offside line is hey when do we stay when
8:17 do we step and when do we drop? When we see that this player has plenty of time to look up and make a pass. This is where you start to drop. It's pretty
8:25 obvious when a player is about to kick a long ball. You can usually read it and see it in their body language and the way they're approaching the the ball to
8:31 kick it. If there's plenty of pressure on the ball and this player can't get their head up and can't make that long pass, now that's the cue. Those are the
8:40 conditions where now you're teaching your team, hey, read the situation, see the queue, understand that you don't need to stop running back to your goalkeeper because if you've already
8:50 have your players here and this player strays offside, this player here isn't probably going to be able to pick that pass out. They're probably going to have
8:56 to make another pass before this ball gets forward. So using a zone game might be a great way to get your players to understand the cues and the and the
9:06 situations in the game for a when we have to move forward and we have the ball and b when we need to drop because that's really what we're working on with
9:13 the defensive line. So another way I had an idea of how you might be able to work on this is to play a game where at any
9:22 time one of the coaches I have two here assistant two coaches on the field with a different color ball. uh if they're yellow, you might have red, blue,
9:30 whatever color ball you have. But the idea here is at some point during this practice or this game, you call out switch or maybe like if it's a yellow
9:41 ball, you call out yellow ball and you play this ball in to the team that's defending. So now the red team has to immediately drop what they're doing and
9:50 look to see where the danger is because now all of a sudden, let's say the ball is way down here and we're working in the final third, but your coach calls
9:58 yellow ball and now gives it to this midfielder that's way up here. Well, now the defensive shape might be all over the place. And so here's a way where you
10:06 can quickly change the dynam dynamic of the game. And now you can work on having your defensive players and other players assess the cues to now be like, "Hey,
10:18 what's around me?" Because while they were playing with the white ball, all their attention was probably focused down on this end of the thing of the field. So they may not have been paying
10:27 attention to this midfielder that was hanging out here or this striker that was hanging out here. And so what you're trying to do now in this type of game is
10:35 not only get your team to be more aware of the cues when the situation changes, but also to be aware of the larger field while you're playing the game. Even
10:44 though all the action might be down here in the attacking third corner, you want your center backs and maybe your defensive midfielders and such to be aware of where other players are hanging
10:54 out. Because how many times have we seen teams where the defenders have gone someplace and they've literally not paid attention to this winger that's hanging out here. The ball turns over and this
11:05 player is on a breakaway and your defenders were like, "Where did he come from?" Well, they was he was standing there the whole time. They just never
11:11 paid attention. So this type of game can really help your defenders and all your team learn to assess all of the field and all the situations on the game. And
11:20 so now when this happens perhaps in a real game, they have a broader sense of what's going on around them to protect against things like this.
11:30 Now, if you don't have goals available or maybe you want to work in a possession game or you just want to mix it up, you can do the same thing in
11:37 terms of a game structure, but now maybe you say, "Hey, you need to be able to string together three, four, five passes in a row in possession, but in order for
11:45 the counting to start, all the players have to be inside a certain zone. So maybe it's again, you start with maybe you got to get all players within the
11:55 final third three zones here." So you can count these passes versus if you've got somebody's who's stuck here and you make passes, it doesn't count. And again, you can then make it harder or
12:06 easier, you can use the halfway line to make those zones. Or maybe you shrink the distance between the center line and these zones like this. But you can
12:16 instead of splitting the field in the fourths evenly, you can take those two outside zones and push them closer to the center line, maybe even the edges of
12:23 the center circle to give your players perhaps twothirds of a field instead of half of a field versus threequarters of the field to make those passes. So you
12:31 can do that in a possession game where maybe your goalkeeper is the only one that is allowed to stay way out back, but they can't be part of the passing or
12:39 maybe you don't have goalkeepers available and you're just doing this because of the number of players. So, how would I make this work for a smaller number of players? Uh, it's actually
12:49 pretty straightforward. I think if I'm going to take this and bring this down to like a smaller level, then maybe we could do this with 4v4 or 3v3. But the
12:56 same principles apply in a smaller version. So, if I want to take from the big picture and bring it down to the small picture and maybe have this be the
13:03 pregame before the full game, this is might be the idea is 3v3, 4v4 can be the possession game, could be pugnet game.
13:11 You could play the game where the ball turns over by a coach calling out and sending a new ball in. You can use the same principles but on a smaller scale
13:18 to get the players used to doing this but with fewer numbers on the field so that it's easier to do. So now if we look at the whole session and how we
13:27 might stage this I would probably have some sort of welcome game or welcome activity as the players come in whether it's just a regular game because you can
13:35 already have the two small fields set up and you know when two players show up you play one v one and as they keep showing up it's 2v1 2v2 etc etc get two
13:44 fields depending on the number of players you have that's your welcome game. Then your first activity is you introduce the zones and whether you play in possession or to goals. You make that
13:52 stipulation goal doesn't count or possession doesn't count to all players are inside this part of the field or that part of the field using the zones.
13:59 Talking about getting all the players up the field. Then you can bring them all together, use the whole half of a field, play the same sort of game with a bigger
14:08 formation and talk about now we're talking about when to step, when to drop, when to hold the line, all those sort of things. So now you can use those
14:14 coaching points and then you take away the restrictions and you now just finish with an actual game in the same format and you see if those principles start to
14:23 be applied to the game when there's no artificial constraints put on the game.
14:28 That's an entire session right there. 90 minutes, 75 to 90 minutes right there.
14:32 And it's really using the same setup twice. Welcome game and first activity and then full-size game and then ending activity. pretty straightforward to set up your fields to do. So you have a
14:45 minimum of downtime of moving cones, moving setups, all those sort of things.
14:49 Um, so between that and the ball switching game where you switch from one ball to the other and make make transitions happen artificially, I think those are two ways that you could really
14:58 work on getting your players aware of the cues to deal with that offside line stepping forward. Now, here's the cool part. That same format can be used now
15:08 in another week to now turn your focus onto your attacking players on that transition when the ball turns over. How can you find passes and time runs and
15:18 make runs behind to to beat that offside trap? So, you've trained your players on how to defend. So, now when you switch to offense, those defenders are going to be a more
15:29 realistic challenge for your attackers going the other way. So now you can spend a week working on how to break the press, how to break lines with passes
15:38 and runs. Can a 1v one then turn a situation to breaking a line because now you've made an oddman situation where now you're playing 2v1 around the
15:47 defender. You can work on those concepts with the exact same setup of the field.
15:52 Thirdly, you can also work on building attacks with your entire team. Too many times, especially in 77 99, it turns into a basketball game. up and down the
16:03 field, back and forth, back and forth.
16:05 As you get to 11 v1, you can't play that way. You cannot play the game like a basketball game, streaking up and down the field. It's just impossible. Uh
16:12 especially at the youth level. So, you really need to build patience into your team to be able to bring more players into the attack and bring the entire
16:20 field up. Well, that first condition in that first game we talked about where the goal doesn't count until all the players are over a certain zone is
16:29 naturally going to delay your attackers because they can't just go streaking down the field and not have the rest of the team involved. So now you are
16:37 building naturally the ability of your team to control the ball in the attack versus just constantly running running out of room, out of bounds, easy pick up
16:47 by the keeper and it comes back the other way back and forth. one drill, one concept, or really two concepts to break the lines and then be able to use that
16:54 for both defensive and offensive. I hope you found this kind of walk through and think helpful. Again, it's not my strong point, but the more I do it, the better
17:03 I get at it. And again, maybe you see something in this that you would think you might do differently. Put it in the comments because again, we're here to
17:10 help each other and that would be super helpful. Other than that, I hope you found this useful. I'll see you out there in the fields hopefully real soon.
