Attacking In Transition Form Your Own Half: Part 1- Liverpool Drill/Transitions
By: Matt Carroll
This session is the third session that I have designed for my high school-aged teams for our open summer session here in New Jersey. This is a period where you can hold open sessions, clinics, tournaments, and leagues. The catch is none of this can be required, and cannot be utilized to “evaluate’ players in the regular season. That being said, the difficulty of planning these sessions is that you really won’t know numbers until maybe the week of, since players may be on vacation, a tournament, etc. That being said, we try to make these sessions something we can work on, no matter the numbers, and design them in a way that any level of player can get something out of it.
For this session, we are working on what we call “light switch moments”, the moments of transition that we tell players they need to “flick that switch” faster than the opposition. If we can transition from defense to offense before the opposition is able to get into a strong defensive set, we are going to open up gaps in their play since they are likely utilizing width to exploit our compactness. This session is designed to give the players a toolkit they can use to create attacking options from these moments in order to refine their thinking when the light switches.
The first drill we are going to start with is either the Liverpool Drill or Transitions. Essentially both these drills have similar concepts, and I want to plan for both to bring some flexibility to the session. Whichever drill you choose, what we’re looking for here is essentially to bring in some element of play practice play. We want players transitioning quickly and often to give the players a mental picture of what these moments will look like as we discuss how we, as a team, want to address them throughout the session.
The Liverpool drill starts with 5 players behind two goals set up about 20 yards apart, with a goalkeeper in each net. The first group to go has a player pick up a ball and go 1v 0 and tries to score on the other team's keeper. As soon as the shot leaves the attacker's foot, two players from the team behind the goal being shot at then take a ball and go towards the other goal in a 2v1. This continues after each shot or defensive takeaway until the game scales up to a 5v5. After that, you reset to 1v 0 from the other side and repeat.
In Transitions, we need a 5v5 on the field and a team of 5 lined up behind each goal, using the same format as Liverpool, goalies and all. The two teams in the center play a small-sided game against each other. If a team scores, they stay on; if a team misses a shot behind the net or gets scored on, they are off, and replaced by the team standing behind the goal they are defending. The team that stays on plays a ball quickly from their own goalkeeper, creating transitions even after a team scores. Games should be short and high-intensity. If an individual matchup drags on, you can install a time limit to games, and if it expires, both teams are off.
