Tag Archives for " counter-attack "

0 Deep Shots Prevent Counters

By Mike Smith I saw it this weekend during a Premier League match. While the announcers seemed disappointed with the effort ( perhaps rightly so at the Premier League level ) the game manager in me was impressed – a deep shot from a rebound which turned out to be more dangerous to the fans 10

0 Quick Movement & Saves in Dealing with Counter Attacking Play

By Scott Housden - When playing a high pressing game, or your defenders are playing a high defensive line there is always the possibility of a counter attacking pinpoint long angled ball for a wide or central attacker to run on to and shoot. In this scenario, the goalkeeper is unable to sweep the ball and

0 Defending the Counter Attack

By Alex Trukan Transition phases have become increasingly important phases of the game with many teams trying to exploit the moment when the opposition is not organised. Especially transition to attack (including counter attack and quick attack) is being used by many teams around the world as a primary attacking strategy. In response to that,

0 Classic Counter-Attacking

By Alex Trukan

According to the type, counter-attack can be divided into four different styles: solo, classic, collective and advanced. Solo involves a player picking up the ball and running with it to score, while other players just make supportive runs to create space. A Collective one is based on a group of midfield players who play against disorganised defence. The Advanced type is when the ball is won higher up the pitch due to pressing being applied. The Classical type of counter-attacking strategy, which involves regaining possession deep in their own half and using quick play to progress forwards and score will be presented below.

Using the target man

When counter-attacking from deep position it is often a case of having 10 players behind the ball what makes it extremely difficult to collectively threaten the opposition defence. That is why, it is crucial to have a target man in front of the ball who can be used as a player to pass to and gain time for the supporting players to arrive. His positioning should be ideally on the weak side of the

0 Defending to Counter-Attack

By Alex Trukan

Football can be divided into three phases: attack, defence and transition (attack – defence, defence – attack). That division simplifies the game and makes it easier to understand and coach, however, any division carries with itself a danger of isolating components from the bigger whole and losing the complexity and realism of the game. Putting all of that into context, the way your team attacks, will affect how it defends. The way your team defends will affect how your team will attack. All of the four phases are linked and interconnected. Modern football has become a game of ‘chess’, where every move will have an influence on other and players have to think couple of steps ahead. For example, if you want to exploit the opponents on the counter attack, the preparation starts when your team is in the defensive phase. The technical details of defending will be then influenced by the next phase which is a transition to

2 6 v 4 Attacking Game

By Renato Lopez Moreira - 

Today's featured activity is a offensive game starting from free kick.

The game is played in a 75 x 75 yard area for one minute at a time.

The play is restarted after goal, shot out of bounds or when the ball leaves the playing area.

Exercise

The game starts with a corner kick. The

0 4 v 3 Defending Game

By Renato Lopez Moreira - 

In this exercise we work on a 4 v 3 defensive situation with a possibility to counter attack for the defense. This game could be used as a progression of last week's exercise.

The defenders have three small goals to defend while the attackers will have a large goal and goalkeeper to defend if they lose the ball.

The game area is played in a 27 x 38 -yard area. It's played for up to 2 minutes at a time.

When a goal is scored or the ball leaves the

2 Quick Counter Attacks

By Lawrence Fine, Author of the FineSoccer Coaching Bible.

This activity uses half a field, three attacking players, five defending players and one target player at midfield for the defending team. There is also a keeper in goal.

The attacking team starts with the ball and tries to score. The defending team tries to

1 Suarez’ Movement On the Counter-Attack

By Stevie Grieve

Liverpool in the 2013/2014 season were a joy to watch all season, and the brightest player in the team was Luis Suarez, who won the Players’ and Football Writers Player of the Year awards. Other than the goals he scored, his work rate to press, his desire to chase down loose balls and his unpredictability in attack, he brought an intelligence of movement which helped Liverpool on constructing attacks, building counter attacks and forcing the opposition to make decisions.

Leading the counter attack

As Sterling drives into space, Suarez has an opponent who wants to drop deep, as Norwich want to tuck in and defend from the centre. Sterling needs to

0 Defending the Counter Attack – Continuous

By Daniel Severn

This exercise will help your players to develop an understanding of key defensive positioning, delaying an opponent and help to develop their decision making. It can be broken down into a more tactical practice, but I like to play this game with a continuous aspect to increase the intensity. It is also a great way to teach players how to keep focus when tiring in the game.

Set Up
You will need a minimum of 9 players to run this exercise as continuous (you can play this with just 6, but for the best intensity, 12 players is ideal). You begin with 1 Goalkeeper and 2 Defenders placed just inside the penalty area. You now have 3 lines of attackers set up as if they are playing the roles of a striker and the two wingers/wide midfielders. The Striker starts with the ball.

Set up is shown below in Fig 1.

Rules
- 2 minutes on the clock
- The defenders begin with 10 points
- Each goal they concede, they lost 1 point
- Winning pair are the ones with the most points remaining at the end

Directions
The striker begins with the ball centrally. As soon as the striker takes

0 Successful Counter Attacks

By Waleed Zaghloul

Counter attacks are a great weapon in football and have been used by numerous teams over the years to great effect. This weapon is not utilized effectively by many youth teams in the US, possibly because it is difficult to teach. As coaches, before we can coach counter attacks, it might be useful to analyze the components of most successful counter attacks. In this article, we will dissect counter attacks and attempt to identify their main components and how they are carried out.

This article references this video clip made up of various examples of classic counter attack situations.

First, players (and coaches of course) need to identify when counter attacks are possible. There are two main scenarios, one from open play and one from set-pieces. From open play, it is usually a bad or an intercepted pass from a team that is attacking in numbers. From set-pieces, it is usually