By Danny Carvalho
Question - “My team is awful at defending. What are some good team defending drills I can do that will help?"
I love working on defending, especially team defending. Here are three of my favorite drills that will help you with that matter.
Activity 1 – Master 1v2s
Use about a third of the field with one goal, a goalkeeper and a 2v1 situation to score on the goal.
Play starts with the two attackers going forward to score against a defender and the goalkeeper.
The main coaching point here is for the defender to deny the pass by positioning himself kind of 50% on the way to the goal of the man on the ball and 50% between the two attackers to avoid the pass, forcing the man on the ball to dribble forward by themselves.
In the diagram below the situation developed to the man on the ball breaking into the box with the pass option blocked, losing the advantage to score.
Goalkeeper and defender are going to put pressure on together in order to invert the situation from an attacking 2v1 to a 1v2.
Goalkeeper and defender succeeded on making the space tight for the attacker with not much angle to attempt to score successfully.
Activity 2 – Trap the attacker
This activity is designed at the final third, setting up a line of cones to split the box vertically and play a 1v1 on one side only as shown below.
The goal here for the defender is to use the central line for their benefit. The attackers has a reduced area of action and the defender can force two situations in his behalf.
1-) The defender can force the attacker to the outside by positioning themselves centrally, chest and hips facing the sideline and never allowing the attacker to dribble the center of the box.
2-) The defender can force the attacker to the center all the way to the line of cones which represents a 2nd defender. In this activity, the attacker would go out of bounds. The other reason to force the attacker to the center could be because that’s their weak foot.
By Danny Carvalho, DOC at Corinthians Campinas Youth Club, Brasil
