Transitions

This session is about the defensive transition. It helps to get players into the habit of reacting immediately after losing possession and works on encouraging the group of players closest to the ball to prevent the opposition from developing an attacking action.

At all times this session is focused on short sprint reactions in tight areas, which always gives the players a realistic chance of winning back possession or stopping the opposition from scoring, and it requires additional running from the players if this aim is not achieved.

The idea behind this session is to run drills that manufacture situations similar to those that occur during a real match. This makes players more familiar with the situations and encourages them to face these phases of the game with more confidence and greater experience.

In every game, we aim to be dominant in terms of good possession and good movement. So, this session is about players adopting learned and thought-out positions involved in transitions between defence and attack.

This is actually one of the easiest principles to coach – it doesn’t require complex instruction, just players being willing to ‘know a role before playing it’.

The object of this session is to achieve a fast transition from defence to attack. Players tend to enjoy it because it’s performed at a high tempo, and with its fast transitions and its focus on encouraging counter-attacks, it’s very much related to the modern game. It covers all aspects of high tempo training – defenders not only have to defend overloads, but the session is also about winning possession and fast forward passing.

This session is about counter-attacking with pace on the first phase, decision-making and game-related play thereafter.

It is match-realistic and game-related for all positions. So in attacking play we want to see shots on goal, with movement to create or score. In terms of defending play, this is about defending crosses into the box, so players have to ask if they defend space or the man.

This session examines how we condition a player technically, tactically, physiologically and psychologically when attacking and defending transitions in a small-sided competition-based game.

It’s important to practise this because it improves our mastering of a scenario that appears regularly in matches…