Coaching Articles

As noted in Part 1of Understanding Individual Defensive Principles , the defender wants to try to force the attacker into an area of the field which will help his team. Much of his decision-making depends on which part of the field the attacker is in.

The most important beginning skills to teach a defender are placement, positioning and footwork in a 1v1 setting. Why are these skills so important? Defense by definition is a reactive state, where the attacker causes the defender to take steps to stop some action.

As the players learned during their earlier training on the phases of individual attacking, the object of any attacker is to hang onto the ball and to keep possession until the ball can be moved into scoring range...

The importance of learning the basic principles of small group attacking cannot be over-emphasized. The basic patterns which are involved in 1v1, 2v1 and 3v1 (or 3v2) attacking are the cornerstone of all other attacking patterns.