Problem with unselfish attackers in possession-style team

[Justin Boatman]

I think that’s why Attacking Patterns are so important. The players need to know when it’s time to “play to feet”, when it’s time to play a through ball, when it’s time to cross it and when is it time to look for the finish. When they rehearse the patterns over and over again they will start to see when each action is appropriate.

I remember when I first started coaching and my teams would look good moving the ball around and possessing the ball but would struggle with finishing and scoring goals like you are describing. It was so frustrating watching them pass the ball around and then not get anything out of it in the final third. It wasn’t until I gave them some Attacking patterns that they began to score a lot of goals.

The Attacking patterns give them concrete ways to break down a defense. Get them to master a few of them, then add another one. When they’ve nailed that one, add another, but only add more patterns once they have mastered the previous ones and are executing them in matches.

I remember my GU11 team a few years back…..we used to rehearse in the attacking third switching the field from one Attacking Mid to the other Attacking Mid and then playing a through ball between the Center Back and the Outside Back with the Winger making a diagonal run in behind the defense. The Winger would then dribble towards the near post and get the GK to commit and then play the ball across the 6 and then the Center Forward and opposite Winger were making their runs in
for the easy tap ins. We scored a ton of goals that way and we ran that pattern at just about every training session. We rehearsed it so many times they could do it in their sleep!

That was an important season for our team, and me personally as a coach, because it was when I started doing Attacking patterns and it REALLY improved our goal scoring. That would be my advice for you…..get your team doing some attacking patterns and they will start to see when they should look for the through ball and also when they should be looking to finish. Hope that helps!

[Dirk Bennett]

Thanks Justin! We incorporated a few minutes of that into our warm-up tonight, along with a nice day of finishing yesterday at practice in between games. It really helped a lot (we also got to play on turf, a rarity around here, which helps our style of play immensely). The attacking patterns really shown through as we created 21 shots and won 4-0 in what was probably our best performance yet! Just gotta keep true to the formula and repeat!

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