Simple question/thoughts about patterm play ???

[Alec]

Mark,
I’ve had similar concerns. I’ve come to this place: we can’t really use the exact same methods as Barca, because we don’t have the same structure. Seeking that result is awesome, but we might have to go after it a little different in our american system. My advise is to master this stuff first. I’ve been using these methods for about two years(ish) and my kids play some pretty good possession. Know that I have the real information from Brian and Gary it’s going to be scary how good my kids could be. The kids need a framework, they just don’t understand even the most basic stuff unless you take them through it on a full size field. Once you have mastered these concepts and your kids are killing it, then try to tweak it. But if you try to change things before you begin you may never produce a product that looks anything like Barca.

[frank starsinic]

I feel that the players need jobs to do on the field. Something concrete that they can picture themselves doing.  By giving them patterns they now will see and feel themselves doing these jobs; things they have never done before, such as losing their man, moving toward a teammate, receiving a diagonal pass and immediately passing to an overlapping wingback.   Those players that WANT to do well, but cannot tell you what their jobs are on the field will end up running aimlessly on the field, i.e., little off-the-ball movement, that actually helps.

Once they have the feel for how an elite team operates and once good habits are formed, they will be able to start to think for themselves and create opportunity by finding and filling spaces, executing timing plays and combination plays.  At some point they will start to make runs, lose their man, overlap and various other “off-the-ball” activities without even thinking .

IMO, “Find, move to and exploit open spaces” is not something younger ages can picture, let alone execute, without first giving it to them in a very structured manner.

For years, I’ve told players to make overlapping runs, but rarely does it happen because I wasn’t able to teach the “when” very well and team shape was not taught very well, making it basically impossible. IMO, using patterns, good team shape, etc., it will happen automatically because there are triggers and it is their job to do so.  Soon enough, the same players will make these same runs even when no specific pattern is being executed, and they won’t make a consious decision to do so. It will just happen.

From what I can tell, the patterns illustrated on this site aren’t new or unique… and that is good. They are just typical scenarios that happen constantly on the field from elite teams (watch any professional game and you will probably see them all in any 10 minute period). The benefit of these patterns, aside from what has already been said is that the players are learning how to execute “typical soccer scenarios” very very quickly, with precision.

[Scott Nelson]

For me, Patterns are meant to provide a framework for the players to aid in decision making and organization. They should help players recognize, create and exploit typical situations that commonly occur during soccer games. Some coaches have taken this to incredibly rigid lengths to create some magnificent robots (most successfully Lobanovski @ Dinamo Kiev). This is a bit of a dead end imo, and ultimately most of the Kiev players other than Zavarov and Shevchenko struggled when they moved west to clubs that expected them to use their imaginations and be creative. You could be really effective with rigid patterns but it would not be much fun for the players. Patterns should have options to them, because of course you can’t just always play the same ball to the same players the same way and expect the other team not to counter it. So you start playing your goal kicks wide to the CB’s level with the six yard box. The other team sees this and marks those players. But by doing this they have left a direct path to the wingers, so you play them. So they close off the wingers and now you play the DCM. Now they mark him so the CB’s are open again. …. They can’t take away all your space, so you train your players to position themselves correctly so they can methodically exploit that space. If you are good you take advantage of whatever the opponent gives you. If you are great, you can take what you want by luring them where you want them.
With all my age groups I am doing more and more shadow/pattern play as part of my technical warm up, and I use patterns for fitness work too by regulating the reps and the tempo. Instead of passing back and forth in free space or in a grid, I prefer to have them Making the same passes they would make it he game, over the same distances, at game pace, on the same part of the field if space allows (my HS team gets the whole field, so we use it all). As they get better technically I add options and let the players decide where to go, then add pressure (the patterns become a kind of point-a to point-z rondo.)

[Stephen Townsend]

Andreas Iniesta once said ” It doesn’t matter how good a passer you are if your teammates are in the wrong position”. I don’t see pattern play as simply a series of sequential passes from player A to player B but  more as an opportunity to train the entire team to be in the correct areas of the field with the right spacing so that the player on the ball has a number of different options.  If you take as an example the video where Brian worked on the overlapping fullback. He wasn’t just focusing on the play on the flanks between the winger and the fullback but also the position of the defensive midfielder in relation to the two central defenders and the finishing positions of the attackers into the penalty box, making sure that each player had a specific location to attack. Guardiola wrote that ” whoever has the ball should focus on opposing players not teammates as he should always know where his teammates are”. I think that’s the advantage of working on patterns, to give everyone a familiarity of where their teammates are and the chance to look to exploit the poor positioning of their opponents.

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