Dropping Back and Counterattack Vs Offensive Vigilance
The unhooked players are very important players in the offensive and defensive transitions, but, they are even more important in the vigilances previous to those transitions. We should practice how to use them to attack and how to defend them.
Supports: Superiority/inferiority
Ball retention, body orientation (One of Guardiola’s biggest obsession) to receive the ball from the exterior neutral player who has advantage through the guided discovery learning method. The defensive anticipations will make the attackers be on the right body shape to retain the ball and switch the play.
Hexagon Rondo
This is a very special space in order to make the players stay in triangles first and then add another player creating a diamond. Doing this we will be able to give 3 supports at least to the player on the ball, becoming a really difficult situation for the defenders to defend.
Conditioned Game: Switching and Stretching
If a team, while progressing on the field, opts for switching the play, for playing wide, for alternating passes to the interior and the exterior and it is positionally balanced, will be successful when attacking. This drill is a conditioned game that will orientate your players.
To move the ball upfield and tactical balance.
There are teams that, while they play they get out of shape constantly. With this drill you would be able to improve the offensive tactical balance.
Conditioned Game: Gives and Goes and changing pace
To play at a different pace depending on the zone of the field where we are at that moment, is a good way for making right decisions and read the game in a right way.
Winning the ball back and play with the players on the rival´s side.
Once the ball is won back, the first option that all the coaches like is to try to move up the field and to try to benefit from the possibility of a defensive imbalance. Let’s practice it.
Coverages, Exchange and Defensive Delay
Individual challenges and basic offensive and defensive micro-associations
Small sided game – Free man
Tactical drill oriented to use, when attacking, the third man and to practice the way of defending it.
Direct Attack: Final Minutes
Maybe your team just uses the direct style of play occasionally (e.g when losing in the last minutes of a game), but it is more than likely that your team will face teams that use it during most of the minutes. To practice it in the same proportion as it is played in your competition is both correct and necessary.