Pressure, Cover, Balance, Balance, Balance

With my girls, I've talked "balance", I've shown "balance", we've practiced "balance", but we didn't really seem to understand "balance".

It's very rare now for the girls to have trouble with "pressure". I'm actually quite impressed at how little they dive in. They seem to have "pressure" down.

With our newer players, we still have some issues with "cover". Some of the time they forget to get back and cover or they run along beside or behind the "pressure" instead of sprinting ahead to cover for their teammate. Sometimes they forget to push up and cover for the forwards, but overall, we do pretty good.

However "balance" has been troubling. We allow the girls to play a very free-style of soccer. We don't assign left, right, or center positions. We let them watch each other and adapt to the situation. This has frequently led to having all 3 backs providing pressure and cover on a sideline and no one in the middle of the field. Well this week we played a team that kept a forward in the center of the field better than most teams. Wouldn't you know it, they found her on a fairly long pass and in a flash we were down a goal. I had 3 backs on the bench and told them, "Look at that. That's why we need balance. We can't leave that girl alone to receive a pass and score with no pressure." I substituted in the 3 backs and started coaching the 3 that had been on the field. Of course, the 3 I just sent in did exactly what they'd always done and left the forward by herself in front of our goal. It made for a great coaching opportunity for the 3 girls on the bench. "Look," I said. "They're doing exactly what you were doing. We have to mark up. We have to have balance." About that time they scored their second goal. "Sub!". Now the original back line was in the game again. Let me tell you, they got it. They marked up the center forward while still maintaining pressure and cover on the ball. The player marking may have changed as they played, but they looked out for each other and shut the door on the scoring. There were a couple of instances where a player actually was running so hard to recover her mark that she actually ran away from a ball she could have won, but her teammates were right there with her, so it was all good.

Now if I could just get most of my forwards to do the same to the other team....

-Bill