My Number 1 Activity to Teach Build Up

When building a team’s style of play, I generally prefer to start teaching the goalkeeper and defensive line players first. Since my style involves keeping the ball in our own half for extended periods of time, I want to give the players as much experience in this aspect of our game as possible. 

When speaking of build up, I mean getting the ball out of our own half. I prefer to do this with short passes as they are easier to successfully complete, with players looking to combine with teammates in close proximity. 

With my 2017 team, we’ve run some activities to start teaching the foundations of build up, so the players can gradually understand the ideas and develop their ability to play together. 

While rondos and possession games can help build the individual and collective fundamentals necessary to resolve these specific game situations, ultimately we need to have players in their positions on the real field. If we miss this type of training, we leave the game up to all of the individuals to improvise the best solution in the moment. Not only will the play then fall to the level of the weakest players, but even the best players may solve situations inconsistently. If you ever struggle with your team ‘playing down to the opponent’, this lack of clarity is certainly a part of the problem. 

THE ACTIVITY

The first step I like to take in teaching the players how to build out from their positions is to play the goalkeeper and the center backs against one opponent. The offensive team starts with a ball from the goalkeeper and must pass into either of two mini goals on the touchline at the edge of the middle third. These mini goals represent the wide players, such as the way outside backs are often used in a classic 433. 

I’ve recently added a twist in how I start off the activity - the center backs will start together at the edge of the middle third and at the start of the activity they must move to an appropriate supporting position to receive from the goalkeeper. This helps to resolve a major issue that comes up when doing tactical training like this, which is that often we skip giving players the opportunity to move into good positions. There is a lot of advice out there about starting activities so they include a transition into the game moment being trained, but this is a nice way to get most of the value without spending time setting up or explaining a more complicated activity. 

ATTACKING ROLES AND INTENTIONS

During the activity I like to focus on player intentions by attacking role. For the first attacker (the one with the ball), I draw their attention to successfully completing the next pass. For the center backs, it’s to ‘score’ in the mini goal as their primary option followed by passing to the other CB, depending on how far away from their own goal they are (don’t want the other CB inside the box and don’t want to play a pass with any risk of defensive intervention). Passing to the GK is the last option. 

For the two other players, both are second attackers, meaning they can receive a pass from the first attacker. I tell them to position themselves where they can safely receive a pass and best orient themselves toward their job as first attacker (since that’s what they will become if they receive, it’s their next action). This is how I’m able to teach players to start thinking ‘one step ahead’ and I find it to be really powerful in developing individual game intelligence. 

Here I also give some position specific information. For example, the GK will only ever offer a back pass option as the second attacker. While it may be self-evident to not have the GK making forward runs and leaving the goal unprotected, this is position specific instruction. Similarly, I don’t want the supporting CB to get too close when the other one has the ball as it will make it harder to reach the opposite goal if one is well defended. To address this, I tell the CB without the ball that they should be positioned diagonal to the teammate in the line behind theirs. In this case, that’s the GK. The CB without the ball has to now be positioned where they can receive a potential pass from their teammate and must also be relatively diagonal to the GK. 

If players aren’t given this information, it can be hard for them to translate the general training into the game. By this I mean, if the most specific training the players see is something like a 4v4 game without positions, they’ll interpret the game through this same lens. You could end up with CBs passing and running into space without anyone covering or trying to take an opponent 1v1 because they are not used to training for a specific situation where players have different responsibilities beyond being the first or second attacker. 

With the above information and this activity, we can start teaching the GK and the CBs how to play together from their positions to solve this 3v1 game situation. Once the players get a handle on this, the numbers can be increased to make the situation more complex. Depending on the age and experience of the players, I may do something as simple as add one center mid for the build up team and one more opponent to the midfield area. Eventually I would want to have the backs and midfield all together, playing to cross the halfway line against the opposition midfield and forward lines. 

CONCLUSION

Teaching the build up is a great starting point when developing the team’s style of play. A team without a clear style of play is one where the players are asked to improvise a solution to most game situations, which leads to inconsistency and ‘stupid’ mistakes. To do this effectively, training must include activities where players are in their positions, solving game situations they are likely to see in the game. If training doesn’t progress beyond general possession-based activities, the players will never consistently resolve situations on the weekend!