Springboks Show Grit

PAGS Matchday 1 

A great, gritty performance by five 'Boks and one good neighbor.  Liza Green kindly played in the net for the first half, and the outfield 6 held the fort even taking a 2-1 lead for a while before losing 4-3 to a scrappy WCUSC team that opted (and quite rightly so) to play with 8 players the entire game.

A couple tricks the 'Boks used to turn the tables and make the game a bit more even bear pointing out to the families and the folks who didn't make the game.

Low Pressure Defending

Coaches always cringe a little when using this term with younger players.  It implies that the defending is not aggressive, or that it is concessionary in it's nature.  But it is simple enough:  High and low pressure indicate a geographic approach.  In soccer lingo, the end of the field where the opponent's goal is, is referred to as "high," whereas the end we defend is the low end...though that term is rarely used; typically it would be "deep."  At any rate, "high" and "low" simply indicate where on the field we choose to defend- and defend like madwomen!



The deal was simple, we set the expectation that any turnover in the opponent's half that killed play (goal kick, throw-in, ball in the GK's hands, or offside call, etc.) we would drop deep into our own half, at the bottom of the center circle.  From there, we'd pursue the ball as a group, staying close to the ball and hunting it together.

The obvious problem this creates for the opponent is that kick and run doesn't work.  To beat a compact and hard working defense in their own half, a team must be able to use technical mastery; they must pass and dribble their way through.  Now, did we concede a couple more than that braggadocio would lead one to expect?  Sure...but one ball the GK put both hands on and still it slithered between her feet and trickled across the line.  Another was the result of a turnover inside the 18 yard area when a 'Bok simply mis-cleared a ball directly to an attacker about 8 yards out.  So, in reality, the game could well have been a win.

The effort was tremendous by the 'Boks (and our much-appreciated "rental 'Bok") and that's the other lovely aspect of low pressure defending; we don't chase the other team all over the park.  Essentially we tell them that we'll only play in one third of the field, and they could have stood with the ball on their foot at midfield and we'd have left them there quite happily.  So the girls learned a little lesson in conserving energy, too.  When we play on the big field, and in a longer timeframe, this will be a crucial bit of information.

Simple Pass-And-Move

Ah, the give-and-go.  So simple, yet so complex.  The past two weeks have been focused on the girls mastering this "easy" facet of attacking.  Once they see how effective it is, and understand the variations on the theme, it changes everything.  On Sunday, we saw six kids play in circles around 7 for most of the game. The percentage of possession we enjoyed was lopsided, and the sense in the huddle was that the girls really had a light come on over their heads.

This approach, while not particularly incisive, forced the opponent to chase us, to defend for longer stretches than us, and for the most part, allowed us to ensure our turnovers occurred in their half, not ours.  Small details, but important enough to have put the team in a position to win an unwinnable game.

The key is defending.  Stopping a give and go is easy:

This is the garden-variety give and go.  The yellow player passes to the black player, then runs along the red arrow to receive the second pass at midfield.  The first defender is clearly beaten, and the second defender is not in a good position to help in this case.

Here the defender does the correct thing, though timing is crucial.  When the yellow player passes to the teammate in black, the first blue defender, at the very instant the pass is made, drops straight back to a covering position level with or just slightly behind the left defender.  This, as we can see, has the effect of blocking the most useful angle of return pass.

U12 players do not get this nuance of 2v2 defending.  WCUSC nearly lost to a team with fewer players for a lack of this defensive savvy.  

A supreme team effort, composure and confidence from the team nearly stole a result that would have been hugely unexpected, but certainly not un-earned!  Good lessons taken away, and a pretty decent day of football enjoyed.