U12 Training Reflection (2.3.22)

Dominant Contraction: Endurance

Principle: (A) Possession

Sub-Principle: (A) Create and Exploit Space (B) Finishing with Numerical Superiority

Sub-Sub-Principles: All

Beginning - Team talk

Good reception and discussion with the players about needing to get better in order to face new challenges this year in the EDP. Players were optimistic and gave good sensation that this is something we are going to work towards.

Very good introduction to our attacking shape. It can easily be described as a 1-3-3 from now on with the middle 3 and back 1 forming a diamond. Overall I was pleased on how quickly the players picked up the idea.

First Part - Activation

In the first part today we took the time to do a walk thru of the organization that we want to achieve in the offensive half. We started simple without the ball and once they arrived at the positions, we made minor adjustments to the positioning.

What will have to be made clear for games is which CB will make part of the left or right side of the diamond.

Second Part - Technical Game

The technical game was designed to provide the players with a form of quick thinking: stringing 5 passes together in a small area and then quickly breaking out in the offensive shape. The quality in the 7v2 rondo was very good and I was pleased to see the wide players taking space and then turning back to conserve the ball. We also made several good switches of play both directly and via the pivot.

We also worked on some elements of our counter-press. This is a big topic that we need to reincorporate. It would be good to make this a focus for next week session. We need to now give some structure and unifying ideas to our pressing.

There was some instances where we failed to control/finish from aerial passes. This is something that we could build into the next practice.

Third Part - Tactical Game

For the tactical practice all we did was remove the initial rondo and played a 7v4+GK positional practice. If the pink recovered they had to dribble into the central area while the blue had to recover it before they crossed over.

Next time a point could be scored more relevant to how we want to act after recuperation but despite the lack of clarity there was still some good actions from the recovering team, i.e. possession and trying to build from the back.

We had some good sequences of play but lacked elements of penetration - this should be injected into our training session tomorrow.

As mentioned earlier, at times we began to lose the shape, especially in the middle. We need to clearly define the diamond roles.

Last Part - SSG

In the final part we played a 6v6 SSG. We had some good sequences of play and used the GK a few times which is good to see from last weeks practice. We also started to see some trickery with the throw-ins and playing back with the CB so it was great to see that some of our throw-in practice was being used.

Next Training session:

-principle to be trained: Finishing with numerical superiority

-include element of aerial balls

Next Week:

-principle to be trained: Zonal pressing, counter-pressing