How to be the Ozil of Tuesday nights
September 22, 2013 4:16 AM Subscribe
Tips for a lifelong 11 a side football (soccer) player making the switch to 5 a side?
After 20 years of playing football on and off at various levels I'm now back to playing regularly but on much smaller basis, usually 5 or 7 a side.
This is great but I would like to be better at the smaller games!
I'm working on my fitness and ball control but the thing is really getting me is strategy. Most of the 5 a side goals seem to come from quick breaks and counter attacks. This totally blows away my football world view which is much more based on sustained pressure, getting a corner, slowly working up from the back etc. I'm struggling with working out how this affects what our tactics and formation should be, what my positioning should be like, when to push up, when to retreat and so on.
In my 11 a side life I mostly played defensive positions in the Alan Hansen/Martin Keown mould, and so have always felt whilst I might not have the best foot skills my positioning and general reading of the game has been one of my strengths.
It would be nice to develop this for the 5 a side world. At the minute I feel that I'm never sure whether I'm diving in for a challenge when I should be shepherding off to the side, or looking for a pass when I need to draw someone in so that there is space, playing high to keep the pressure on when actually someone needs to drop back etc.
Does anyone have any tips or resources to give me a bit more insight?
As I say I am working on fitness and ball control. Most web resources I can find seem to concentrate on the more obvious and generic points (even Arsene). This old AskMefi has been very helpful for ball control exercises but not so much the strategy. I am going to try talking about it specifically with my fellow team mates some more to get their views.
Thank you!
After 20 years of playing football on and off at various levels I'm now back to playing regularly but on much smaller basis, usually 5 or 7 a side.
This is great but I would like to be better at the smaller games!
I'm working on my fitness and ball control but the thing is really getting me is strategy. Most of the 5 a side goals seem to come from quick breaks and counter attacks. This totally blows away my football world view which is much more based on sustained pressure, getting a corner, slowly working up from the back etc. I'm struggling with working out how this affects what our tactics and formation should be, what my positioning should be like, when to push up, when to retreat and so on.
In my 11 a side life I mostly played defensive positions in the Alan Hansen/Martin Keown mould, and so have always felt whilst I might not have the best foot skills my positioning and general reading of the game has been one of my strengths.
It would be nice to develop this for the 5 a side world. At the minute I feel that I'm never sure whether I'm diving in for a challenge when I should be shepherding off to the side, or looking for a pass when I need to draw someone in so that there is space, playing high to keep the pressure on when actually someone needs to drop back etc.
Does anyone have any tips or resources to give me a bit more insight?
As I say I am working on fitness and ball control. Most web resources I can find seem to concentrate on the more obvious and generic points (even Arsene). This old AskMefi has been very helpful for ball control exercises but not so much the strategy. I am going to try talking about it specifically with my fellow team mates some more to get their views.
Thank you!
Are you playing with a keeper or without? I play in a 5-a-side league with no keepers, so I can talk about things from that perspective...
We play a 1-3-1 formation. (Here's a good breakdown of various formations.) The player at the back doesn't look to join the attack; they're there to cut out long balls when the ball's in the other team's half, and to call out defensive assignments and mark the middle when the ball's in our half. They'll also always be available for a back pass. You probably shouldn't look to dive into challenges very often; there's so much less space in 5-a-side that help defense should arrive quickly.
As for offense, the key is to keep the ball moving as quickly as possible. 5-a-side is all about one- and two-touch passing and movement, because defenders can close down so much more quickly than in a full-field game. There's a reason the Dutch don't let kids play 11-a-side until they're older!
posted by asterix at 9:24 PM on September 22, 2013
We play a 1-3-1 formation. (Here's a good breakdown of various formations.) The player at the back doesn't look to join the attack; they're there to cut out long balls when the ball's in the other team's half, and to call out defensive assignments and mark the middle when the ball's in our half. They'll also always be available for a back pass. You probably shouldn't look to dive into challenges very often; there's so much less space in 5-a-side that help defense should arrive quickly.
As for offense, the key is to keep the ball moving as quickly as possible. 5-a-side is all about one- and two-touch passing and movement, because defenders can close down so much more quickly than in a full-field game. There's a reason the Dutch don't let kids play 11-a-side until they're older!
posted by asterix at 9:24 PM on September 22, 2013
« Older Help me find more songs like Soul Searchers'... | Problems with Snap.do. How do I limit the damage? Newer »
This thread is closed to new comments.
Do you watch hockey? There are a lot of similarities from a positioning and fast-break perpective.
posted by stp123 at 5:31 AM on September 22, 2013