Soccer Basics - Positioning and Movement

hey everyone it's me I know it's been a while since I've been out to practice but you can probably tell by my voice that I'm still a little sick now that doesn't mean I wasn't thinking about you guys in fact I've been working on this video to help you out with some stuff on the field now I always thought you could learn just about anything on YouTube but I looked everywhere and couldn't find much on things we've been trying to teach you like positioning and moving when you don't have the ball so I found some old recorded soccer games and added some commentary and some pointers to help explain some of this stuff now this was something that really helped me when I was younger so hopefully you got something out of it too and even if you don't at least you'll know what the coaches are talking about when we point these things out on the field okay so why don't we get this started now positioning is a really broad topic so we're just gonna focus on some of the more important concepts for now the first key concept is playing in space in this first clip keep your eye on the player with the red marker watch how he moves with the play and settles into space he sees a nice little pocket right there and just moves into it slides over with the play and finds another pocket of space right there gets the ball back puts a nice pass into the box now he doesn't get a goal but he does draw a foul which isn't too bad now to find space you have to look forward all good players no matter what position they're playing look around constantly now let's just watch that same clip again but this time I put a little head tracker on the guy so you can see where his eyes go notice how often he looks around every few seconds he peeks over his shoulder to see what's around him the only time his head goes down is when he gets the ball at his feet and because he already checked his area he knows exactly where the open man is here's another example where you can see this you see the player looking around and finding a good spot to get a pass he spots the defender coming right there and realized he's got to get rid of the ball touches the ball back right away and moves to another spot to get open again the last point I want to make on this is to make sure you're standing between the defenders so it's easy for you to get the ball it doesn't matter how big a space you're standing and if there's a defender between you and that ball you're not going to get an easy pass see how these players stay between the defenders can make it easy to get a pass when the ball moves the players - and they stay between the defenders as much as possible that creates a nice big window that's easy to pass the ball through four forwards the only difference is when you're playing high up on the defense you're still looking for space but now you want to play between the back for defenders watch the players the ball moves around you can already see the center back and the full-back starting to lose track of them stays level with the last defender so when the ball comes in he stays on side and gets a nice shot away now look at the defenders looking at each other to see who was supposed to mark them now this sort of thing works really well in the middle of field - the ball comes out to the sidelines and the midfielder just puts a nice ball behind the defense from that angle it looks like the four just outran the defense but that's not really what happened you can see the forward between the center backs one of the back steps up to put them offside but the other one is running back to cover the long ball the forward stays level with that one and stays on side then because the ball comes in at an angle the four can run straight onto it now that brings us to the next key point which is creating space by moving the easiest way to do this is coming back to the ball in this clip the midfielder runs at the defender to make him back up and then he comes back into the space he just created the defender follows him so he just taps the ball back to his teammate next we see the Ford coming back to the ball again this time the defender stays at home because he doesn't want to give up that space behind him this leaves a big space open behind the forward and he just turns and shoots on the next clip we see the winger with the defender right on his back he comes back and gets himself into the passing lane the defender follows him but this time the winger turns into the middle and he just about sneaks the ball behind them to an open runner another way to create space is by changing directions for this first clip the winger is already moving back to the ball he's in good position to get an easy pass and when it comes he puts on the brakes right there you can see the defenders still coming forward the winger does a quick turn and the defenders momentum takes him right out of the play next we see two attackers running straight ahead into the defense the defender just has to drop back to stay with them now this forward keeps running straight and the defender follows him like you should but this one just bends has run a little bit to the inside there you can see the two defenders who were marking him still going backwards that whole space right there opens up just because of that little inside cut the last and probably the best way to create space is to change your speed here we see the midfielder just jogging up with the play the defenders are jogging back with him but then he just accelerates past them with that much of a head start it's almost impossible to catch up to him and that force of this defender to come inside and help that draws him away from the winger who is now wide open now this sort of thing works really well for forwards to here you can see the forward jogging back with the defense and then he just bursts ahead still on side when the pass goes in he runs down in the corner behind one two three four five defenders so you see it doesn't matter if you're outnumbered if you can get behind the defense you always have the advantage now I hope you noticed from all these clips that most of those runs were not straight ahead straight runs do have their place but not all the time and here's why so here we have a standard back for the defense naturally wants to drop back to protect the space behind them so if you just run straight ahead you basically go exactly where they want you to go each defender takes a player that comes in their area it makes it all too simple for the defense but running at angles makes it a little bit more difficult for the defense to know who to mark once you get between two defenders both of them have to decide who's going to mark you and this forces them to think about whether to stay in position or whether to follow you so this is how it looks on the field the ball comes out to the side the forward runs diagonally and pulls the center back with him this creates a space behind him so the winger cuts in and attacks of space now watch what happened to the two defenders the center back realizes that a position so he drifts back to the middle where he should be but the full-back is man marking the winger and ends up following him inside to guess who that leaves open now in this clip the ball goes to the outside again there's a nice wall of defenders here but there's still space in the corner behind them forward accelerates right into that space and it's an easy pass into the corner now this is a classic way to get past a defense from the sidelines look at it from another angle ball comes to the sideline the defender takes the inside position because it doesn't want to get beat inside and this leaves a nice passing lane into the corner the Ford runs onto it the defender has to make a desperate tackle just to stop the play now if you are going to run straight ahead you still need to get away from the defenders you can see the forward here he's running straight but he fades away from the defender until he gets close to the box the important thing is just to get some space between you and the defenders so you're not so easy to mark so that's it for now I hope this helps some of you understand how to position yourself and move a little better if you don't remember anything just remember these three points always move around so that you're an easy target for your team and a hard target for the other team secondly always look around so that you know what's in your area and where you can go if you get the ball and finally don't run straight all the time if you remember those three things you'll be a much better player on the field so make sure you try these things in practice and in games so that they just become routine for you okay we'll see you at practice

Channel: Howard Chang

Views: 3,180,489

Keywords: Soccer, soccer training, soccer positioning, soccer movement off the ball, soccer basics, soccer for beginners, soccer skills, soccer attacking, soccer tactics, soccer striker, soccer where to move, soccer moving with the ball, soccer forward runs, soccer IQ

Id: _dYy4QGXnns

Length: 7min 49sec (469 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 21 2015