23 Apr 2014

Football Training on how to defend a counter attack

In football, one of the biggest dangers is on the turnover of the ball that happens when the attacking team lose the ball and have committed players forward. They are open to a quick counter attack and many goals are scored from this transition of attacking to then having to defend a counter attack. The problem for the defending team is that they are now outnumbered, disorganised and have lots of space behind them, which is difficult to defend. This is the football training subject of a question from one of our coaches:

Question:

My defenders are very impatient and almost every time the opposition counter attack, we are in trouble defensively. They don’t seem to recognise when to press the ball and when to drop off and defend space and the midfield and forward players just don’t seem to be able to grasp the concept of running back to help the defenders. Can you help with any football training sessions?

Answer:

Defending when outnumbered or disorganised requires a different defensive understanding. The opposition have more attacking players than there are defenders, so the defenders have to delay and slow down the attack so that other players can recover back to defensive positions. The football training video below, is a rotating, game related practice that will really help your players to develop these key defensive skills.