Committing an Opponent

Our focus this week is building out of the back.

We start with goal kicks. Many teams will bring their biggest foot to the six yard line and have them thump the ball as far as they can up the field. While this can work in the younger age groups, it will not when the girls get older.

There will be times to kick the ball over everyone’s head but only when we are "numbers up". That would take a team pressing us as high as they can and committing everyone forward:

I want the girls to develop courage with the ball, to know they can possess the ball, go around a player, or hold it until she knows she can pass to a teammate. 

In order to understand this concept, we must first understand the principle of committing an opponent.

Committing an opponent can only happen when a player retains possession of the ball as opposed to getting rid of it as fast as they can or losing it when a defender approaches them. 

Parents, there is a growing curve to this. We will lose the ball. We will get scored on from it. However, the girls will also learn from their experiences early in their soccer lives and will grow into confident girls on the soccer field.

Let’s look at how this may play out on the pitch:

Our keeper passes to our left center back. She touches it forward and one of two players will commit to her. Can you guess these two players?

If you said 7, you’re right. If you said 9, you’re also right. 7 blocks off the outside pass to our number 11. Number 11 is now the free man. We want the ball to go to this “free man”, but we can’t pass through the player. What can we do instead?

We can use another player to pass the ball to them. In this scenario, who can we use?

Our left forward, 10, who checks back in and plays a one or two touch pass to 11. Now, we’re out of the buildup phase and into an attacking phase:

Committing an opponent forward to open up our player behind her is what this game is all about. We place ourselves in ideal positions in order to do this and the game becomes much easier.

This is simple to say but takes years of practice to understand. 

We’ll emphasize both the right and left sides of the field and show the girls how to look at the game in smaller chunks (2v1, 3v2, 5v4) rather than 9v9. This will teach them to make better decisions on and off the ball.