Passing: Length Matters

Do you know how hard it is to come up with a fun title for this topic?

Good morning! I want to talk about the reluctance to play a more direct style of play in modern football.

Before we start, please check that The Weekly Rondo is marked as “important” in your inbox. Each week just under 50% of readers aren’t being shown the latest issue in their main inbox.

Neat Reads

Neat Reads is a segment where I share an article or podcast that interests me and relates to our weekly theme.

Enjoy a podcast episode from the And Again podcast.

It’s a fun reaction to the claim Sam Allardyce made when he took over Leeds, where he said that he knew more about football than Pep Guardiola. 

Subjectivity shouldn’t decide what is best

Football has always had a bit of an elitist feel to it. Fans, analysts, coaches, etc all debate what style of play is best or prettiest with little context.

In coaching for example, there’s almost a feeling that teaching players, especially young players how and when to play a ball over the top is bad. 

“Only play the long ball if you have to” and other negative ways of describing a decision lead to players not wanting to make that decision.

Our tone and choice of words will affect how the player makes a decision in the game. 

If we describe certain actions as bad or good, players will stop or start doing them. 

If we relegate a decision as a last resort, then players won’t look for it to begin with.

Most football fans like the short passing game and as a consequence, will only coach that or look for that. By having this bias in football preference, we are imposing that on our players and affecting how they view the game and how they react to it.

Coach’s Corner

Coach’s Corner is a segment where I ramble about training this week and answer some questions I get from Substack or Twitter.

Ramblings

I was given our U15 group in Malawi back in November 2022. The first thing I learned was how reluctant the players were to play long passes. 

I’ve written about this before but it’s worth revisiting because of how big of an issue it is in parts of the world where players don’t have lots of footballs; long ball = higher chance of losing the only ball your team has.

It also affects countries where there are no football pitches. If you build a makeshift goal with no net then the ball goes flying away if you score OR miss. So the solution many kids in these countries find is removing the goals entirely and playing possession games.

Malawi, and other countries similar in landscapes, youth sport importance, and financial power, develop short passing players who don’t have any experience needing to play the long ball because they’ve never been taught or incentivized to do so! 

This becomes frustrating when your U15 team plays against a solid mid-block with a high defensive line and low line of engagement and refuses to play a ball into space behind the opponents defensive line.

Q&A 

What is your style of play?

Okay, this question was asked a few weeks ago but I feel it’s more relevant now given our topic. 

I don’t have a style of play. Coaches who only want to coach one style of football are going to be worse coaches than those who can coach many styles of play. 

I want to coach professional football someday. I may not have amazing dribblers, or passers, or athletes. 

So what then? I simply must improve the players I have at my disposal.

I don’t even have a preference for the football I watch. I like football that’s exciting to me, but that can depend on the context. A team defending a 1-0 lead in the last 10 minutes of a match can be more exciting to watch than another team passing another team to death for 90 minutes and winning 4-0.

Questions can be asked anonymously if you’d prefer your name not to be included in the email. Just remember to  mention that in your Twitter DM to me or in the comments below.

Exercise of the Week

I just tried this exercise for the first time this week with my U15 boys group while focusing on attacking and defending during transition. 

Transitions are so hard to coach because they’re random and hard to recreate organically in training. However, I felt that this exercise went well! Players loved it, I got most/all my coaching points across and left the session feeling that my players understood what I was trying to teach them.

Conclusion

Thanks for reading this week! Let it be known that I will be the greatest long ball soccer coach ever.

I’m always interested to hear your thoughts and ideas so please feel free to send me a message on Twitter or leave a comment above in the Q&A section.

Share this newsletter with a friend or every single person you have ever met.

See you next week! 

Where to find me:

Twitter: https://twitter.com/CamH___

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cameron-herbert-football-coach/