Yes, Mr President, but it's best that you understand that if that's how others worked, then I'm a little different.  I don't work that way.
-Jose' Mourinho

For today's session I wanted to work on our communication defensively and I wanted to keep hammering home the basic points of defending.

0-10 Tennis Ball
Just like yesterday I had them moving to play catch, but today I had them try to sprint and catch the ball.

10-20 Footskills Routine

20-50 Defending 2v3 To Goal
This was a simple exercise in design that was just meant for us to get repetition.

Set Up: Field was 20x40 yards.
I had the 3 attackers start from various positions and I played the ball to a different attacker to start the exercise each time.

Procedure: I played the ball to the 3 attackers and they tried to score on the 2 defenders.  If the defense won the ball they went to goal.

One of the biggest issues we are having defensively is getting pressure on the ball quickly and deciding who should go to the ball.  Our main problem is that we don't communicate who should go to the ball so I told the girls about one of the drills we did thousands of time during my college lacrosse career.

The set up of the drill was very simple.  One team was on offense and one was on defense.  The offensive team would pass the ball and stop until the coach blows the whistle to pass again.  Whoever was supposed to go to the ball on defense would yell out "I Go Ball!"  The defender on his left would yell out "I Got Help Left!"  The defender on the right would yell out "I Got Help Right!"  In preparation for the chance that the first defender got beat a fourth defender would yell out "I Got Slide!"  All of this was supposed to happen in a second or two, then the ball would be moved to another person and we would repeat the calls. 

We did that drill all the time.  We would practice it against different offensive set ups.  We would practice it saying "Ok, if this person gets beat and the ball gets played to the win, how do we react?"  We practiced it everyday in every situation.  It was boring.  It was no fun.  But come game time we always knew who was supposed to go the the ball and if anything ever broke down we knew exactly where the help was coming from.

While I am not going to make the girls go through all that pain at this young age someone is always going to yell out "I Go Ball!" and her teammates are going to yell out "I Got Help!"  every time the ball is passed from one player to the other.  If the ball is passed and the same defender is going to stay on the ball, I still want her saying "I Go Ball!"  I don't care how obvious it seems, I want everything called out every time the ball is moved. 

We will be doing this from now on in every training and game we play.  As the girls get older we can add in other things, but if we can figure out who should go ball and who should be ready to help if she gets beat, we will be way ahead of the game.

The other key points we talked about were:

-Make the play predictable.  If you make it obvious where the ball is going, even if you get beat we will be ok.  We had a good example of this today when Hannah forced the attacker outside from the beginning.  The attacker beat Hannah down the line, but Blitz knew it was coming since Hannah had made it predictable and she stopped the attacker as soon as she accelerated.

-Decide whether the ball is in a dangerous position or not.  If they can't score or set up a goal from where they have the ball, we don't need to rush to pressure the ball. 

-As you are pressuring the ball take the line that takes away the shot or the dangerous pass. 

-Try to face your other defenders.  Try to face "Chest to Chest" so you can see your help and force the ball to your help.

50-75 Futsol