FA Editor Jamie Bradbury has taken his next steps along the coaching pathway and is now working towards the UEFA B coaching licence. Day four looked at a number of different defending situations...
Having spent the previous evening planning my first practical session of the course, I arrived at London Soccerdome looking forward to an opportunity to do some coaching myself.
The day started, though, with some theory work on defending as Richard Carter, one of the four tutors overseeing this 48-strong UEFA B course, showed us a DVD of football action.
UEFA B Workbooks
The first film focused on ‘Defending when organised’ and featured a dozen or so clips from FA Cup and England matches when the topic was demonstrated.
We had to make notes before discussing what we saw. Some of the things I noted were when the nearest defender would pressure the ball but not attempt to win the ball, teams conceding possession in the opposition half and only pressing when crossing the halfway line and teams being compact near their own goal.
One of the obvious points that was raised, that we’d spoken about much more during the defending topics earlier in the week, was about defending teams dropping deeper when there is little pressure on the ball higher up the pitch.
The other films we viewed were on ‘Sliding and screening’, picking up from the practical session we did with Richard the day before, ‘Pressing’, also following yesterday’s session with Colin Reid, ‘Defending in wide areas’, ‘Defending Deep’ and ‘Defending out of balance’.
The DVD was the first time this week we had been able to watch some football and analyse the footage as a coach, and consider some of the things we were working on.
We talk a lot about how, as coaches, we need to use different coaching styles because players learn in different ways but we also learn differently.
The DVDs gave us another way of understanding the topics in a match situation and think about how the practices we may deliver in the future can replicate these scenarios.
There were lots of practical sessions ahead of us, so after a short break, we sat down briefly in our four separate tutor groups to work out the running order for the 12 candidate sessions. Six would be today, six tomorrow and I was drawn out amongst tomorrow’s lot.
Ted Dale then addressed the whole group to talk about functional practices, a type of UEFA B practice we’d not seen yet this week, before leading us outside to demonstrate one on ‘Defending in wide areas’.
I've used The FA Coach's App to draw up Ted's practice, which you can download below.
Defending in wide areas, Functional Practice (download below)
13 Defending in wide areas
Functional Practice - click to download pdf created with The FA Coach's App
Before going out on to the pitch, Ted explained what a functional practice is and how he would go about planning a session that is focused on a certain area of the pitch. Splitting the pitch into imaginary lanes, he sacrifices the lanes furthest from the ball.
So, working on a practice in wide areas, in this case on the defence's left flank, he cut-off the far right of the pitch, eliminating the area where the right back and right midfielder would play, and thus he did not need those players in the practice. The image above illustrates the area of the pitch that was used for this practice.
14 Defending outnumbered
Phase of Play
Course director Jon Gittens demonstrated a phase of play which was structured with starting positions to work on specific outcomes. So, initially, he set up the team he was coaching to begin on the attack, giving the ball away to leave his team outnumbered. It's from this situation he would then be able to coach the topic.
It's little techniques like that that we need to get the hang of and practice as UEFA B coaches, and with the first of our own sessions coming up it's the perfect training ground for us. I have to wait until tomorrow, but today's six practices were of a really high standard, and I had play in all of them. They were;
2v1 Overloads (James), Crossing and Finishing (Erdel), Playing out from the back (Tom), Defending outnumbered (Owen), 2v1 and 3v2 Overloads (Terry) and Playing out from the back (Matt).
With so many candidates on this course, breaking off and working as a smaller group of 12 allowed us to really bond as a group, as you tend to on most coaching courses. Today's practices were a good ice-breaker and ignited a lot of cameraderie and banter. Everyone was willing each other on to do well.
So, after a more hectic day on the pitch than normal, I made a slow walk to North Greenwich station contemplating my practice tomorrow. With today's sessions as inspiration, I may even re-think mine to challenge me even more...
Check out TheFA.com over the coming days as Jamie continues on the UEFA B course.
If you have any questions you can follow Jamie on Twitter @jamiebradbury.
To find out more about local coaching courses, visit your County FA website, or for national courses click here.
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