Free Kick Lessons to Learn

Original thread here: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1345380040750604288 

Something I saw in United v Villa last night. We don't teach it enough at most levels of the game. What would the vast majority of teams do, if they were in Villa's situation, and were awarded a free kick here? Thread below.

In USA, Mexico, and England, most teams would have filled the box, taken maybe thirty seconds to restart the game, and would have lumped forward a long and hopeful ball.

When working with new teams, I establish that we don't do this. Immediately. It's one of the first things I address. I explain the logic of it, and they all agree.

What do we need in order to score a goal? The ball? Good. What else? Space? Excellent. If we lump it forward into a congested area without having rehearsed a routine, what's the chances we'll have the ball? Less than 50%. Chance we'll have space? 0% So why hit it?

They get it. They understand. They gave me the answers. Then we'll get into our first match, have a free kick near this area, like Villa, and you can guess what happens. Everyone runs away from the ball, and the donkey defender boots it at a congested defence.

Most of the time, it's taken one kick to go from having an unopposed restart where we can get out team into good positions, to now having to defend a counter attack while being wide open, because everyone went forward.

When I bring it up during the break, what are the excuses? I had no options. So, because there were no options, rather than seeking some way of maintaining possession, you decided that you might as well roll the dice, potentially now sabotaging the team's chances?

The stupidity is self-inflicted. It's punishing. If football is like chess, a free kick allows you to move multiple pieces into favourable positions, without losing your turn. What do defenders want? Organisation, time, predictability. The wait and boot approach gives them that

Waiting allows the defenders to get organised. They can cover the spaces and players they need to. They can get compact, denying us any useful space. They can take away our options, read what we're about to do, and be more likely to win the ball.

What do Villa do here? They get the ball back into play pretty quickly. All the time the ball is dead, you cannot score, and you cannot change the picture of the game. Football is all about problems and solutions. If the ball stays in the same spot, the problem remains the same.

We pass the ball to move the opposition. That means to disorganise them. To move the defence from a state of organisation to a state of disorganisation. The more the ball moves, the more the defence has to move to adjust to the new pictures of the game.

Once the ball is played by the Villa players, the ball is now live. The defence are no longer working off of a fixed reference point. Their job has become harder. The two Villa players nearest to the ball begin to back pedal away from each other, while playing it.

What this does is it creates a 2v1 against the nearest United defender. If the two Villa players stay close, it's easy for the defender to cover them both. Because they move apart, increasing the distance along the same passing lane, the 2v1 becomes more favourable.

Remember that overloads are not just numerical (quantitative) but spatial (positional). More space benefits the attacking team. The cover shadow of the defender covers a smaller percentage of the relevant area, because that area has increased due to Villa dispersal.

It's also hugely important that the two Villa players have kept their body shape open, and have back pedalled rather than turning away. This means their important visual cues of the ball, the teammate, the opponent, the space are all within their vision.

Back pedalling also allows them to pass and receive at any time, thus reducing their predictability, taking away many of the advantages from the defender.

Once the defender has over committed, and enough space has been created, Villa are able to turn out, switch the play, and look to exploit space on the far side. Or they could have just booted it and hoped for the best.

Thread part two here: https://twitter.com/CoachWilly1875/status/1345390126155898880

In this video, note the differences between Villa and United for their FKs. United's took 30 seconds for them to restart the game. This is lost time, as referees rarely add extra for this type of event (mainly goals, subs, injuries).

Both teams used the technique of pretending to go to kick the ball, to throw off the opponent. As you can see in the picture, by pretending to kick the ball to his left, it has made the United player respond to that cue (taking the bait) and thus create space.

It's a way for the player on the ball to make space for the receiver. I call this getting rid of them. It's illegal to actually fake kick the ball. In the eyes of the law, a fake kick counts as having taken the kick, and would mean the ball is now live.

We see it on throws too, where the thrower shapes up as if they are about to throw in a certain direction. The opposition then condense around the perceived receiver, and this creates space in another area of the field. Time and space is football currency.

By making the defender take the bait, move out of position, neglect a passing lane, you have bought the receiver more football currency. If going to take a short free kick, there's no need for a run up. Stand on the ball, be inconspicuous.

It was during this sequence of the game, 2-1 up with ten minutes left, that United began to commit lots of niggly fouls in the middle of the pitch. The fouls were not dangerous, meaning there was a low risk of a yellow card.

Because the fouls took place in the middle third, that further reduced the chances of the fouler receiving a yellow. It breaks up the play, and keeps the ball high up the pitch away from the United goal. Final third free kicks are far more dangerous to defend.

The United player would commit the foul, then run back into position. This bought time for the defence to reorganise and get numbers behind the ball. Villa, with their rhythm disrupted, looked to restart play quickly.

Just like in the other thread, had Villa been slow in their restarts, it would only have benefited United, allowing them more time to reorganise. As United moved closer to a state of optimal organisation, Villa restarted quickly to try to find and exploit any disorganisation.

Without disorganisation in United's structure, Villa's best bet was to then try to create some disorganisation, and that was to be done by moving the ball laterally, to shift the United defence, and then trying to probe the spaces between the lines.