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Defending again fast breaks

I've got a team of young women (12-13 year old) several of whom only played last season for the first time.Our first season last year was pretty good given they're young inexperienced and we rarely had subs. One area that always gets us is fast strikers getting in and behind our defense from quite a way up the fieldâ75% of our goals are conceded that way.So any thoughts on training the team to not allow so many of these goals? TIA!

John AllsoppCoach, Australia

1 answer

ANSWERS

Matt MorrisonPlayer, England

Hi John,

It can be quite common for younger teams playing on a full size pitch to see the majority of the goals coming from balls over and strikers running into a lot of space behind defenders. I found that as my teams got older, we saw less of these goals being scored. The best way to defend against this would be to reduce the space in behind your defence. That could be sitting deeper as a defensive line, especially if you don`t have quick defenders, that means that the strikers will have to play in front of them. You can practice this in training by getting your defenders to hold a line together and not allowing them to go past a certain point up the field. If you do this - you don`t want to have big gaps in between your midfield and defence so you might want to use a defensive midfield to cover that space that could be left.

Another option would be to have your goalkeeper standing out of their box when the other team has possession around the half way line - this again closes the distance behind the defensive line. Then any ball over the top - the goalkeeper should be encouraged to attack and clear before the striker has a chance of getting there. This could be seen as a riskier option and I would only suggest this if you have a confident keeper who is good with their feet.

Matt