Your friendly neighborhood Coach Kyle is back, and while I wouldn’t say I’m better than ever, I’m certainly happy to be here. I’ve been trying my best to enjoy the rainy days, but it’s been the cause of too many cancellations for my liking. My girls have been playing some great soccer recently, and Mother Nature seems completely and utterly determined to keep us from keeping the momentum going.
Yet, despite the near-weekly letdowns, team morale is as high as ever: the girls are roasting me as normal, and there are smiles all around. I must admit, I’m inspired by their example, because even though they’re not always happy, their ability to recover from disappointment and setbacks has proven constant and reliable. I take no credit for their resilience and determination; I just show up to the address I’m given, set up the cones, and listen to what they have to say, and this is what they’ve shown. Pretty lucky coach, if you ask me.
When we’ve been able to beat the weather, we’ve been working on how to deal with losing the ball, as well as what to do when we win it back. Collectively, this is known as playing in transition, and if it’s a lesson good enough for my girls to learn, it’s a lesson worth putting on paper. Or pixels, I suppose. Print media isn’t what it once was, is it? Let’s take a closer look at the turmoil that comes with transitional play.
Phases of the Game
As always, we’ll start with the foundational part. There are three major phases in any soccer game: attacking, defending, and transitioning between the two. A team is considered to be attacking when they’re in possession of the ball (trying to score), while the team without possession is defending (trying to keep the other team from scoring). You can’t score without the ball, right? Those two are pretty self-explanatory, but things get a little messy in the middle.
In the moments of chaos between the phases, when tackles and errant passes send the game pinballing into random space, both teams enter the transition phase on opposite sides of the same coin. As the ball changes feet, one team will go from attacking to defending, and the opposite will be true for the opponent. There are several schools of thought that can be employed within a well-thought-out tactical system, which we’ll expand upon below, but remember this general principle: expand when you win the ball, collapse when you lose it.
What do I mean by that? Well, a soccer field is pretty big. In fact, the pitch is 110 meters by 69 meters at Allianz Field, and while 22 players fill a decent amount of space, there is always more room to use during a game. When your team has the ball, you want to make the most of all that available space, so you’ve got to spread out. Wide players stretch the field to the touchline, strikers sit on the shoulder of the opposing backline, and midfielders plug the gaps in the middle and connect everything. The quicker a team can spread out and utilize the available space, the more effectively they’re able to use the full field.
When you don’t have the ball, on the other hand, space becomes your enemy. The more space you have between your lines and individual players, the easier it is for the opposition to play through you. So, rather than chasing each individual player on the other team and abandoning your shape, most teams will collapse into a defensive block to limit passing lanes and make it difficult for their opponents to get the ball into dangerous areas. By picking what spaces you’ll allow your opponent to keep the ball, you make it easier to manage the areas you’ve decided are most dangerous. Then, you wait for a window to win the ball, and transition begins.
Defense to Attack
Transitioning after your team wins the ball offers a few possibilities. You can strike fast, connecting quick passes and purposeful runs to carve open the opponent. You could find a quick outlet to relieve pressure and establish possession for a patient buildup instead, or you could end up somewhere in the middle. No matter what your team is trying to accomplish, the moment of transition is critical to executing any gameplan. Poor touches in transition lead you right back to defending, and the more you switch back and forth, the more frustrating and tiring the process will get.
Teams that look to get forward quickly upon winning the ball are considered counterattacking teams. Their offensive strategy is built around speed and intensity and often pairs with a high pressing system to win the ball in dangerous areas. Regardless of where the ball is won, though, this strategy takes advantage of the opposing team’s disarray as they look to transition from attack to defense and reestablish their lines.
If a team opts to possess for a longer period, they likely have a very clear, defined way that they want to create chances. Whether the chance to counter immediately isn’t on, they aren’t prepared to take it, or they simply prefer patient buildup, having the ball gives a team a lot of power to dictate the flow of the game.
Where the ball is won often dictates the ensuing approach, meaning that most teams will likely end up using a mixture of counterattacking and possession across a 90-minute span. However, a clear identity should be present in the most organized teams, and that goes hand-in-hand with the strategy used on the other side of the transitional play coin.
Attack to Defense
When the ball is lost, your team needs to limit space, get pressure on the ball, and get organized quickly. That’s a lot to do at once, and that’s why a clear, established plan is so important. The first step in making this plan is deciding where you want to meet the opponent and what space you want to allow them to have. You can’t cover every blade of grass, unfortunately, so you need to instead decide what areas you think are most dangerous.
Teams can set themselves up in a high, mid, or low block, giving increasingly more space to their opponents as they push their defensive lines closer to their own goal. If you’re confident in your ability to win the ball quickly, you’ll want to set your first line of defense higher up the pitch. If you prefer to be patient and wait for a mistake from your opponent, a deeper, more compact setup can make you nearly impossible to break down.
A high block tends to go with a counter-pressing strategy, designed to win the ball back immediately after losing it and not allow the opposition to establish possession. This leads directly into a counterattack more often than not, as momentum brings the pressing team forward onto their reeling opposition. But while this strategy is effective when done right, it’s not always possible.
Depending on where the ball is lost, your team will have to adjust their immediate reaction. If you’re already organized well, you might as well try to win it back quickly. If not, the closest player to the ball needs to apply pressure to give time for the rest of the squad to get into the desired shape. This player applying pressure doesn’t need to win the ball; they just need to keep it from advancing.
Here’s your homework: next game you watch, pay close attention to the transitional moments. Pick one team to focus on if that makes it easier, or observe both teams’ strategies if you feel ready. Don’t just watch the player closest to the ball, though; the magic is happening everywhere else. Watch how the midfielders respond to the striker losing the ball, how the strikers respond to an errant pass, or how the defenders spread out when they’re playing in the back. Watch the things that no one else is watching, and you’ll learn so much more about the nuances of the game.
Alright, that’s enough work for now. I’ve got some PTO coming up, and I’ve got a lot of planning to do. My coaching gig is taking center stage next week, as the girls and I are taking on the world at Target USA Cup. I’ll be back in a few weeks to let you know how it all went; I’m expecting great things and, at the very least, plenty of fun.

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