Soccer-Defense Tips

There are 3 types of play in a soccer game; offense, defense, and transitional period. Offense is when your team has the ball and is attacking the or moving the ball forward toward the opponent's goal. Defense is when your team is trying to get the possession of the ball back into your team's play so you can move the ball forward. The transitional period is when you are moving from defense to offense or vise versa.

This article is going to focus on defense. Defending is a key ingredient to any team's success. It is a difficult position to play and it takes specific soccer skills. Players need to be able to have good reaction time, know the game, know when to clear, when to jockey, tackle, put pressure on a player, when to play it back to keeper, when to never play it back to keeper and so forth.

There are many drills that a youth soccer coach can implement that will help make learning the defense fun and easy. Coaching plans for defending should include drills that will test players individual skills of defending, such as 1v1. Then the coach can move them up and work in units that are specific to their learning areas to correct weaknesses and so forth.

Some key areas for defenders to focus on are: improving your defensive shape, not getting sucked into the middle, delay in defending, when to pressure, when and who should mark, second defender situations, defending crosses, defending corner kicks, and more.

As the ball makes it way towards your own goal, there needs to be a higher rate of pressure put on the ball. Putting the pressure on the ball doesn't necessarily mean getting the ball back right then. Just putting a defender in the way of the possession player, limits his ability to make good decisions. So the defender doesn't need to attack the ball with his pressure every time. If you are on your half of the field and even closer to your third, your defenders will always want to stay goalside of the opponent. soccer is about angles and he will want to angle his body in a way that will push him outside and not inside towards the goal.

It's important to remember to teach your team, or yourself if you are a player, when to mark. The closer the opponent is to the ball the closer the defender should be marking him. Sometimes the coach will need to know how to teach marking for throw-ins, penalty kicks, corner kicks, and other strategical times in the game.

Defenders need to learn the appropriate times to shut down the passing lanes of the opponents. They also need to know when to double team the attacking player. Another important area of defending is known as second defender or knowing when to back your defender who has gone on ball. As a coach, sometimes this seems overwhelming but defense must not be neglected during training times.