How I play with my own teams – How to create a game model

So hey guys a little bit of a differentvideo today.

I asked what kind of content you wanted, since there are no matchesbeing played, and the top comment was why don't you chose your own tactics andreally go in depth into the depth in depth into the tactics you'd use.

So fortoday I thought I make a video on game models so I will show you thetheoretical background of a game model basically how I created my game modeland how you can create your own game model.

And I will add that why I will addto that the practical application of myself as a coach.

So I will tell you howyou can create a game model and I will tell you how I play how I answer certainthings and in the end I will show you some like a practical stuff how Iactually played with my own teams.

So a game model.

A game model is theway that you want to play with your team how you want to address games what youwant to train on like the entire way of how you want to play.

So not just like aformation with the formation all the principles are the other things that youwant from your team.

So your game model is in my opinion created by four likefour pillars.

First of all are your principles as a coach second pillars thequalities of the players that you have available in that team at the moment, Third is the culture of the country and fourth are directions of the board.

So yourmain coaching principles, I think this is the most important part of the game model, because these are the principles that you want in your team no matter what.

Sobasically it doesn't matter if you're coaching Stoke City it doesn't matter ifyou're coaching like France second division or or if you're coachingBarcelona or Liverpool these are principles that you always want to see in your ownteams.

So for me those are zonal defense I think it's important to distinguishthat it's not just either man-mark or zonal marking, but it's like a spectrumand then you have zonal marking on one end with man marking on the other end andyou're like somewhere on that spectrum but I like to be on the more zonalside of the spectrum.

So it depends a bit on the context how much I can go to thatzonal phase, which I will talk about later a little bit, but I prefer zonal over manmarking.

Second principle what I have is a fast build up which basically means thatif I can get to the opponent's goal within two or three passes I will alwayswant my players to choose that option.

Like I get building out from the back, Iappreciate it, I think it can be a very very good way of playing but it's notnecessarily my way of playing.

If I can play two or three perhaps a bit morerisky passes like further forward I prefer those kind of passes instead of alot of horizontal passes a lot of recyclation I don't it's not my way of playing.

My third principle is runs in behind.

I think it's very important always haveplayers making runs in behind trying to get in behind the opponent's, putting questions on the opponent's like will they drop off will they keep a highline.

I think it's a very very important it's a very important part of my way ofplaying.

My fourth principle is a secure rest defense.

And for those who don'tknow a rest defense is the players you keep behind the ball while you areattacking and with the secure restdefence I mean that I want at least fourpreferably five perhaps even not that much more but I think five perhaps sixat certain points players behind the ball taking care of defense because it'sensures that we don't get a lot of counters against us it allows us torecycle possession more more effectively and it ensures that we are able tocontrol the transition phases.

This brings me to the next point which is quicktransitions.

Like the way of the transition so for example when you losethe ball you can either counter press so it may be press the ball with everyoneor it can basically everyone fall back into your defensive shape and thenit's a little bit more complicated that they're a little bit more decisions tobe made but in general you can either do one of two those one of those two thingsso either counter press or fall back.

So the way in which I do my transition like thepractical application depends on the players and context but I always wantthe transitions to be executed as quickly as possible by the entire teamso there's no one like jogging back no when we lose the ball all 11 playershave the transition immediately and immediately get into defensiveshape or defensive positions.

Next one is field occupation focusing onCenter and halfspaces.

I don't like playing over the wings you're easilypressed there I don't really like playing with crosses which I will cometo next so I only keep one player wide on eachside which is like either a winger or a fullback depends again on practicalapplications but I don't play with like winger and fullback on both sides on theouter part of the pitch think it's it's disconnective for the it disconnects yourplayers from each other because the distances become too bigin addition passes over the outside corridors are kinda useless so I don'twant two players in those corridors anyway yeah but yeah for example I wellI will come to that later but it brings us to the to the last but I like to havemy width in the midfield so I want one player to keep the width it can either be like afullback in a high position or just the winger in this regular position but Ilike to have the one player that keeps the width on each side I want them to bein like a midfield slash attacking position so for example I don't usuallyplay a 442 diamond that's not a formation I would that would be like my firstchoices because it lacks it has a lot of players in center and halfspaces but itlacks width in the midfield their we like have to create that width there's nonatural you really have to create width with like players making runs andplayers getting into different positions so the last one are low crosses I'm notsure if you know but they did a statistical analysis on crosses infootball and they found that from all the high crosses played in like professionalI think it was Premier League only one in about 80 crosses actually converged toa goal so if you think about this it's a really really really low number and theyfound that there are two types of crosses are actually like statisticallyway more effective and those are either a low cross in between the spacebetween the goalkeeper and the defenders or a cutback cross so a player likemaking a run to the to the goal line then cutting it back to a player on likethe penalty spot so I prefer to play with those two types of crosses I don'tprefer to play with high crosses especially youth football because then theruns in front of goal have to be good the high cross has to be good you have to beable to do a good header there are a lot of duels with defenders that can be lostand they are like three but be like I cross need three or four players insidethe box actually heading the ball which then again consider the rest defensebecause you have already four players in the box plus a player playing the crossit's already five so the rest defense is not optimally organized so I prefer toplay with low crosses another important thing I put at the bottom hereprinciples can change and evolve throughout your career like for example I'm now coachingfor about five six years something so this is like my game model now but likeit's not set in stone it's like when you evolve as a person and as a coach youlearn new things you get different ideas then your game model changes so this islike my principles right now could be that in one or two years I perhaps addedthree new ones and I removed two one to two of the ones that I've right now it's it'snot set in stone it's something that can evolve so the second important thing is thequalities of the players so in my personal opinion the qualities of theplayers determine how we're going to play so both in a wayof formation so let's say you have two good strikers then I would obviouslyI play a formation with two strikers so 442, 4D2, 352 something like that and the qualities of the players determine the way ofplaying so are we going to build out from the back are we going to play a longball are we going to press with fullbacks are we going to press or are we going tofall back I know that there are a lot of coaches that basically have theirformation as a principal so I always play 433 or I always play outfrom the back personally I don't like that I don't because it's not applicableto different contexts and I think that your principles should beapplicable to every single context that you encounter so if you have two good striker to me personally doesn't it make sense to play with only one in additionfor example you have a quick fullback then you can have your fullback makeoverlapping runs you can press with your full back but if your fullback is quiteslow then you have to you have to change because it doesn't make sense to likepress with your fullback and try to have him make runs from like 40 meters whenhe's when he's one of the slowest in the team and in the back are our centraldefender capable of playing out from the back because in my opinion if they're notlike we don't play out from the back if they we play out from the backor like it's an option to play out from the back but it depends on the qualityof the players of course in youth football that can be a little bit differentbecause for example like U11's, U12's U13's like you can't expect theplayers to have all the qualities so you need to teach them the qualities becausethat's a little bit different between like youth football and professional footballthe third aspect is the culture of the country because the culture of thecountry influenced the way that the players themselves want to play and itinfluenced the way your opponent's play so for example I'm from the Netherlandsand here everyone plays 433 or 4231 and we're allbuilding out from the back so let's say I simply want to play 442I only want to play along to my striker and I want to play from the second ballfirst of all my own players can like feel resistance against that way ofplaying because they are not used to it and they're like basically theybasically have learned throughout the years from the culture that that way ofplaying is not the 'right' way to play because they are so used to like 433 playing out from the back that's how you're supposed to play football becausenot really because that's like a truth for something but because that's whatthey all have been taught for the past like what 15 16 17 years so if you simply want to play very very differently then you first need to tell your playerslike why you want to do that I need to see if you players are actually open toplaying it that way in addition for example if I coach and under-17 sidehere in the Netherlands and all they've done is play 433 man-markingin their defensive stages for like the past 12 years and I certainly want toplay it 442with zonal defence then I really have to see if my players areready for that because you just you can't suddenly just throw in verydifferent things that they have never experienced before and expect them allto understand it so you have to see like if your own principles but you have tolook at okay but what are the players used to so how can I find a combinationbetween what they are used to and how I want to play in the ideal way becauseyou can't just suddenly expect players to learn a completely different style ofplaying in different formation within a couple of weeks that especially at youthlevels it takes like months and months and months final thing the cultureinfluences is how your opponent's will line up so for example let's again say Iwant to play 442 in The Netherlands and almost everyone plays 433that means that almost every single game I'm going to be in a 2v3underload in midfield so the opponent's gonna have like a man up so Ineed to prepare myself for that I need to see okay how am I go to defend thatand do I have the players that are like intelligent enough to understand that weneed to fix that and that players need to shift to the free player and are ourplayers good enough to deal with 2v3 underload in case itever happens the fourth and final stage are the directions of the board I thinkespecially in professional football there of course teams that say they wantto play a certain way also in youth football you have for example a lot of teams arelike forced to play 433 you're not allowed to play a different formation soyou can only play a different formation if you, so basically you'reforced to play 433 they tell you that until like the U17's U19's you have to play either 433 or 4-2-3-1 so you knowokay I have to stick to the formation and then you have to add that toyour to your principles and the qualities of the players so now let'sget to the practical side of it little background information I coached U11's and U12's over the last two years so those were in the Netherlandsthose teams play eight against eight so I will start with that and then I willmove over to how I play with 11 v 11 teams also important to realize thatyouth football players are not the same as professional players you can't expectthem to know everything you can't expect to do everything so the conditionsweren't sufficient to implement all my principles and I will tell a little bitabout that later but just keep it in mind like I said there were principlesthat are non-negotiable but sometimes you have to tweak the principles alittle bit too to suit them to your current context so here's the practicalapplication of how I played with my under 11's U12's.

I will go into how I play with 11first 11 teams in a bit so we played 8 against 8 on half the pitch basicallyboth the sides so they're like three meters from here are cut off and it'sthree meters from here so a little bit smaller pitch than you see here but you get the idea basically I first started by looking at what most of our opponentswould do so I knew that most opponents which are the reds would play a 3 sothree at the back one midfielder three forward 313 formation So than I went on to look what can I do against that how can I ensure that with myformation my way of playing I have always an advantage over them and I didthat by looking at the qualities of my players I had I think at the start twomaybe three players they're really good at defending but then also at joiningthe midfield and creating play from here so what I did was instead of playing a313 during attack so when we had to ballwhen we had the ball I wanted him to move into midfield I wanted those tobasically become center backs and these two went widehe moved up and I basically played 2-4-1 with diamond in midfield sowhat this usually meant was that the opponents would basically always manmark so here at the back and now it had even those men usually on the press hewas either I put them a bit to the side just to get through a bit bigger eitherhe was like kind of lazy because he's a striker so then he had the gaps righthere and right here he would just position himself here eventhough the position himself here and I could just set my keeper playing therefirst touch forward and then you immediatly have a five against four against theopponents goal in case if he dribbles towards him attracts him plays to himand now with four against three towardes the opponents goal because the field is so smallyou've basically create a small overload two against one somewhere and you'rejust immediately creating a scoring chance so I think that this this patternor like in a way of this pattern with a 5 against 4 or 4 against 3 being createdit happened at least three or four times every single game like every single gamemainly because like this striker will almost never fall back all the way hereso of course we found it's the only problem of course when we didn't play out the advantage and then I could suddenly have three against two or four against two againstmy central defenders luckily the pitch wasn't very big so he was usually ableto recover when he went on too far I wanted him to stay back so I always had threeplayers at the back usually it went okay the central defenders were quitecapable with defending underloaded situations we practiced a couple oftimes it didn't like we had goals coming from counters against us but notsufficient as in like that it was really an issue for us another advantage thatthe formation gave me let me put it back for you is that because I put both mywingers lower than usual because I'd say we play with three strikersyou tell kids we play with three strikers, they will stand like this you know so then the defendersare also near each other that's why I said we play with midfielder if you play with a diamond in midfield so position them tohere and here so then that caused both their fullbacks to run on to mymidfielder or wingers that caused like spaces here and space here for mystriker to move into so he had a lot of space to move into what a lot of timeshappened was he was a bit there ball was played to him he would make himselfavailable ball was played here he would come and then he could make it run intothe corner here and the ball is played there and then he would step out and then hecould run into the center so that was also very very beneficialfor us yes some other patterns that I used were but a lot of like ball playedto him he went to press he would come short pull him out ball was played herehe should be more there that make like the inside run give andgo like that and then strike would move to the side of the ball tracked himhe would move up there then ball used to be play to the striker so I got a coupleof options he could lay it off to he could lay it off to him and he could runon attacking midfielder come underneath receive and then play it forward or hecould like make a run there a couple of times he could just play that pass yeahdefensively defensively I did went to a 313 most of the time becauseit make more sense because otherwise your central defenders defending likehere and then their striker is left free so once I guess I usually chose to just fallback make the pitch compact because there's no offside in these types of gameso like if they all move up then you just have a lot of space in your midfield becausethey they can't move up because they move up then he can just play it inbehind because there's no offside so this was if he we fall back when that ball wasplayed we didn't press we just try to minimize these gaps so that he couldn'treceive then his job was to take out the passing lane to the striker mainly so he would be abit more there and then when the ball was played to him and he was in quite ahigh position he would press he would go short on him he would provide coverhe would move this side he would press out he would press onto him he wouldmove to this side he would move in and then we try to basically get him herethen if he played back and you can just continue his press it went okay thisthis was perhaps a little bit too hard for eleven twelve year olds it went very verywell in the first half the season where we became champions it became less whenthe opponent's started to defer their way of build-up because a lot of teams wewent to like a higher competition with all the champions from our region andthen you had a lot of teams that put one fullback very high and they moved himinside because but now you already see problems because then he already has todrop all the way down there so he's not here anymoreand then like basically the the build-up shape becomes a lot different like itdid a lot of this happened so one fullback very high winger drops bring himinside became too too difficult to be like a zonalcompact shape which waswhat I mentioned with the the playing principle because I prefer zonal shapebut it became too hard when the opponent started to do things like this we wereforced into different kind of shapes so I went back to the more men markingstyle which is you follow him you can follow him like more like this becauseit just it was it was beginning to become to complicated.

Now the practicalapplication of the 11 v 11 games so first of all I haven't coach 11v11 teams myself I will do like next year will be basically on my first year on adecent level coaching a 11 against 11 therefore it's not these are more likemy general ideas of how I usually would do it but it's not really as aselaborated as the 8 against 8 was so again my team is the blue teamred team are the opponent's would go go you're basically forced to play 433 or 4231 I go for a 4-2-3-1 I like the structure better usually gives you a bit of a better restdefense base otherwise would usually the one midfielder here you can havethat they are too advanced and that when you lose the ball you lose a lot ofthe second balls so usually I go for 4-2-3-1 so basically in The Netherlands during a matchusually looks a little bit like this so like in general lines it looks a little bit like thisFirst thing is that I usually want my two central defendersto play at the striker so in case he starts pressing here you just play hereand if he has the capabilities I want you to try driven to midfield see if youcan find an opening when one of the central defenders has the ball I usually want thestriker to move to the side of the ball I want him to be basically make thishorizontal line on like the last line of the defense and then make himself available asthe vertical option I usually want my attacking midfielder to be on the farside because for example if he drops a bit and he pulls him with him I wantmy number ten to be able to make the blind side runs in behind make a lotof those runs again I want like one of the full-back on the outside wingersmore inside and I use a lot of opposite movement so for example the striker and the attacking midfielder.

But also like a lot of this this player moving here inside theymove towards the ball with him following him in and play the ball in behind for thefull-back because also like if he loses this ball if he follows and he wins the ballthen I again have like seven eight players in really good positions todefend they recovered time with just in shape while if he is like here and heplays it to him and he loses it then he immediately it gives you trouble.

Defensively Iusually try to press high up because mainly the most team will go play out from theback and most especially youth teams don't really have the necessaryqualities to play out from the back all the time so it gives you quite quite alot of options you if you if you press quite high usually my preferred way atthe moment is if your striker wait and have him like pass to either of center-backs mmm either of thecentre-backs so he now plays to him then you striker now starts pressing himthis winger immediately moves inside trying to press him if he tries to playthat pass and then your winger goes here and everyone gets tight on theball in case he does manage to make this switchI want this fullback to immediatly sprint out and press him he then takes thewinger so then we go 1v1 at the back but I'd like to to step forwardwith with the full-back because there are also like ways in wich you let'ssay for example does this and the team press with the midfielderand then this means he has to go there or this Center back has to move up and hestays here but I don't really like it because it's more players having to passover their opponent to another player and it's often that like this midfieldermoves out but then the taking over of this midfielder isn't like this midfielderisn't taken over in time or he moved there and then like he can't move thereanymore so I'd like to move out with the full-back because I think it's it'seasier way of pressing so yeah basically I was it guys this 11v11 is abit shorter because I haven't played it with like one of my own teams for a fullseason so when I have done it practical examples of what I really doreality in this or more like general idea's again very different video from normallylet me know in the comments if you liked it leave the thumbs up if you liked itif you hated this it's and you don't want me to do it ever again just give it a thumbs downand then I'll know so I'll see you guys next time and thanks for watching.