The Paradox of Possession

Anyone who has read this blog may well have noticed that I consider possession to be a vital part of my philosophy on football. One might say that possession is a vital part of any philosophy, unless the coach prefers to watch his side lose. However, in this case I mean that my entire philosophy is built around holding the ball. This is something which I have spent the last few months attempting to teach my youth team, with varying levels of success. A question has since sprung to my mind - how much possession is too much?

The core of this question refers to possession in the attacking half. I have a team that is excellent on the counter attack and has a quick, direct (not long ball, but a quick succession of forward passes) style of play. The fear our coaching team had was that this, in the higher division in which we now find ourselves, would leave us open to more intelligent sides who would pick us apart.

The image on the left shows in red, our formation for last season (one that I have not seen another 9-a-side team use, they all seem to prefer 3 man defences) and in blue, the one we plan to use for this season.

This season we have moved to a five man midfield, which I have yet to see in 9-a-side. The reason for this is that it would give us three central midfielders who would be able to dominate the middle and control possession, with one pushing forward to join our striker when the opportunity presented itself. The central midfielder (holder) at the base of the three would pick up the ball from defence and begin attacks, either passing out wide or to a team mate in midfield who made themselves available.

I firmly believe that this is a system that should work. It allows us to dominate the middle and has width in the two wide midfielders who have more licence to push forward when the midfield are on the ball. It also offers flexibility as the extra central midfielder can shift positions when required. It can easily revert to a 3-4-1 when the team is under heavy pressure or to a 2-4-2 if we are dominating the game.

The problem seems to be that the players don't understand why we should hold the ball in the midfield zone. Many of them do not appear to be comfortable enough on the ball to keep the ball for large periods of time. I would prefer for us to dominate possession and move the ball until we make ourselves room for a throughball which leads to a quality chance. The difficulty is that U12s rarely have the patience or concentration to keep the ball until that opportunity arises.

The players seem to be happier playing in the very effective 2-4-2 formation. They can attack teams with speed and intensity. We have a striker who seems to have taken elements from the new emphasis on possession and creating our goals (i.e. passes and moves that we make because we know they will get to a player, rather than hitting forward to chase in hope) and is playing some superb through balls. Our players seem to be slowly understanding the need to retain possession and create opportunities through movement, rather than forcing a pass that just isn't on. It would now seem to make sense to use 2-4-2 on teams that will be weaker than us as it gives us many points of attack and makes it difficult for the opposition defence to play out (a 3v2 situation for them at the back often leads them to hit long, rather than pass out, giving opportunities to win the ball back). Against stronger teams it still seems sensible to use 2-5-1 to give us control of the game and allow us to create enough chances to win the game. The players simply need to take on the philosophy. When teams start to cause us real difficulties, perhaps this will happen.

Andrew