What is Positional Play
Today on the internet it seems that many coaches enjoy complicating the game. When you click on to read explanations of the most simple of subjects often you will be greeted by complicated explanations and diagrams that can easily bamboozle people who don’t have much coaching experience or knowledge. Recently we can across one such article that made Positional Play seem like the most complicated of topics. The truth is that positional play is not complicated at all in terms of description. Granted, there are many facets to this style of play and so many breakdowns within positions, but when simply explaining positional play and what it is, that should never seem complicated.
So in simple terms what is Positional Play
Positional Play originated from Total Football which was the mastermind of Rinus Michels and later Johan Cruyff. Interestingly Pep Guardiola was not the first coach to actually bring this concept to England. From 2012-2014 Michael Laudrup's Swansea team were another recent example of a side coached on the principles of positional play, and for anyone who can go back to watch some of those games it is an education on the subject. Simplified positional play in an approach that educates footballers to take up positions on the pitch that ask questions of the opposition positioning. When coached players are instructed to occupy certain areas of the pitch, but to be ready to move to another area (zone) based on how the opposition react to the positions taken up. The approach requires players to be patient in their areas of the pitch and to understand why being sat in certain positions will eventually affect the game or the opposition. Let’s take a look at a simplified example in the video below.
A. Build one side, if the opposition shift (tuck in) then quickly switch the point of attack wide to exploit space wide.
— Derek Ó Caomhánaigh (@ObsessFootball) May 6, 2021
B. If full backs don't tuck in. Now run to exploit that space with well timed runs beyond.pic.twitter.com/ID7E4b7d8i
Difficult to Coach but not to Explain
Positional Play at it’s effective best will involve a team who understands where to be based on the position of the football and the opposition players, otherwise known as coaching game intelligence in relation to movement and positions. Another important facet of positional play is that players are educated in a way that allows them to rotate positions with teammate comfortably, or overload certain areas of the pitch during build up. A popular example of the aforementioned would be the now famous inverted full backs. The idea being that full backs overload central positions during build up in order to create space to pass into between the lines or dribble to commit the opposition. Pep Guardiola was credited for this concept, yet it has been around years, famously so in the Cruyff FC Barcelona side of the 1990’s.
OK so in brief break down why Positional Play works or is used?
There are three main approaches to positional play. The first is called numerical advantage. Numerical advantage is the idea that overloads are created in certain areas of the pitch. The example of full backs tucking in to become central midfielders again being an example of this, another example could be centre backs splitting while a central midfielder drops between them to create an extra player when building from the back. The second approach of positional play is isolation. Online today, you will see coaches refer to this as qualitative superiority. Isolation involves setting a team up in such a way that you can put a player directly up against a member of the opposition you view as a weak link. In this example you set your team up in such a way that one of your best players will always be able to quickly be found in a position that isolates him or her against a weak link in the opposition. If you identify a weak full back in the opposition one such approach can be to build play on one side of the pitch by creating overloads, before quickly switching the play to isolate your winger against the full back you deem weak positionally or defensively. The final approach is known as positional superiority. With positional superiority the idea is to position players in spaces that will drag the opposition out of positions in order to create spaces or opportunity to exploit. A good example of intelligent positional superiority would be a recent goal scored by Gareth Bale as seen in the video below.
In One Line…..Positional Play is the attempt to create superiority in areas of the pitch either through overloads, positional or isolation.