Here's something that I noticed in the game Monday evening: At one point in the second half a player on the ISC team got the ball just on their side of the half line and managed to break away down the bench side of the field. As that player is carrying the ball past me down the line Ava comes streaking up from behind, touches the ball away from the other player while still headed toward our goal. Then when she'd gained a good three or four yards ahead of the player she had just dispossessed she made a nice Cruyff turn followed by a simple zig-zag and got turned back up field and brought the ball well past the half line.
I've seen Ava make this sort of defensive stop before but in this game I saw some of our other players do it too and it occurred to me that this is another unexpected benefit of the sort of training we do and the confidence the girls have in their skills so I want to be sure everyone else understands what was going on. So, what Ava did there was to confidently take the ball away while running at full speed into our own half. She didn't feel like she had to run up on the opponent and somehow stop the ball right there. We see kids try that all the time with disastrous results. They play like they somehow aren't allowed to run past the ball when chasing an opponent. They are in a panic to get turned around immediately so they swipe at the ball or they try some sort of pull-back and then not only do they fail to get the ball but they also give up a step or two to the attacking player and then our keeper is in a one on one. But Ava knew better. She knew that the space she had left between the attacking player and our goal was more than enough for her to use her skills to get turned around so she just took that space by stealing the ball while running past the attacking player. She carried it right toward our goal but in doing so she got the space she needed to turn around. She was using the whole field. I've always thought that Ava is ahead of the group a bit in her ability to see the whole field and to anticipate. But I think that the confidence she shows in knowing how to use all that space to her advantage is a result of the hard work she's done in developing such excellent ball control skills. She's always been able to see where the open space on the field is but now she's got the skills to use that space, even for playing defense.
I think we can expect to see all of our girls adopting this tactic to great effect.
Good point Pat. I have always told our players not to chase the player or the ball, but to run past them and get ahead of the attacker. What Ava is doing makes a lot of sense and can be incorporated into our games and training as a defensive option they will all appreciate because it is very similar to what they do early on as young players...steal the ball from their own teammates as they themselves are on the attack.
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