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Pressing Triggers & Jumping Your Opponent 〔✎〕

MARCH 16, 2024

Excerpts from the 'How Football Works' series on The Athletic, written by John Muller on August 16, 2023.

... In the good kind of wall pass, the type coaches teach kids, the first player dribbles until an opponent closes down, then they pass forward at an angle and continue their run so that the rebound off the wall player catches them in stride, leaving his defender in the dust. Many people call this a one-two.

But there’s also a bad type, where the first player passes straight ahead to a team-mate who is facing them and has a defender at their back. There’s no room for the passer to run forward and there’s no good option for the wall player except to bounce the ball straight back, leaving their team in the same situation as before, only now under more pressure.

The main thing that makes the second kind of wall pass bad is the receiver’s closed body shape. Allow a dark-haired young defensive midfielder named Pep Guardiola to explain what’s wrong with it: “Before I receive a ball, all I can see is what is directly ahead of me. My vision is very narrow — I cannot see absolutely anything that is going on behind me, where the team needs to attack.”

When you can’t see the opponent behind you, it’s not safe to turn and play forward. That’s why defenses will often use a receiver with a closed body shape as a “pressing trigger” — a cue to sprint forward together and apply pressure when the team in possession is vulnerable. To avoid turning into danger, the player facing the wrong way will have to play the bad kind of wall pass, causing every youth coach they ever had to howl at the TV in unison.

Anyway, here’s Cody Gakpo doing that to Enzo Fernandez on Sunday:

Things only get worse for Chelsea from here, because a backward pass is another common pressing trigger. After using Fernandez’s closed body shape to force the wall pass back to Axel Disasi, Gakpo “jumps” the backward pass, blowing past the midfielder to chase the ball back to the center back.

The angle of Gakpo’s pressing run cuts off the return pass to Fernandez and forces Disasi to turn and play back to the goalkeeper, which — hey, look, another backward pass — is Gakpo’s cue to continue his press by jumping the center back to follow the ball all the way into the box.

Gakpo’s curved pressing run has taken two Chelsea players out of the build-up and closed down the Goalkeeper, forcing a high turnover and a dangerous Liverpool chance seconds later.

You might say he ran through a wall pass and came out fighting on the other side.

This basic pattern — pressing a player with a closed body shape, then jumping the backward pass — is common enough to show up in simple event data. Compared to the average pass by a Premier League center back in front of the box, one that follows the bad kind of wall pass takes 19% less time on the ball and gains 31% less distance toward the other team’s goal, suggesting that those passers are feeling the pressure.

Like a lot of soccer’s little building blocks, once you start noticing defenders running through walls, you’ll see them everywhere.

In Saturday night’s German Supercup, RB Leipzig — a team that knows pressing tactics as well as anyone — caught Konrad Laimer, their teammate last season but now of Bayern Munich, receiving with a closed body shape …

… and sprung a trap that won the ball in Bayern’s third.

A few hours earlier, Aston Villa did something similar in the first half to Newcastle United newcomer Sandro Tonali, setting off a cascading waterfall of pressure. It was a nice illustration of why triggers matter, as Villa didn’t just have one player chasing the ball but a whole series of pressers recognizing their cues and swooping forward in graceful synchrony with each pass.

Coordination is critical for a high press, because a defender who steps out to close down leaves a hole behind them that can be exploited if their team doesn’t move with them. When one player trips a pressing trigger, that’s typically the signal for their team-mates to push up and get tight on nearby passing options, switching from a defensive structure that’s designed to deny space to more player-oriented defending in hopes of forcing a turnover in the next few seconds. If everyone finds their given opponent in time, they’ll smother the build-up and leave no way out, but if one defender misses an assignment things can get ugly fast...

... If the defenders press together, they’ll have someone closing down that sideways pass almost as soon as it’s received, like Leipzig and Villa did. If they don’t, there’s a risk that the team in possession can complete a triangle back to the midfielder who played the wall pass, now sitting in space behind their marker.

READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE HERE

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