Playing with Connectivity

Building & Maintaining Connections

Soccer is a team game. That sounds obvious, but what we're really talking about is collaborating with and supporting your teammates as the game goes through it's gyrations. To be an effective team, it's members act in concert. They create a system of give and take that provides support and relief, coverage and options through which play can be developed.

In your quest to develop space, you must make sure you establish and maintain a connection to your teammates. This means being in reasonable physical proximity to valuable, play-making space and obtaining an impactful position on the field in relation to your teammates. It also means mentally responding to what they are communicating on the field with their play, their body language and their voices, and doing so effectively with your own.

All that said, good soccer turns effort into opportunities, not certainties. You should be prepared for the likelihood that this supportive, collaborative effort will result zero tangible impact a lot of the time, but that doesn't make it worthless. It's a numbers game, the more connected plays you put together, the better your odds one of these plays will bear fruit, that is, and opportunity to shoot and score.

Reciprocity & Selflessness

Additionally, you have the right to expect that your support be reciprocated, but not necessarily that it be duplicated. Players make decisions on the field based on a variety of input, a split second decision isn't often personal. You must develop and maintain a selfless attitude, successful team players are often just as interested in making their teammates look good as they are in obtaining glory for themselves, if not more so.

[After a while you should be obtaining a feeling for where teammates do well and do often, and can tell whether players are team guys or not.]

Offensive Connection

As an offender on a team in possession, if you are so far removed from play that a defender dismisses you as a threat, if you can't see an open line to your possessing teammate, or you are attacking a space in which you are unable to even remotely impact the play, you need to move to a more connected position. It may not be the most wide-open green space, but it's connected, which makes it useful. One of the worst things you can do during play is to take advantage of the green space to the extent that you lose the ability to participate in the play, in effect cutting yourself off from and out of the game.

Defensive Connections

For defenders, the connected position is usually goal-side in relation to their opponent, within striking distance of attacking his position should the ball move his way. Care must be taken to ensure staying useful to the defensive scheme. Defending players with no ability to impact the play is wasted effort. A good defender is constantly evaluating where he is best needed, what opening needs to be filled. He or she will recognize when field circumstances have changed and a different level, position and direction of effort.

To properly understand the balance required between Space and Connection, you can think of your team as connected by rubber bands. If you are too close, you're likely not doing anything, or at least not something someone else isn't already doing. If you are too far away, the rubber band snaps and can't help. As the ball moves around the field, you must near-constantly consider and adjust your position so that you are you are stretched to cover as much of the field as you can with reliable effectiveness, but without breaking coverage by being too far away.