Lately I’ve had a few discussion with people about different systems that people use.  These people discuss to me passionately why their system is so much better than playing a traditional 3 striker, 3 midfield fielders, 3 defenders, 1 sweeper and a goal keeper.  Its very interesting to hear people’s rationalisation for playing these systems, some have merit and others I must admit, bring a smile to my face.

No matter what the system is, they all have strengths and weaknesses, and this post isn’t about what’s the best one to play, its about understanding that no matter what system you play you will always have to adapt to what the opposition team is doing.

I always like to think of hockey in its most simplistic form.  In the case of discussing systems, I like to think of the game from 2 aspects:  having the ball, and not having the ball.  To me it makes sense to think of it this way for a few different reasons.

First of all, if my team has the ball then we have the ability to move around the pitch at will as the opposition has ‘chases’ us to try and get the ball back. This is where whatever system that your team is playing becomes important.  As you have the ball, you can do whatever you want.  You may choose to have an extra player in the midfield, or if your game style is attacking, maybe a 4th striker, whatever the system clarity and understanding of the plan will be a major factor in your team’s success.

Without the ball, does it really matter what system you play?  No.  I can answer this quite confidently because when you don’t have the ball, you have to react to what the opposition is doing.  If you don’t you’ll get hurt on the scoreboard!  For instance there’s no use playing 3 midfielders when the opposing team has 4 midfielders and they are able to easily come out of defence and launch attack after attack.  Your team has to adapt to this challenge and there is a lot of ways to handle this, e.g play with only 2 strikers and have the extra striker back in the midfield, or instead of having a sweeper, push them forward to pick up the extra midfield.

So in a nutshell, it isn’t important what system you play, instead the importance is the ability for your team to transition from having the ball and playing your structure to not having the ball and countering the oppositions structure.  The faster and more fluent that this transition is handled, the more likely the result will end up your team’s way.

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 1st, 2010 at 10:14 pm and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.