How to coach challenging in football

Ever wondered what makes a player good at challenging? In this article, we explore how The FA’s six core capabilities can help your team master this skill.

1. SCANNING

To successfully challenge for the ball, your players need to scan their environment before, during and after the tackle. This helps them to win possession – and decide what to do next. Let’s take a closer look.

Before the tackle

Ask your players if they can:

• notice where they are on the pitch in relation to the goal
• spot the path of the ball
• see the movement of the attackers and the space they want to use.

Posing these questions will encourage players to survey their surroundings.

Next, to help players use their scanning skills to anticipate in-game problems, get them to consider the following scenarios:

• What if your teammate loses the ball?
• What if your teammate gets beaten by an opponent?
• What do you do when two or more attackers are running at you?

During the tackle

Whether a player is observing their opponent before making a move – or side by side, ready to challenge – it’s essential for them to consider what could happen next. After all, there could be further danger via a runner into space or even a chance for them to win the ball and create an attack.

This is why it’s so important that we encourage our players to “have a quick glance”. And it’s simple: just ask them to look around before they carry out their next action.

After the tackle

Following a tackle or interception, can your players spot a chance to counter or the opponent’s next potential attack?

To help them do this, provide transitions in practices and reward individuals when they demonstrate the action of challenging.

2. TIMING

When challenging for the ball, the ultimate aim is to win it cleanly. That’s why timing is crucial. Go in too early, and the opponent could play around you. Too late, and the opportunity to win the ball passes by – or you might give a foul away.

To work on timing, ensure that your practices provide opposition, offer repetition of tackling and are like the real game. Doing this will give players plenty of opportunities to try challenging – and make it easy to transfer their learning into a match.

3. MOVEMENT

To challenge, players have to get close to an opponent – and that requires good movement skills. They need to be able to turn, rush out to press, and change speed and direction.

Players also need good balance – to stay on their feet – and good coordination. For example, using their upper body to make contact and their lower body to steal the ball.

With this in mind, it’s important for you, the coach, to support your players in the physical corner.

Arrival activities that include tag games will help develop movement skills. A great example is ball tag. To give this activity a go, mark out an area and give a ball to a team of ‘taggers’. Their job is to pass the ball to each other using their hands and tag the other team with it. However, when a ‘tagger’ has the ball, they must stand still. This means they need to move into a good position before receiving the ball. Their opponents can run around freely, trying to avoid being tagged, however. To increase the challenge and encourage more movement, you can use more than one football.

4. POSITIONING

When challenging, to get into the right position, a player needs to be close enough to make contact with the ball. Alternatively, they should be positioned in a way that forces an opponent to go towards a supporting defender.

To help your players work on this, try an activity that rewards tackling. This will encourage repetition of the skill. For example, have two teams play a normal game of football on a pitch that’s split into thirds. Then, to ensure there’s more of a focus on challenging, add the following scoring system. Reward a team with three points if they win possession in their defensive third and score, two for doing so in the middle third, and one if it happens in their attacking third.

5. DECEPTION

Being able to disguise a challenge is a really useful skill. For example, showing an action that suggests you’re going in for a tackle, but not actually challenging, can often confuse your opponent. This can force them to make the first move or a mistake. Travelling in a straight line and then changing your angle can also demonstrate deception when challenging for the ball.

Setting up games, such as 1v1 duels in 10x10 yard areas, is an excellent way for players to develop their deception skills. In this example, you could provide players with a point each time they touch the ball, win possession or force their opponent out of the area. After each successful action, the defender needs to run outside of the practice area and then come back into play. With so much repetition, defenders will need to use deception to change their approach to make it difficult for the player on the ball to keep possession.

6. TECHNIQUES

Finally, when challenging, players need to demonstrate a good variety of techniques. This can range from adapting to block a shot on goal, positioning themselves to intercept or using different parts of the foot to challenge cleanly and keep possession of the ball.

It can also be the ability to get in between the opponent and the ball – dipping a shoulder to create space.

Mastering these techniques will increase the likelihood of winning the ball. To work on them with your team, set up small-sided duels. Then, to increase the possibilities, add goals or target areas. This gives players the chance to experience blocking shots, as well as intercepting and challenging for the ball.

PUTTING IT ALL TOGETHER

To master the skill of challenging, players need to be efficient in each of the six areas above.

To see exactly what that looks like in a real game, take a look at the video below.