Creativity at play: Bridge passes

Increasingly, defenders are encouraged to race into the attacking line to help prevent the ball reaching the wingers. It’s a good tactic. Instead of matching up in defence on the outside and perhaps finding themselves outnumbered, the defence can block the attack. That means they can compress the defence nearer to the first few passes the attack made, cutting down their options to go forward.

This sort of aggressive defence makes it hard for the attack to go wide. The midfield attacker who’s looking to make a pass sees free attackers wide out, but defenders in the path of a normal pass.

Set plays can help mitigate against this. Also, the use of a “block” or “bridge” pass continue the movement of the ball. This play has the ball carrier pass behind a team mate to another player. However, this can also push the attack further behind the gain line.

One solution is this long, looped pass. Lots of players at the top level use this tactic, because defences are increasing cutting down the outside option.

To be effective, it needs the following attributes:

• It must be high enough to float over the defenders’ grasps.
• It must be flat enough (that is, not backwards) for the receiver to run onto.
• It must be fast enough that the ball doesn’t hang in the air too long so that defenders can adjust to meet the ball themselves.

The pass suits a spin pass rather than a push pass, though your players can experiment. They could use an American Football like quarterback throw, though that’s hard to execute when the passer is trying to keep their hips as square as possible to the opposition.

The risks of a long, looped pass are:

• They can be perceived as a forward pass.
• A mistimed or poorly executed pass can be intercepted, probably with dire consequences.

Adaptive games

On page 7, we have a game where overhead catches are part of the skill. You can adapt the game, so all passes must start below head height and must go above head height at some stage. That should improve the pass execution.

You can also play “cheat” touch. One or two defenders from each team are nominated as “cheats”. They can stand in the attacking line and intercept or block passes. They cannot touch an attacking player though.

This means that the defence will have gaps because they will hwave one or two players less in their line. The attackers will have opportunities to go wide, but may have to use looped passes to succeed.