In modern football, pressure is a critical element of many coaching strategies. It's a fundamental tactic used to disrupt the opponent’s build-up and regain possession. However, effective pressure isn't the result of individual efforts but rather a coordinated team action.
Success hinges on the entire team pressing in unison, often triggered by a pre-determined cue based on the opponent’s weaknesses or their specific style of play.
In this post, we’ll explore how MyGamePlan can help coaches evaluate and fine-tune their team’s pressing tactics, using custom triggers to maximize defensive pressure.
Defining different triggers
During an opponent's build-up, teams often employ various triggers to initiate pressing and attempt to regain possession.
For example, pressing might begin immediately following:
- a short goal kick,
- when the center-back passes laterally to the full-back,
- or when a backward pass is made to the center-back or goalkeeper.
These are common triggers that can be communicated to the forwards, signaling them to apply pressure. The objective is clear: disrupt the opponent's play, force an error, or win back possession.
A good way to visualise the strength of pressure on a short goal kick, is to measure how many times your team recovers the ball after a short goal kick.
This season in the 2024-2025 Premier League season, we see that Liverpool and Leicester City are the most difficult teams to build up against short from the goalkeeper. They recover possession in 54% of the cases.
We can do the same evaluation but with a specific trigger like we discussed above. Let's start with the trigger of the backwards pass from the central defender.
Clubs that have a trigger like this are Tottenham Hotspur, Bournemouth and Brentford.
Checking positioning on these triggers
When the trigger of the pressing is a lateral pass to the full back, you expect your winger on the opposite side to approach the centre of the pitch to close down the spaces.
This is also something you can evaluate with MyGamePlan.
This gives you all the context to sit together with your player to show him how and where he can be positioned better in these situations, but it also gives you a longer term overview of the performance of this player.
MyGamePlan is a Belgian startup founded by Berten Knaepen and Dries Deprest, using their expertise from working experience at different clubs. They help clubs like Bayer Leverkusen, KRC Genk and QPR to reach their targets by connecting different data sources into one tool.
