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The Misconception About Positioning On A Vertical Line PT. 1
Intro
When talking tactics during football we often hear “ Players shouldn’t be positioned on the same vertical line” or “No more than two players in the same vertical zone”. Both these statements are false when dealing with absolutes. Many times they are true. I will look to describe a few reasons in which having players positioned on different vertical lines can be beneficial, while the core of this post will look at how to gain an advantage from breaking these two “rules” above to gain an advantage to progress the ball.
Let’s first define a few key terms and look at the three different pass types. The first term that is important to define moving forward is “Connection”. The term connection when used throughout this post will have both a defensive and offensive meaning. The defensive meaning will be when two defensive players are close enough to one another so that if the other is beaten the defensive player further from the ball will be in a position to cover the defensive player closest to the ball. For example, if the opposing right sided full backs dribbles and beats the left sided midfielder pressing him and now the near sided central midfielder slides across to prevent further progression the left sided midfielder and the central midfielder would have had a defensive connection.
