Cutting out long passes.

[gallas 10]

Is there any way to completely iradicate the long ball? Whether a player purposely does it to create an attack or a defender does it in a tight situation, I'd love to be able to cut this out. I know obviously setting passing to the shortest possible is the best start in order to do this. But what else can I do to stop the long balls happening?

[Parat]

Not possible, I guess

-> short passing

-> low creative freedom

might do something, but - if short passers find no people to pass the ball to, they have a problem .. so actually, maybe passing not on the lowest setting, but only a low setting may produce less long balls than the bare minimum setting

[lam]

Hi Gallas,

Setting your passing to the shortest possibole is NOT the best way to do this.

By setting a short passing system, you are telling you players to ONLY (depending on CF) pass short and when an opporunity does not present itself the said player will then hoof the ball into space rather than get caught in possession.

To eliminate the long ball or to hazard a guess at what you actualy want, to eliminate the poor long balls, you need a few things:

1. Players in open space to receive the ball (or quality players that can receive when in a tight spot).

2. A passing style that enables players to pick out a team mate almost anywhere to make that pass connect.

That is pretty much it, but the bigger question is how you get the above. The first thing to do is to eliminate some of the things that cause a lack of the above.

Ease off on the following things (Ephasis on the ease.... do not turn to rare!)

1. Through balls

2. Forward runs

3. To high a mentality (across the board. If you want short passing, imo you need small differences in mentalities throughout the team)

4. Direct passing.

If you do the above and pick a low mixed passing style, you might just get what you wished for.

I would suggest to, that you look for SFrasers thread entitled - Tactics: A less is more threory. The suggestions in there create a wonderfull style of play that you can learn from and then adapt.

Just to finish, imo, a short passing with low creative freedom may work with a top class team (though you will lose so much through the low CF), however, with a weaker team, its about the worse thing you can do.

LAM