Positional Play Training Series: 3v1 Rondo
There’s no way around it. There is an inherent problem with this rondo as it is.
The game is by nature directional. You’ve heard this a million times. Football follows team invasion principles, which are:
Possession
Progression
Finalization
In order to satisfy the objective of the game of scoring more goals than the opposition, we first must have the ball in our possession, then we must advance it towards the opposition, and lastly we try to score in the opposition’s goal.
Those are irrefutable facts.
Let’s approach this from a player experiencing this rondo. There is no better feeling than the one you get when you and your two friends are whipping the ball around the rondo. The sound of the ball when each pass is made, the ball skipping along the slick, freshly cut grass, manipulating the defender in one direction and playing it to the other teammate who is free.
13, 14, 15 passes and still the defender has no chance.
Success.
This is my favorite type of football. Associative football - we are working together to make this defender feel like they have absolutely no chance of ever even getting a sniff on the ball.
It feels like winning, and it is winning by the objective set by the rondo.
What makes it so effortless is that you can focus all of your attention on the pass - move - pass - receive - support - one touch pass - move - support - receive, etc.
Let’s now take the pitch on matchday.
In my unimportant playing career I played many positions but I played central midfielder the most. I often played in a defensive role, like a #6. My job was to support the two central backs as we built the ball up from our back line to our midfield line.
So there I am creating a perfect triangle with the two center backs. The opposition are pressing with one striker.
Look! My much loved 3v1 rondo in the game!
Great, I know what to do here - move - support - pass back to center back - move again - receive… wait, another defender… and another… this doesn’t happen in training. It doesn’t feel the same.
And wait, we need to move the ball forward.
My friends and I can’t make 12, 13, 14 passes like in training because we also need to be looking forward. We need to score.
I don’t feel entirely prepared by the rondo.
The Benefits of the 3v1 Rondo
Don’t lose hope my friends, there are some benefits from this training tool.
To fully understand the benefits we have to understand the idea of standardization and variability. To standardize something means that we are keeping something the same regardless of the situation or context.
What Rondos and Positional Games do is they standardize a player’s position (to a certain degree). They essentially limit where the player can move. By doing so, players have to make one less decision. One less decision means that they can focus their attention on the timing, direction, and speed at which they execute within the activity.
Position is standardized and timing, direction, and speed are the variables players have more control over.
Why would this be helpful?
We are simplifying the game by minimizing the number of variables players have to consider when playing. A simplified version of the game would be useful when the players need this because they are struggling with the current demands of the match.
Simplified versions of the game should be used as much as necessary but as little as possible.
However, the beauty of rondos is that you can use them as the building blocks to arrive at a more realistic game situation for your players to experience.
As I pointed out in my example of when I was playing the #6, for a brief moment there was a 3v1 rondo in the match. I want to emphasize ‘brief’. It’s a snapshot of the game because in an instant that moment is gone, and now the situation requires movement up the pitch.
This means that we can use this rondo as the starting point of a game situation that would be more realistic.
Building on the Rondo
In order to know how we have to build it up towards the game, we have to know what makes the game the game.
We will use the constraints that are present in the match to gauge how close we are to the match. These will be our tools to arrive as close to the game as possible.
What’s most important here is we know where we have to end up - the match.
The football constraints we’ll use to measure our game realism are:
Laws of the game: The fewer rules we’re disregarding, the more realistic.
Direction: Activities with direction are inherently more realistic
Transitions: When each team has an objective/direction, the activity is more realistic.
Opponent to Teammate Ratio: The closer this is to equality, the more realistic.
Space: The closer it is to the amount of space they will have in a match, the more realistic.
Time: The closer it is to the amount of time they will have in a match, the more realistic.
I will add an additional consideration because we have to remember that the purpose of training is to prepare players to play the game as it will be played on match day. This is true for 7 year olds or 27 year olds. The difference is that, for 7 year olds, we wouldn’t prepare a tactical plan to win Saturday’s match, but we do want them to have a general understanding of how the match will play out. This means providing more contextual information in training about the match.
Match Context: The closer it replicates a game plan or tactic, the more realistic.
Practical Application
Let’s use the 3v1 rondo to demonstrate what it looks like in practice.
We start with the simplest version of this rondo. It’s a square with three attacking players and one defender in the middle.
As you can see in the image below, when referencing our football constraints it’s missing a handful.
It’s disregarding all laws except law #2 (The ball), law #4 (The players’ equipment), and law #12 (Fouls and misconducts). I just want to make it clear that it would be impossible to satisfy all the laws of the game in a training environment but the closer we get to it the better.
It doesn’t have a clear direction which means that we’re missing the team invasion principles of progression and finalization.
As it is, it doesn’t have transitions because the defender doesn’t have any objective after recovering possession of the ball. We could very easily include that by either stating that the defender has to dribble out of the square or place goals around the outside of the playing area that the defender can score into.
The opponent to teammate ratio favors the attacking team by having two more players, which fails to satisfy that constraint.
The space that the game is played in could be realistic; it's about the same amount of space that they’d experience in a match with that number of players. By manipulating this space we could either make it easier or harder but we’d do this intentionally depending on what the players need.
The time players have to execute is usually linked with the amount of space they have. In this case, it’s about the same that they’d have in the match. Again, as with space we can manipulate time to make it easier or harder, but we’d do this to meet the players’ needs.
Lastly, this rondo does not provide any match context.
The first add-on to this rondo is a goal for the black and for the white. This now incorporates direction and transitions which gets us closer to the game.
Next we could place the rondo where and with whom it might occur. In this case, I have created it in a build-up phase with two center backs and the #6 attacking a small goal that would replicate advancing into the midfield. The #9 would be defending, preventing the build-up. Additionally, by placing the rondo where it might occur on the pitch, you’d be creating more match context. You could even add the goalkeeper for the #9 to have to score on.
All of this creates more match context.
The next add-on is a progression zone with two additional attackers and defenders. Again, this is even more match context by incorporating a more game realistic progression. The additional small goals for the attackers would replicate passing options with #7, #11, and #9.
Although, the opponent to team ratio is still two additional players for the attacking team, in the progression zone it’s equal.
All of this provides even more match context.
Lastly, we add outside backs for the attacking team and additional center midfielders and wingers for the defending team. We increase the field of play to the actual playing field and in doing so we could incorporate more laws of the game like throw-ins. You could also determine the winner of the match on goals.
In order for the players in the 3v1 rondo to still experience that situation, you could give the players outside of that rondo starting positions. What this means is they have to start from a certain position on the field so when the ball starts with a center back in the 3v1 rondo, those three players have a certain amount of time to work within the rondo and then act based on the defenders that potentially press them (or don’t press them).
This now creates a wonderful game situation to learn from. They have to maintain possession within the rondo and when a player from the outside comes into the rondo they can find the free man on the outside in order to progress.
This is now infinitely closer to the match than where we started with our simple 3v1 rondo.
Whichever version of the 3v1 rondo you choose should be decided intentionally. The more simplified the game situation is, the more match context you are losing. Whatever you choose, just be aware what you are sacrificing.
Remember, simplified versions of the game should be used as much as necessary but as little as possible.
I will continue to demonstrate throughout this Positional Play Training Series how the process I applied here can applied to any rondo or positional game to achieve all kinds of purposes.
But for now, I want to remind you of one thing. With everything that we do, we want to remain Faithful to Football.
