One of the essential skills that athletes and teams have to show in competition is to not allow their opponents to be comfortable in playing against them. This rule applies even when you are in advantage: you must continue to work keeping pressure on opponents. In tennis it’s shown that when a professional player wins the 1st set in 80% of cases wins the game. How does it happen? Maintaining the self-control and striving twice in the second set to prevent that the other is back into the match. These players are aware that winning the 1st set have not yet achieved anything and their question early in the second is always the same: “What should I do to continue to keep pressure?”
The need to demonstrate this attitude is decisive in sports where almost every minute during a match is scored a point, as in tennis but also in basketball and volleyball: if you do not create competitive pressure (of course quality) opponents would take the upper hand.
In soccer, it’s different, because you would think that it’s enough to defense or even to have already won when you are ahead in the score. These approaches show, in my opinion, a passive team mentality and it leaves the initiative in the game to the opponents. In soccer the teams do not usually play with determination and energy for the whole game but certainly the first and the last 10/15 minutes of both times are often decisive in determining the final outcome and it’s especially in these times that a team must work to obtain the majority of the phases of the game in its favor. The task of the coach should be to implement this idea, adapting it to the needs of the game and the charactheristics of his team.
0 Responses to “Be consistent to maintain the pressure on the opponents”