Photo: Jeff Wilson
Timbers Training: A View from Tucson
by Jeff Wilson in Arizona
Wednesday’s training session in Tucson, Arizona was a lesson in bringing possession style football to the MLS/American context.
Training focused primarily on player position on the field and possession. Caleb Porter broke the players up into two groups of 7-on-7. During breaks in the play he spoke to the need of the wing players, when in possession, to maintain a wide position vis-a-vis the run of play.
Spatially this point is extremely important in the development of this tactical style given a significant goal when in possession is to expand the playing field.
This is what the world’s best players do. You may note this with right back players like Dani Alves who generally keeps to the touchline when Barcelona is in possession. It was fun to watch the proverbial “rubber meeting the road” in terms of tactical approach and practical training methods.
Photo: Jeff Wilson
This continued for a good half-hour before Porter brought the team together to play a horizontal 11-on-11 minus goalkeepers (see above). This aspect of training focused on touches and possession with one of the assistant coaches counting out the number of completed passes.
Again the emphasis was on creating small three player triangles to help facilitate more possession as well as switch fields to open up play. Each session was about 3-5 minutes with the losing side doing pushups.
Photo: Jeff Wilson
From there the play was opened up to a nearly full field and included the goalkeepers. Again a main goal here with respect to the goal keepers was to play out of the back, meaning the goalkeepers don’t simply kick the ball up the field but worked possession through the defenders.
The Ghanaian international and former Stormsgodset keeper Adam Kwarasey was brought in presumably for this purpose and today he looked good with the ball at his feet. Finally it’s worth noting that the team was very energetic during this last half hour of practice.
Fernandez did not hold back in the tackle
Photo: Jeff Wilson
While this should not be all that surprising, full tackles were allowed
In a post-practice interview Darlington Nagbe made a similar point:
“Yeah we’re definitely working on keeping width, circulating the ball, find gaps and stretch out the defense. Coach likes to keep the ball and control the game.”
To digress just a bit, a critical point about the game on Saturday (against Sporting KC, which the Timbers won 2-0) was not so much notable individual play but the relative intensity of the Timbers.
There was remarkable linking passes between wing players and the Timbers enjoyed a majority of possession, while Sporting KC looked flat and totally uninspired.
There will be rust and both poor and good plays but you want to see a certain type of desire. The first game delivered on this front and this has carried over into practice on Wednesday.
Golub: We are still looking for ways to expand capacity
