RONDOS
Over the last few years, elite teams, ordinary fans, and youth coaches have become obsessed with possession style football and the notion of dominating the ball. After the success of teams like Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City & Spain, it’s understandable that youth coaches would want to implement this style.
However, more fundamental than this is the concept that youth development is best achieved through possession based soccer. If you have a child who wants to play soccer, try to find a club, team, and a coach where the emphasis is on possession based soccer as this will help his/her improvement over any other style of soccer.
Rondos and the implementation of rondos in both practice and games is essential to promoting a possession based style of soccer. But long before trying to understand what a rondo is, it is important to understand what is the possession style and how to coach it?
It is not “pass, pass, pass” all the time. It is not telling players to pass when it is detrimental to other skills like dribbling or finishing. When some coaches are watching the matches of the aforementioned teams, all they see is passing and don’t know what is actually happening.
With that in mind, what is a possession style of play? In its fundamental form, possession style is when a team aims to have more possession than the opposition, looking to control the game through retaining the ball and taking charge of their own destiny through attacking and not being reactive but there are so many layers to truly using a possession style of play. There is a lot more going on than just passing the ball or having high possession stats.
Let’s remind ourselves what is purpose of soccer? It is to score a goal and then to score more goals than the opposition so that they team wins. But teams start of numerically equal, 11 v 11 and so if teams are equal in terms of ability, skill, talent etc., then the score in theory should be equal at the end of the game whether it is 0:0 or 1:1 etc.
With the KISS principle in mind, Johan Cruyff regarding possession stated:
“When you have the ball, you have one problem, trying to score, but when we have the ball, you have two problems, getting the ball and then trying to score.”
This philosophy is almost as simple as it gets. If you don’t have the ball, you can’t score. So, when this is the basis of your philosophy, does that mean you keep possession in any way you can, with the main aim only to see if you can get more ball time than the opposition? No! The teams that play a possession style of soccer keep the ball deliberately and know exactly what they are doing with it.
So, it is important to have possession of the ball but what is the primary purpose of having all this possession?
Pep Guardiola also gives the answer with the following:
“La Intencion no es a mover la pelota, sino a mover la oposicion.”
The quote translates as;
“The intention is not to move the ball, but rather to move the opposition.”
Having possession is key to a possession based style of soccer but moving the opposition is the foundation of positional soccer. When you move the opposition, you create space and you create superiority whether numerical such as 2v1, 3v2 etc., positional superiority or talent superiority where one of the most talented players comes up against one of the less talented players on the opposition in a 1v1.
Teams like Guardiola’s Barcelona, and Bayern Munich, practice not only being comfortable in possession, but specific passing patterns to create space for their tactical plans.
So, when we’re watching and see the midfielders making short passes to each other back and forth, it’s not just a pass for the sake of it or so they can have a fantastic pass completion rate at the end of the game; they are trying to draw the opposition in or move opposition players in/out of areas of the field to create space.
Subsequently, when they see that space, they will attack you at lightning speed.
This space can come from an opposition player switching off and taking up an incorrect supporting position, or from a player getting frustrated and trying to make a tackle at the wrong time. When this happens and the opposition leave a space, it is exploited to its maximum potential.
This is where using rondos becomes a crucial part of your training philosophy as it allows the coach to introduce tactical elements while the players become accustomed to having the ball in small, tight spaces; all of which are exceptionally important if you are planning to use a possession style of play with your team.
This style of soccer cannot be played with players who are uncomfortable on the ball as it requires highly technical players to perform. This style of soccer cannot be played with only a few players. Every single player on the field needs to understand the concepts, the ideas, the reasoning behind the movement of the ball. If 10 out of the 11 players understand and implement this style of soccer and one player does not, the system breaks down. All 11 players need to have an understanding and need to implement the positional style of soccer together as one unit.
POSSESSION STYLE SOCCER OR JUEGO DE POSICIÓN
Possession with a purpose is a phrase that we hear all the time either by coaches that want to implement that style of play or from detractors of that style of play. Both are right but both are slightly misguided. The vast majority of coaches that want to implement the “possession” style of play start by focusing on their team having the ball and making passes rather than using the possession of the ball as a tool to carry out their strategy.
Players positioning and the plan on how to maintain possession whilst attacking is vital. This takes us onto the subject of Juego de Posicion or Positional Play.
Again, the introduction to positional play with the distances between players, tactical concepts and the players seeing the same pictures on the field during match days; this all comes from a base of using rondos in your training.
Positional play is the elite and advanced version of the possession style of play but the training methodology, in as much as using rondos and positioning games, is exactly the same.
WHAT IS THE RONDO?
Many teams want to use a possession style of play and rondos & positional games are vital to your team being able to do that. Many coaches use rondos incorrectly and fail to connect rondos to their style of coaching. Rondos together with positional games if used correctly can help transform 11 individuals into an attacking, purpose driven and creative team. A rondo is not “piggy in the middle”, it is not simply keeping possession and it is not a simple warm up exercise such as the activation exercise 8v2 commonly seen in warmups.
First of all, a rondo is a game where one group of players has the ball while in numerical superiority (3v1, 5v2, 5v5) over another group of players. The basic objective of the group in numerical superiority is to keep possession of the ball while the objective of the group in numerical inferiority is to win the ball back.
But a rondo is much more than just keeping possession. In fact, a rondo is all about positioning and principles of penetration and not what many people incorrectly believe it to be; namely passing or keeping possession.
Rondos are slightly different from positional games in that they tend to be done in a pre-set or fixed space as opposed to being done in a more random practice. That’s not to say that we can’t have players in more specific positions, but rondos are used to work on one aspect or sub principle based on a specific moment or situation in the game, like changing the zone of play rather than a phase of play like attacking the goal as team.
In a rondo we find more than 40 fundamental skills and details that a player must know and apply. A rondo represents a real field of play or game space with players in roles that represent real positions. There are defensive and offensive objectives to rondos and directionality. It teaches creativity and encourages the players to make the ball do the work.
The 1-40 key concepts are:
1. Head up
2. Break the line
3. Play between the lines
4. Control the ball with the back foot
5. Forward control
(a) The ball never stops
(b) The ball is guided forward with control
(c) Change of pace with the first touch
6. Speak with the ball:
(a) Pass the ball to my teammate’s back foot when he can go forward
(b) Pass the ball to my teammate ́s front foot when he is under pressure, and he must play with a one touch pass
7. Speed of the ball – strong passes
8. Play inside the field, play within the real game space.
9. There is direction to the rondo so understand the positions inside a rondo.
(a) The holder of the ball is always the center back and the opposite player is the center forward (9) with the 8 and 10 are located on the sides.
(b) The players located as lateral supports, have to give pass lines in different heights. 8 and 10 must always be diagonal. Rational occupation of the space.
10. Body profile, standing parallel to the line and orientate yourself towards the field
11. Pressure with a curve, meaning position my body to cut the passing line and orient the rival to the other side. Dissuade. I will convert the option from 2v1 to 1v1
12. Recognize the inside of the foot as the safest contact surface.
13. Play only one-touch soccer when the pressure is high.
14. Free play when the player in possession is alone.
(a) Play to generate an advantage.
(b) Attract the opponent and play.
(c) Do not pass the ball just for passing the ball.
15. Communication between the player in possession and the receiver.
16. Offensive basics:
(a) Do not lose the ball
(b) Overcome lines and rivals
17. Defensive basics:
(a) Do not be beaten
(b) Recover the ball.
18. Offensive 2v1
(a) If the player possessing the ball has space, the supporting player without the ball must be on the same line as the opponent to overcome the opponent with the first contact.
(b) The supporting player without the ball must be on the same line as the ball holder if there is risk of losing the ball since he is being pressured.
19. Play with intention.
(a) Make the rival see that you are going to do something and do the opposite.
20. Speed in making decisions.
(a) Acceleration of the mechanisms of perception, decision, and execution.
21. Attack the ball in the “pass” action
(a) Pass is like a punch
(b) Kicking the ball without letting the leg follow the direction of the ball.
22. Never follow the ball after giving a pass.
(a) Give time and pass lines and options to the receiver of the ball.
(b) The ball always travels with pressure.
23. The Third Man
24. Work zonal defending
(a) Work on coverages
(b) Cover the teammate that is pressuring
(c) Reduce the space of progression
(d) Defend the goal
25. Living the game with constant support movements.
26. Low game, quality passes
27. Steal the ball when
(b) The player in possession of the ball is positioned parallel to the far player
(c) The player in possession of the ball is showing his back
(b) The player in possession of the ball has a bad control or loses control of the ball
(c) The defender is able to stop the pass through individual pressure and the player in possession of the ball has no options
28. Defend with the ball by keeping possession of the ball
29. Develop creativity to solve complicated game situations
30. In the “control action”, the player must not lean with his heels touching the ground but have body relaxation at the time of control.
31. Triangulation of the game.
32. Attack to defense and defense to attack transition teaches a quick change of mentality
33. Passing lane – Understand what kind of support I am providing and why
(a) Is it emergency support?
(b) Is it continuity support?
(c) Pass line to progress with the ball under control
(d) Pass line to an empty space to break the line
34. Sprint, slow down and timing in actions of recovering the ball
(a) Gesture speed
(b) Reaction speed
(c) Acceleration capacity
35. Body language
36. Laterality
37. Interception – Anticipate the trajectory of the ball
38. Amplitude and depth
39. Protection of the ball: position the body between the opponent and the ball
40. Actions with feint and rotation for the protection of the ball and the change of orientation of the ball.
Coaches must know:
1. How to use rondos properly in training;
2. How rondos relate to match situations &
3. How to enable the transfer of knowledge from the practice field to the match situation.
TECHNICAL BENEFITS OF USING RONDOS
Short Passing
Short passing is fundamental to the possession/positional style of play, most passes will be 10 yards or less. Rondos are a fantastic way to practice this technique and for your players to turn it into a skill faster that they would doing unopposed or line passing drills.
One And Two Touch Passing
I am of the belief that there are times in which we can use touch limits or stipulations to our advantage or to help, but with rondos we can manipulate the space so that players need to play quickly and are only able to have one or two touches and I have found that to be a better way for players to understand the importance of using different amounts of touches.
First Touch and Control
When players are getting better at rondos, the ball starts to be passed around at a very high pace and this forces players to adapt to the situation and improve their first touch and control of the ball before lifting their heads to find that next pass. There is, of course, a place for unopposed control practices but the consequence of having a bad first touch in a rondo is that you lose the ball and become a defender, that is a big incentive for players to make sure their touch is on point.
Improvisation
Not all passes are perfect, and rondos can help players learn to improvise if a pass is short or played harder than expected. Most Spanish players can play passes with any surface of their bodies and this improvisation ability, in part, comes from not knowing how they will receive the ball from teammates in a rondo.
Weight of Pass
Weight of pass can be a difficult thing for players to understand but through rondos we can show them the different weight of pass in 1st, 2nd and 3rd line passes and this aids understanding in pass selection in matches.
COGNITIVE BENEFITS OF USING RONDOS
Constant Decision Making
During rondos the picture changes all the time depending on the movement of the defenders, teammates and how the ball is going to be received so players are constantly having to receive information and having to improve the speed in which they process it and make decisions based on what they see. When we add in the tactical elements, like the 3rd line/penetrative passes, they also have to make the decision at the right time to attempt these passes.
Competitiveness & Team Building
Rondos are a fantastic way to improve team building through playing the game and that can come by the way of giving them passing targets to achieve and should they do so, their teammates defending have to do some kind of forfeit. The competitiveness aspect comes from the defending aspect. Anyone who has ever been in the middle or on the defending team in a rondo knows how demoralizing it can be and you can see players’ competitive streak grow in front of your eyes.
TACTICAL BENEFITS OF USING RONDOS
Tempo & Rhythm of Play
Players understanding how, when, and where to play faster or slower is a major factor in the possession style of play and rondos can be fundamental in helping players understand that you don’t need to play at 100mph all the time. Quite often when players are first introduced to rondos they feel compelled to pass all the time and often pass themselves into trouble, but through the rondos we can show players that, for example, if we have just switched the play to another area of the space and there is no pressure, we can maintain possession in this smaller area until the pressure comes; and that is when we look to play faster and look for penetrative passes.
Recognizing Overloads & Their Importance
Overloads are an important factor in using a possession style of play, both understanding when, where & how to create them, recognizing them and also knowing how to take advantage of them.
Passing Line Creation
If we want to maintain possession, we are always looking for the “free man” or for a teammate to create a passing line in order to receive the ball. The constant movement and creation of passing lines is a fundamental aspect of rondos and it will help your players take that into matches, which is crucial.
Creating Triangles
It’s very common to hear coaches shout things like “triangles, we need to make triangles” from the sidelines, but what does this actually mean? Well, when coaches shout about triangles it can mean one of many things.
The first one could be the opportunity to create an overload, like we have looked at, or one of the other aspects it could refer to is the distance between players.
Distances between players is a vital aspect when we want to maintain possession and ‘creating triangles’ means that we have available short passing options, usually at least two, and that distance tends to be 10 yards or less between the players making the triangle.
The distances are similar to those that we use in our rondos and if we can show our players that it’s similar, I have found that it’s easier for them to relate to and it helps them understand the movement required to create the passing line, triangle or maintain correct distances between teammates.
Third Man Concept
The third man concept is a fundamental part of Juego de Posicion or Positional Play, and we use rondos to help players understand it and it fits in with creating triangles and changing zone to a ‘free’ or unmarked player.
“The third man is impossible to defend against……. impossible”
Xavi Hernandez
The third man is what we want to achieve when we create overloads, and we make it impossible for the opposition to defend against because not only do we create superiority, but we also use the pressure from the opponent to make the third man the free man.
For example, we have the ball with our holding midfielder, and we want to pass to one of our central midfielders, but he is marked. Our defensive midfielder can use another one of our players as the second man in order to release our central midfielder from his marker and allow him to become the third man. We could do this by the holding midfielder passing to the fullback on the same side; this would usually force the opponent to shuffle across and if our central midfielder makes a slight forward movement, he will be free to receive the ball from the fullback/ second man. We have created an overload in 3v1 or 3v2 and used the third man concept to allow one of our players to become unmarked.
HOW TO DECODE A RONDO
A rondo represents a real field of play or game space with players in roles that represent real positions. There are defensive and offensive objectives and directionality to the movement of the ball.
- The player who has the ball is the 4 (center back) and the player directly across is the forward (9). The objective is to move the ball from the 4 to the 9 while employing key concepts like back foot, break- lines, head up and between lines.
- The other offensive players are used to provide support and options in pursuit of moving the ball as effectively as possible from the 4 to the 9. The defenders inside are tasked with making this as difficult as possible while looking to recover possession.
- Variations on the basic Rondo allow for the incorporation of additional positions and complexity but no matter the exact form, the true rondo is meant to teach and reinforce virtually all the most important technical and tactical principles of play.
MOVEMENT RONDO
RONDOS AND YOUR GAME MODEL
Now, rondos should be used to help teach and demonstrate your game model that you have thought about beforehand and not just used as an isolated exercise or because they look good. Understand your game model first and use rondos to teach it.
If we want to use a possession style of play, we need to have thought about how we want to use the possession of the ball to progress up the field and how we will use it to win the match and there are a few ways in which we can see rondos translate more directly to match situations
- Overloads
- Maintaining possession in small spaces and knowing when to change ‘zone’
- Triangulation
- Third man concept
In 99.9% of cases, rondos are done with a numerical superiority (3v1/ 4v2/ 5v3), and this is so that it can help work on the maintaining of possession and also to help us work on recognizing the importance of overloads but also finding the free man.
The use, and creation, of overloads is crucial and fundamental to using a possession style of play correctly and efficiently and we should always look to create overload where possible. We can create overloads on the grand scale but putting another player in a specific zone on the pitch, with the easiest example being if we are playing against a team that uses a 1-4-4-2 system of play and we are using a 1-4-3-3, we have 3v2 in the center of the pitch and we should look to use this to our advantage.
When we start to look at the game through a deeper lens, we will be able to see how it’s possible to create overloads or rondos, all over the pitch that, if used correctly, will allow us to control the game and maintain possession in a much easier fashion. This is us using numerical superiority to affect what the opponent does and, in most cases, pull them out of position as they try to defend against the overloads and numerical superiority.
HOW RONDOS APPEAR IN MATCH SITUATIONS
Using rondos as part of your training methodology and in your practices is great, but only if we see that transfer to match situations. This image shows how overloads and rondos can appear on the pitch when playing out from the GK. The image shows how you can see the game if you look through that deeper lens and how you can equip your players with the knowledge on how to identify overload situations. This is where the understanding of how we can use rondos in our training to help players maintain possession and progress up the pitch.
We can use a 4v2 rondo in training and work with players in smaller spaces until they are comfortable receiving the ball under pressure and playing those penetrative passes; and then once we move to the larger playing out from the back session we can then show the players that playing from the goalkeeper is just us creating a 4v2 rondo in a much larger space and that if we can maintain possession in a 8×8 square, we should have no problems in this space. There are countless examples of this if we look at the image above and this is how we must think when designing training exercises and using positional games. We want our players to see the same pictures and feel comfortable and grow in confidence.
We want to create and use overloads & numerical superiority whenever possible in matches and, ideally, we want to pass from one zone of the pitch with an overload where the ball is being pressured to another area of the field where there is space, no pressure and from there we create another overload easily. This is a fundamental aspect of this style of play.
When using a possession style of play we need to be aware that even though we may have more space when playing from our goalkeeper and creating overloads in our initiation phase, once we get into midfield and, even more so, into the opposition’s half, the space we have to play in will become much smaller and a lot more congested with both our players and opposition player occupying the space.
How Can Rondos Help Us with This?
If we look at the image below, we can see how little space there can be if your opponent adopts a medium/ low block in either a 1-4-1-4-1 or-1-4-4-2 shape; which has become more of a recent trend against teams that try to dominate possession after the success of teams like Diego Simeone’s Atletico de Madrid.
If we plan on our team dominating possession, then we need our players to be able to keep possession in tight areas but also be able to understand how, when, and where to create overloads, as we heard before.
I have seen a number of teams set up similarly to the image above and have success against possession teams like FC Barcelona and Bayern Munich by closing the space in the center of the pitch, only leaving the wide areas open and pressing aggressively in the wide areas with two or 3 players as well as having the touchline to help narrow the space.
“The center of the pitch is the essential part of a team”
Pep Guardiola
The center of the pitch is where his focus has always begun when building his team. If we look at rondos, even the more basic set-ups, players are keeping the ball in small spaces with very limited number of touches due to the pressure and this is how rondos can help transfer into matches both technically and tactically.
We can see it most often when we pin the opposition in their own half and keep possession. Using rondos will help us excel in these types of match situations.
Maintaining possession to change zone and affect the opponent to repeat a Guardiola quote used earlier in this book “The intention is not to move the ball, rather to move the opposition” and this is the key to this aspect of using rondos and seeing their affect transfer to our matches.
In the match, we want to use possession of the ball and rondos to affect our opposition and use the possession of the ball as a tool to ‘move’ the opposition and create opportunities for our team to either progress further up the pitch or to create scoring opportunities.
If we create and overload in a certain area of the pitch and keep the ball, even for a short amount of time, most opponents will send more players to help win the ball back. The defensive team are attracted to the ball because they want the ball. When they are attracted to the ball, they are moving to the ball and in doing so this creates pressure where the ball is located. Players using this positional style of soccer must have the skill set to keep the ball as this pressure increases and understand that if defensive players are attracted to the ball, this creates space in another part of the pitch and players must recognize this space and know where it is.
Only then, with lightning speed, move the ball to the space, create another rondo and another overload and attract the pressure again and in doing this we are moving the position of the ball to another ‘zone’ on the pitch.
To give an example, if we have a 4v2 overload from our goal kicks, using our goalkeeper, both center backs and our holding midfielder, once we’ve managed to play into midfield four or five times, many opponents will try to put more people in that zone of the field to try and win the ball. This actually helps us as it now creates more space for use to play into, but our players need to know how long to keep possession in one zone before passing to another zone with an unmarked teammate.
We can also use this aspect to create 1v1 situations on the opposite side of the field in the final attacking third. If we believe that we have qualitative superiority, when our player is better than the opposition player, on one side of the pitch, we might try to attract the opposition over to one side of the pitch before switching play to a free player on the opposite side of the pitch to create either a 1v1 or a 1v0 in our favor.
CONCLUSION
The most famous club that uses rondos is FC Barcelona and it’s no surprise that they have a consistent theme of using rondos and positional games throughout their academy training sessions from U6 to the first team level. It is said that by the time a player at La Masia is 20 years-old, he will have completed more than 2,000 hours of rondos and possession conservation games, alongside over 1,500 hours of positioning games, and it is important to remember that the academy coaches are always coaching and correcting the technical elements throughout these practices.
I have seen the majority of coaches set up a rondo and let the players play without ever correcting or coaching the players. Of course, we need to find that balance but if we are working on tactical concepts within a rondo or positional game, we need to make sure the players are learning.
We need to train like we play. One of the important aspects of your training is making sure that it is done with your playing style and tactical plans in mind. Even when we use rondos, we need to make sure that the organization, tactical concepts, and pictures we paint for our players are consistent with what we, as coaches, are looking for in our matches.
“Everything that goes on in a match, except shooting, you can do in a rondo. The competitive aspect, fighting to make space, what to do when in possession and what to do when you haven’t got the ball, how to play ‘one touch’ futbol, how to counteract the tight marking and how to win the ball back”
Johan Cruyff
