Master these game situations and people will call you N’golo Kante A defensive midfielder is as the name says a midfielder that has to have the defensive side of football in his mind. Yes, there are types of players that are considered the creators of the team in this position, but even these players need to have a certain level defensively otherwise the team has no balance. Another defensive midfielder type is the pitbull type, he is selected mainly on his defensive skills. Teams who play with two defensive midfielders often combine these two together to have balance. But no matter the type o ..read more

DM how to train The defensive midfield position is one of the most complex positions because everything happens around the player. Especially offensively it’s difficult. That’s why it can take a longer time to see the results of training this. Defensively you can see progress quite fast, and this will help the player offensively as well. In this chapter, we will talk about how to train two game situations that we discussed in previous chapters. At Tactalyse we work with a three-level approach. The first level trains the movement in isolation, the second level is the game situation isolated but ..read more

While the defensive midfielder has very important defensive tasks. A defensive midfielder will get noticed by scouts and other clubs for their offensive skills. Only a few defensive midfielders are known for their defensive skills, and many more are known for their offensive skills. That’s why a defensive midfielder needs to know which situations he has to master to become good with the ball. Everything can be described with one sentence, a defensive midfielder has to make progressive actions with the ball. He either has to pass or dribble past opponents, so that imbalances arise in the oppone ..read more

DM Defensive A defensive midfielder is as the name says a midfielder that has to have the defensive side of football in his mind. Yes, there are types of players that are considered the creators of the team in this position, but even these players need to have a certain level defensively otherwise the team has no balance. Another defensive midfielder type is the pitbull type, he is selected mainly on his defensive skills. Teams who play with two defensive midfielders often combine these two together to have balance. But no matter the type of defensive midfielder, the game situations that defen ..read more

The heart of a team, Defensive Midfielder Pep Guardiola once said: You watch the game you don’t see Busquets, you watch Busquets and you see the whole game. This is how important the defensive midfielder position can be for a team. Both in defense and offense, the defensive midfielder position is crucial for a team. In defense, it can disrupt the opponent’s attack and in offense, it can create rhythm and be the connection between the defenders and attackers. Like all other positions, there are different types of defensive midfielders and also different roles within the team tactics. In this ch ..read more

How to train a full back? Now we’ve established the most crucial fundamentals for a full-back, we can work out how you can train this to get better. As mentioned before, the full-back position has the most fundamentals in our methodology. This makes the position complex and a lot of different things have to be trained. We will give two examples of exercises that you can do for training full-back fundamentals. At Tactalyse we work with a three-level approach, the first level consists out of isolating the fundamental without opposition. This helps the player create automatisms and thus be able t ..read more

Make goals and assists as a full-back The full-back position has become one of the most interesting offensive positions in recent years. This is because they’re asked to do a lot of different things. Even within teams, you have different strategies for full-backs. Think about Manchester City, where Zinchenko played as an inverted full-back, but Kyle Walker played as a third center-back. Then there’s also the full-backs that play almost as a winger, like Dani Alves and Marcelo, and you also have the wing-backs in a 5 at the back formation. So as a full-back, you possibly come in a lot of differ ..read more

How to become an unbeatable full-back In the first chapter, we established that the full-back position is the most versatile position. In our methodology, the most fundamentals are at full-back. This is because there are a lot of variations in types of full-backs because of team tactics, therefor full-backs come in a lot of different game situations. We also talked about how most full-backs get scouted on their offensive skills, but if a full-back is not good enough defensively, this will catch up sooner or later. That’s why, in this chapter, we will talk about the most relevant defensive fund ..read more

What makes a world-class full-back? The full-back position is one of the most versatile positions in football. In our methodology a full-back has the most number of fundamentals, they have 17 defensive and 15 offensive fundamentals. This is because there’s expected a lot of a full-back, both defensively and offensively. This doesn’t mean that a full-back must be able to do all fundamentals, because this depends on team tactics. Based on team tactics there are several types of full-backs. Types of full-backs There are several different full-backs, you have the old-school full-back who is there ..read more

Before Stefan de Vrij’s free-agent transfer from Lazio to fellow Italians Inter Milan in the summer of 2018, he had privately enlisted the help of an independent tactics coach based in a Dutch business park. De Vrij was by then an established Netherlands international centre-half, with over 30 caps to his name and a CV that included a place in FIFA’s team of the World Cup in 2014, an Italian Super Cup and two Italian Cup runners-up medals. Yet the then 26-year-old was still curious about which areas of his game could improve, figuring a source separated from the emotions of his employers ..read more