Hello and welcome to Soccer 101.

My name is Daryl Grove and today I'm explaining positional play.

I know, brain, right?

But not really. Because positional play isn't as hard to grasp as you might think. It's hard to pull off, for sure. And coaches like Pep Guardiola, Marcelo B. Elsa,

create some dazzlingly complex soccer within the framework of positional play. But positional play is

really just a way of thinking about how to win football matches.

It's a little bit Dutch, a little bit Spanish.

The original term is huigo de positionion,

but I'm not pretentious enough to say that for an entire show.

So let's stick with positional play.

And let's get started with a couple of quotes.

Here's the aforementioned Pep Guardiola,

easily the most famous and most successful proponent of positional play.

Pep says, quote,

one must occupy the right positions and the positions depend on where the ball is located." Unquote.

Is that just nonsense gobbledygoo? It's not, I promise. Peps saying that when the ball is in a

specific area, he has specific places on the field for all his players to be. When it's in a different

area, he has different specific places that he wants all his players to be. When it's in a different area, he has different specific places

that he wants all his players to be, because positional play is about multiple movements from every

member of the team, all in response to where the ball is. Here's Juan Manuel Leo, a highly

regarded Spanish coach who was a mentor to Guadiola and an assistant to Jorge San Paoli with both Chile and severe.

Leo says, quote, it's not about moving the ball, it's about moving the opponent, unquote.

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