Happy Friday!  I hope you’re gearing up for a great hockey weekend, getting started with this week’s Playbook.

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Understanding the evolution of consistently the best team in the world, the Dutch Women’s National Team, is always interesting and so this week I delved into their recent Pro League matches under their new coach Raoul Ehren.

Ehren took over just over one year ago after their 5th Olympic Gold medal in Paris and is tasked with continuing their domination of the women’s game.

On the face of it looking at the results, much remains the same.  They have 7 wins from 7 in the Pro League having scored 26 goals and only conceding 3.   However watching some of the recent matches, especially against England last week, the way they are winning these matches and create goals has a different feel to it.

In possession they seem to favour a more controlled build up, with more frequent switching of the ball around the back and longer sweep passes from their pivot players looking to open progression opportunities out wide.  This seems a change of approach from under Alyson Annan (now the coach of China) who notably discouraged longer passes and sweeping in favor of faster, shorter ball movement to attack spaces faster and be a little more direct.

Now sometimes this approach is dictated by the opposition defensive strategy.  With England being pretty effective at blocking central progression, in the game I watched, the transfer heavy and horizontal passing may have been purely situational.

Regardless, where I really saw a difference was actually in their defensive or ‘out of possession’ game.  When watching them in action I was drawn to the intensity and numbers committed to the ‘Counter-Press’.

What is a Counter-Press?  I hear you ask.

This is what a team does when they themselves lose possession of the ball.  Some teams will immediately try and drop back behind the ball and be hard to play through.   Some teams may ask their closest player to press the opposition player who now has the ball - this is what we define as a ‘counter-press’.  

In simple terms, the process of immediately trying to regain the ball as soon as you have lost it.

What was notable about watching this iteration of the Dutch Women was the numbers committed and intensity of their counter press.  They almost always get 3 sometimes 4 players immediately around the opposition player who has recently regained possession in an attempt to win it back.

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The images above show a fairly consistent pattern we see in their games.  These stills are taken just after England win possession through intercepting a Dutch pass.  The ball carrier is immediately surrounded by 3 or 4 players and in this instance this led to an immediate regain from the Dutch and an attack into space down the left channel.

The idea of counter-pressing has come into more mainstream sports consciousness through German football (soccer) and it’s most famous proponent the legendary coach (Dortmund & then Liverpool) Jurgen Klopp.   He famously said:

“No playmaker in the world can be as good as a good counter-pressing situation”

What he was getting at here is that counter-pressing is so effective because:

1. If the ball is won high up the field the attack has a lot less distance to cover before they are in the circle and can create a goal-scoring chance.
2. When a team wins the ball in this situation, the opposition are in a vulnerable state.  They are set up to possess the ball, often spaced out.  So not well organized defensively and usually there are large spaces to attack.

It seems that Raoul Ehren has some similar ideas.   He has been quoted this year saying his team:

“Try to win the ball from any position on the pitch”.  

Which I interpret to be referring to this extremely aggressive counter-pressing approach.  Defensively, looking at the macro statistics, only three goals conceded in seven games it certainly seems to be working.  

What I witnessed from the eye test though is that most of the team’s best attacking opportunities have also come from this.  Actually in settled possession building out from the back I felt they struggled for creativity and penetration against an admittedly very well organized English defense.  But when winning the ball back high in the counter-press and especially in central position, where they are even more aggressive, they looked extremely dangerous.

Now what is the downside of this approach?  Why doesn’t everyone use it?  

Well if the ball carrier is skillful enough or the support play sharp enough and the counter-press fails, then large gaps are left in the rest of the defensive structure and the opposition are able to progress the ball easily and attack your circle.  In fact in the first half against England this was the exact scenario.  

In many cases, England played through the 3/4 Dutch players swarming the ball carrier and as a result had a lot of circle penetration, chances on goal and in my opinion were unlucky to go into half time with the score level at 1-1.  The flow of the match probably favored England.  This half showcased the weaknesses of the approach and if either:

1. Your counter-press is not consistently energetic enough to take the ball.
2. The opposition attackers are good enough dribblers to avoid even intense pressure from 3 defenders.

Then you will likely suffer as a team.

However, over the course of the match and what we have consistently seen this season is the Dutch team were eventually able to create enough turnovers from the counter press to create and score the game defining goals.

One last observation when watching their counter-press was the regularity with which it was the further advanced player tracking back who would win the ball.  Coming from behind the ball carrier with a ‘shave’ or ‘take over tackle’ the Dutch players won the ball so many times using this technique, see the images below:

When coaching young forwards I try to make it clear that good defensive and tackling skills will help you score goals and this is a great example.   What we can learn from the Dutch counter-press is that it is not always their incredible skills, passing vision and attacking flair that wins games.  Their attacking players work so hard off the ball in defensive phases and their shave tackling is just as strong as their 3D skills.  As always, these are principles we can all take inspiration from and use in our own games.