It was in 1967 that Allen Wade, then technical director of the English FA, released the FA Guide to Coaching and Training which outlined the principles of attacking and defending in football. As part of a coach’s education webinar I ran with a colleague, we discussed whether the principles that Wade outlined in that publication were still relevant to the game today. Everyone can agree that the game has evolved since 1967, but it can also be agreed that Wade’s principles are still very much relevant to the game, no matter the level or the style of play.

Attacking Principles	Defending Principles
Width	Concentration (physically)
Support	Depth
Penetration	Delay
Mobility	Balance
Creativity/Improvisation	Patience/Discipline

Wade’s principles are broad and all encompassing of most invasion games. As a coach, you want to take the broader principles of the game and apply them to your game model. When I looked at the principles, I thought to myself whether I ever overtly talk about these with my players; about the need to have these five specific things in the attacking and defending phases of play and the answer was no. Instead, they are woven into more specific ideas within coaching points and the organisation of exercises within training sessions. There are, however, four things that I specifically talk about with my players, particularly when we are in possession (but also when not in possession), and one that grows over time. These five superiorities allow us different opportunities to be better than the opposition.

Qualitative Superiority

While, I always talk about these five superiorities together, as it is hard to separate them, the first one I talk about is qualitative superiority: the ability for us, as a team or individuals within the team in their various 1v1 situations across the field, to be better than the opposition. This categorises every technical or physical quality that a player has and I tell my players to actively look for situations where their teammates are simply better qualitatively than the opposition nearest to them.

A quick example to illustrate this would be looking at our wide player against the opposition full back. Some things we would look for in that situation would be: Is our wide player a better dribbler than their defender is defending in 1v1 situations? Is our wide player quicker than their defender? If our wide player is better in those particular situations (and these can be very different depending on your game model and the tactics deployed on the day), then we should try to create as many situations and opportunities where our player is in an advantageous situation with that defender, whether that be a 1v1 with our player on the ball or our player making movement behind that player, etc. If we are able to exploit these sorts of situations, we have a greater chance of being successful in the game and the early we are able to identify those situations, the better, as we are then able to think about how to create those situations and how we can look to take advantage of the other superiorities that we are looking for.

The qualities of the collective and individuals of the team can mask the need for or the underwhelming ability to utilise the other superiorities. We have all seen players get out of situations where they should not have (based on past experiences) been able to because they were in a situation where they were numerically or positionally inferior compared to the opposition. This can be a crutch as well as a blessing, but certainly at the youth level, if a player or teams are consistently able to rely solely on their qualitative abilities to problem solve then it likely means that they need to be in a more challenging environment, whether that be in training or games. While a player may have success in a game because of their qualitative superiority amongst peers, we must always provide feedback on how that situation could be made even less difficult by utilise better game understanding.

Here is one of my favourite goals that one of the teams I have coached scored. This is all about the qualitative abilities of this individual player and knowing how to use them to be successful in this situation.

The ability to master the different technical qualities of the game start at the youngest age groups in any pedagogy/methodology. To dispute that is to not have an idea about the game itself and player development, thus there should always an emphasis on being to create the type of player in the above video starting at the youngest ages and working on that foundation.

Teams with an ample amount of qualitative superiority can have success with just that, albeit likely inconsistently. As Bielsa said, ‘…I also don’t like ones [teams] that only rely on the inspiration of their soloists, because when God doesn’t turn them on, they are left totally at the mercy of their opponents.’ It is important to compliment the individual qualities of the players in the team with a more structured plan.

Numerical Superiority

Simply put, if you are able to create situations where you have more players in a given area of the field, you have a much higher chance of having success. Each team has eleven players on the field, so we have to think of different ways to move the players around to achieve this numerical superiority. Compared to positional or dynamic superiority, this is typically easiest for players to understand. They can very easily visualise a 2v1 situation or a 4v3 situation and they can understand what is required to create an overload/numerical superiority if they see something like a 3v3 situation in an area of the field. Moving into that space creates a numerical advantage for your team, but simply moving into that space does not guarantee that the superiority is used to created a real advantage.

In order to be successful when creating situations of numerical superiority, players must think about the implications of their positioning within that situation. If your team is in a 4v3 in the given area of the field, but you have four players in a straight line, it would do little against the three if they were organised. If your four players have positioned themselves where there are now three options for the player on the ball, it becomes effective.

Again, how you utilise this comes down to your game model, but also the quality of players that you have in particular areas of the field. Think about Pep Guardiola’s time at Barcelona. Where did that side want to have a numerical advantage and how did they achieve that? Once Guardiola started to use Messi as a false nine this, among other things, allowed Barcelona to outnumber most teams in the centre of the field. Now move to Guardiola’s time at Bayern Munich, particularly in his last year when Douglas Costa was there. Guardiola recognised that the Brasilian was excellent in 1v1 situations and so looked to create those situations for him by overloading once side so that Costa and his respective defender were isolated.

When looking further back in the field, many teams that look to play out of the back currently are either building in a 3-2 or 2-3, a lot of this depends on how the opposition is pressing and where it is that the team in possession can create their numerical advantage. We have seen evolutions of how these teams structure this and where certain players drop in to make the 3, etc., but the primary principle remains the same: to build successfully and comfortably, you want to look to overload your opponent in that area.

Positional Superiority

We want to progress the ball forward and finding space between the opposition’s lines, both horizontally and vertically, is incredibly important to doing that. Positional superiority is the idea of positioning players in areas of the field that give an advantage to the team.

There are two important components in positional superiority. The first is the physical space in which a player is occupying. To find space behind the opposition’s line of pressure can allow the ball to progress and takes opposition players ‘out of the game’ defensively. Below is a screenshot from a game (and a past article I wrote: Contextualise Your Content) that shows a good example of this concept.

The team in white here as numerical superiority within this area of the field, with the right back and holding midfielder inline with the two red defenders. We would have worked on this exact situation in training likely in a positional rondo. I would have told the right back and holding midfielder (though not specifically addressing those position in training) in this situation to make sure they are within eye-line of the two defenders so that the defenders are aware and drawn towards them to allow for space to open up between the defenders, allowing for the pass to be made. In this situation, the advanced midfielder for the white team has taken up a good position behind the red team’s first line of pressure and a pass into him allows for the ball to progress.

The other important component with positional superiority is not about the physical space in which the player takes, but how they utilise that space. In the above example, the advanced midfielder has his body opened on the half turn, so when he receives he will already have a good indiction as to what will be in front of him. If his hips were square to the player with the ball right now, although the physical space he is in would be good and could lead to other combinations (something like an up-back-through with either the right back or holding midfielder), his body orientation wouldn’t allow him to progress the ball. I tell my players that if they are not the ones that can receive the ball facing forward or on the half turn that their next option is to try to play someone that is facing forward, which I would expect this player to do if they were not to be able to receive on the half turn here.

David Silva has consistently done the above throughout his career. He’s been one of the best midfielders in Premier League during his time at Manchester City for this exact reason. Below is a clip from one of his final games for Manchester City getting in both a position of superiority and receiving on the turn to setup Gabriel Jesus for a goal.

Returning to the screen capture above, the white team has numerical superiority, but this is not a prerequisite to achieve positional superiority. With good understanding, players and teams are able to achieve it against even numbers and numbers down situations. If you takeaway the right back and holding midfielder in the above picture, the advanced midfielder has still taken up a position of superiority. With this is mind, it can very much be that case that a team that has a better understanding of positional superiority can beat one that has a better understanding of numerical superiority. Ideally, a player occupies a good position between the lines and is able to receive in a numbers down situation, it has now drawn more defenders, allowing space to open up in different areas of the field.

Dynamic Superiority

This can be broken down into two sub-categories. The first can be somewhat interwoven in with positional and qualitative superiority to an extent, but is more about the movement into spaces rather than the occupancy of space like with positional superiority. The time and the speed (but not only the physical action) in which a player is able to arrive into a space is important to the usage of the previous three superiorities and to be able to arrive in this space quicker than the opposition is to be dynamically superior. There is no requisite of receiving the ball in this situation to be effective, it can simply be a dummy run that pulls defenders out of position, but good examples of an on-the-ball action could be a third man combination where that third man is making and anticipating movement prior to the opposition.

‘What is speed? The sports press often confuses speed with insight. See, If I start running slightly earlier than someone else, I seem faster.’

‘Every trainer talks about movement, about running a lot. I say don’t run so much. Football is a game you play with your brain. You have to be in the right place at the right moment, not too early, not too late.’

– Johan Cruyff

While something like a dummy run or a third man combination are proactive movements, dynamic superiority can also encompass the reactionary movements that the team has when, for instance, the ball is lost. My teams know that once we lose the ball, we now have to counter-press and we want to do so as quickly as possible to not only win the ball back, but to eliminate counter attacking opportunities for the opposition. The ability for our team to react collectively in a more organised manner to the loss of the ball than the opposition is able to organise now that they have the ball demonstrates an aspect of dynamic superiority.

Cooperative Superiority

The four superiorities mentioned thus far all very much have to do with the exercises worked on within training sessions and can be substantively addressed and objectively critiqued, however, cooperative superiority goes beyond the actions on the training ground and within games and looks at the social relationships that are built in the team. These relationships are hugely important to any sustained success: the better the individuals within the team understand one another, both their personalities and their actions on the field, the better the collective will function.

There are a number of examples of how team cohesion is essential to winning sides, but one of the more striking examples is Spain’s 2010 World Cup winning side. At that time, Barcelona were the best club team in the world, having won the Champions League, LaLiga, and Copa del Rey in 2008/2009, followed by winning LaLiga and Copa del Rey again, along with the Spanish Super Cup and UEFA Super Cup in 2009/2010. Of the starting XI in the 2010 World Cup final, 7 of the players were playing for Barcelona (with David Villa having just joined Barcelona). Barcelona would go onto win the 2010/2011 Champions League and Spain would go onto win the 2012 Euros. This same sort of connection is seen between Bayern Munich and the makeup of the German team that won the 2014 World Cup.

This is far more than just players knowing one another, it is also about the team collective having a consistent understanding of what the expectations are as a team, as the individuals within the team, and the understanding of the principles of play that the team follows. With a clear, collective cohesion and communication channel throughout the team, the ability to master the other four superiorities becomes significantly easier, but cooperative superiority is also something that takes a longer time to work its way through the team from the broader introductions of something like the team’s principles of play to the understanding of micro-actions amongst teammates within the game.

Superiority Relationships

Dependent upon the age of players, the focus and terminology would be significantly different, as the ideas would start from simple to more complex. As should be the case no matter how you look at the game, the younger ages would have a greater focus on the development of the individual player’s qualitative abilities and as the team’s individual abilities progressed, the focus would shift into the more collective superiorities.

A team that has individuals that are collectively, qualitatively superior to the opposition can hide the deficiencies of the other superiorities. The same can be said if a team is stronger in the other superiorities masking their shortcomings qualitatively. With that, the relationships between the superiorities can be wholly complementary or supportive and it is down to the coach of the team to best understand the profiles of the players to full understand how the team can best benefit on the field.

With the best teams in the world, you would anticipate that they are superior to their opponents in each of the five superiorities and as with Wade’s principles of the game from 1967, these five superiorities can be applied to to all game models, but perhaps if the focus (at an older age/professional level) is on one or two over a balance between each, the game model becomes more easily identifiable.

How we as coaches apply ideas to our players is the most important relationship within a team. Everyone must be understanding of the game model and principles of play in which you want the team to be based and so whether the ideas behind these superiorities ring true to you or not, having a clear identity is always something to strive for.