Defending the box

When the ball goes wide and low into your box, it looks like one problem: the ball. It is at least three. There is a runner attacking the near post, one arriving at the far post, and one waiting at the edge of the box for the ball to come back to him. Each is a different pass, and each needs somebody in its lane.

Three jobs, not six bodies

Their #11 is about to drive the ball in from your right. The near post is where the ball is going first, it is where the crowd is, and it is where everyone wants to be. Send three defenders there and you have covered one pass three times.

Diagram4-4-2 vs 4-3-3

Fan them out instead. One at the near post, one at the far post, one on the edge for the cut-back. Nothing clever happens: each pass simply has a defender standing in it. Which of your players goes where matters much less than that no two of them go to the same place.

Diagram4-4-2 vs 4-3-3

The late runner

Now add the player nobody notices. Their #10 is 40 m from goal when their #11 gets the ball, and he sets off late, towards the space at the edge of the box that everyone has just left to defend the posts.

Dropping another man into the box adds a body and covers nothing. The dangerous answer is the one that looks right: your #8 waits at the edge of the box, exactly where their #10 is going. In the last frame your #8 is standing next to him and the pass is cut out. But for the first part of his run — more than half a second — nobody was within five metres of their #10, and a runner who is free while he is running does not have to finish where you expected.

Diagram4-4-2 vs 4-3-3

Go with him from the start and he is never free.

Diagram4-4-2 vs 4-3-3

The model in one sentence: every delivery here is a ground ball — no cross in the air, no header, no save — and a runner counts as tracked only if one of your players is within 5 m of him and goal-side at every moment of his run, not just at the end.