A clean sheet - working on defending with the Poland national team

Last season with the Poland national team, one of my tasks was working with the centre-backs. I focused mainly on defending, because our opponents required it, and together with the staff we decided it would be the main phase we emphasised.

The decision was simple. In one week of camp you can teach a team defensive principles, while implementing attacking solutions at the start of working with a team is much harder.

The absolute top

The second argument was the level of the opponents: Germany, England, Italy, Portugal - the world's top.

My work at that camp looked like this:

• presenting the principles and expectations for the back line,
• analysing players before the camp - each player's strengths and weaknesses,
• analysing training sessions,
• post-match analysis.

A few things instead of a dozen

The goal was to find 3-4 things we would work on. Following the Pareto principle - things that give the biggest effect for the least effort. After the analysis I chose:

• marking in the penalty area,
• blocking shots,
• active defending,
• following the opponent.

The work paid off - we kept a clean sheet against top opponents.

More on the requirements for centre-backs: Requirements for the centre-back position.

🎯 On a short camp, the winner is the one who chooses less, but chooses well.