How I Build My Teams (2.0) I’ve always liked "possession football": - A tool to develop technical & smart players. - The opponent cannot score as long as we have the ball. - Score goals in a repeatable way (not hoping for a moment of individual brilliance). - The only thing that matters is what you can do with the ball, not how tall or strong you are. But I built it the wrong way: “Keep the ball. Find the free man. Find a gap to attack.” This led to boring “side-to-side” passing. \ The idea. So, I flipped it: We use possession to score more goals. Keeping the ball becomes the byproduct. Attack the goal. As fast and as direct as you can. Just go. And if you can't, go back and find a new way to attack. This resulted in a narrow structure (so you can play this way), and short, vertical, and diagonal passes. That's why I call this brand of football 'vertical possession'. \ Make it work. The idea is simple. The execution is not. But I stuck with this idea for years, and through thousands of iterations, I figured out a process to make it work (see example below). My goal is to stay focused on this ONE simple idea. Improve its execution. Make it simpler every day. The simpler we can attack, the harder it is to execute, and the better the players become. Here's my plan: 1. Build it my way. Ignore opinions. Opinions lead to conformity. We reduce our philosophy to its essence - and build from there. Everything else is a distraction. 2. Simplicity wins. We only do simple things. So we can do them well. A simple way of playing so we can focus on its execution and channel the players' creativity in one direction. A simple way to train it so we can focus on playing better rather than mastering exercises. And simple messages that players can digest. 3. Eliminate Waste. “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry. We cut every unnecessary element: - The less waste, the more capacity left for creativity. - The simpler it gets, the more recognizable the style. 4. Practicing possession football BY playing possession football. That's the core of my methodology. The fastest way to build a possession-based identity is…to simply practice it. We don't invent possession games to condition possession football. That is training FOR the game. We simply practice possession-based football BY playing it. We develop players BY playing better football. 5. Repeat what matters most. The most effective repetition is experiencing the same situation over and over. We start with the game, and simplify to core training situations. Players repeat the same situations over and over (but each repetition is slightly different). Repeating the same core situation with a few differences leads to pattern recognition. And because we started with the game, players learn to recognize patterns that match exactly what they'll face in the real game. --> Fast transfer from training to game. 6. Proof-based Coaching. We do not coach vague “technique” or “first touch”. We are focused on tangible results. Our coaching is proof-oriented (“can we beat the first opponent - yes or no?”). We focus on ONE real-world outcome at a time. Until it works in the game. We always have proof of whether we're making progress or not. (And not “be patient, development just takes time”). \ What's next Now you're caught up. This is what I do. And if you'd like to follow along, inside the VerticalPossession.com Newsletter, I share the process of how I build my teams, what I learn, as well as tools you can use to build your own teams. Bene.

By the way, a triangle is not a rigid, fixed structure to draw on a tactical board. A triangle has the function to help the players progress the ball. It is dynamic and adjusts constantly to the unique situation.

This also explains why many players can be good dribblers but struggle in 1v1 activities. In those activities, they can only compete through speed and physicality. In a real game, they have many other ways to compete.

I often hear that coaches choose physicality-based football over possession-based attacking because it is supposedly more successful in youth football. The idea is simple: just kick the ball forward to your strongest player, and you’ll win. Maybe that is the best way, but I don’t think it’s true. Playing this way is still random and relies too much on luck (Kick-and-Hope football). Possession-based attacking allows you to get the ball forward more consistently and in a more controlled way to this player. So you would score much more and win more. Possession-based attacking is more successful, even in youth football. The simple reason they don’t do it is that they don’t know how. It is perceived as this big, complex thing. That takes “years” to develop. (That’s the other side of the coin where coaches then say when they try to build it: “losing is okay because we develop something.” Losing becomes even a status signal for “hey, I am developing.”) But why is it perceived as so complex? Because possession football is usually framed as learning to keep the ball. And that is complex to build and hard to train. You need to train positional structure, patterns, how to build out from the back, and all that stuff. But if you simply attack the goal and pass back if you can’t, it gets much easier. Keeping the ball becomes the byproduct if the opponent can defend their goal. That is no complex game model. That is just a simple idea that players can learn from day one. It is the same as kick and hope, just without the hope.

The reason clear structure is often associated with robotic football is that coaches look outward. They look at successful teams. And they copy what they SEE (not underlying intentions) and impose it on their own team. Without understanding the full context. This leads to "Wait in your position!" "Wait for the right moment to move" "Do not run there!" (or "Run there!") The position (the thing coaches can SEE) is prioritized over the purpose of the game: winning. Which of course will always lead to a conflict: Players want to run in behind or move toward the ball, but they can't, because they have to "wait in their position". You have a conflict between player intuition and structure. This feels like a straitjacket for the players. And it looks robotic for everyone watching. Does this mean we should let them do what they want? If you want to, sure. But I don't think that's a good idea either. Or necessary. So, what do we do? 1: We put the purpose of the game at the top. We want to score goals and prevent goals. 2: Our goal-directed, possession-based playing style is HOW we want to achieve that. 3: Each player inside the team tries to help the team achieve its goal (based on our playing style). They have roles. They have functions. And when everyone understands how they can help the team succeed: A clear structure is the result (which others then blindly copy and wonder why it doesn't work).

We attack the goal as a team, so players naturally get close together (teammate-oriented structure). However, that doesn't mean it is random or we "just let them play” within the structure. At the same time, it isn't rigid either. Players don't have to “wait in their positions”. The solution to combine a clear structure without restricting players is to use functions. Here’s how it works. The team always has a (sub-)goal. For example, getting behind the opponent's back line. Each player then tries to help the team achieve that goal. We call this their function. That's what we do in training. We help each player find a function that helps the team the most AND fits their way of playing. For example, asking your slowest player to make runs in behind probably isn't the best use of that player. And not fun for the player. The clearer the functions, the better the organization. A clear structure is the result of all 11 players working toward the same goal. Structure is not the goal itself. And the better you adapt those functions to the player's strengths, the more they enjoy playing. They can do what they want AND help the team. And players who enjoy playing usually work twice as hard. In simple words: 1. Have a clear team idea. 2. Help players understand how they can contribute to it. 3. Help them find the best way to do that based on what they enjoy and can do best. The result: Clear structure without restricting players. Talk soon, Bene P.S. Here I walk you through how I apply this with my teams: skool.com/verticalfootball/a…

By attacking together, we can compete against opponents with better players. That's the core idea of my playing style. The problem is that possession football originally led me in the opposite direction. I wanted a style that made us less dependent on physicality and individual players. Instead, it made us even more dependent on them. -> Yes, to compete against stronger opponents, possession football seemed like the solution: 1. As long as we have the ball, the opponent cannot score. 2. And, together as a team, we can move the ball faster than anyone can run. It becomes a game of “how fast can you think”, “What can you do with the ball.” Two things we can train. That being said... building this was much harder than I expected: When I started to build it, I conditioned my players to: "Keep the ball. Wait until we find a gap to attack". The core intention was: "I want to have the ball so we can DOMINATE the opponent." But that created a conflict. A conflict between the purpose of the game (scoring/preventing goals) and the purpose of the playing style (“dominate”). Which leads to: - Passing from free man to free man ("there is always someone in a better position. Why should I take the risk - we want to dominate") --> Symptoms: Boring side to side - around the box, one extra pass after the other. - Players make the pitch as big as possible to have more time on the ball. Yes, out wide I may be far away from the goal, but I have more time so I can keep the ball more easily. - This also explains why these teams often are reliant on having a star player. A special player who can win 1vs1s. A great striker. A fantastic winger. You pass the ball from side to side until it reaches the "free winger," who must then win a one-on-one. So instead of becoming less dependent on star players or physical players, we became even more dependent on them. But luckily for me, there was a team at the time that gave me the exact blueprint for solving this problem. A blueprint I still use to this day. That team was Sarri's Empoli. They played possession football. But very differently from what I was used to. They broke with all the rules of classic possession football. - They played in a narrow structure instead of making the pitch big. - They played forward and backward, instead of the typical horizontal passes. - They played fast and short, instead slow circulation of the ball. This way of playing allowed them to punch above their weight consistently. They got promoted to Serie A and were able to compete with teams that had far bigger budgets. This team showed me that I built my football philosophy on the wrong foundation. I had the second part of the equation wrong: "We want to have the ball [core philosophy] ... so we can ... dominate the opponent [purpose]" The naive thought was, if you dominate, you will score. Somehow. But we didn't. So, I flipped it to: "We want to have the ball [core philosophy] ... so we can ... score goals, and prevent the opponent from scoring [purpose]" We connected the philosophical idea with the purpose of the game, and this changed everything. This idea alone caused players to behave completely differently. - Players NATURALLY got closer together so we could attack the goal together. - Short, fast, diagonal passes instead of boring side-to-side possession. - A better structure (balloriented) to immediately win the ball back after losing it. And this is what I call goal-directed possession-football. Or: Vertical Possession. And: The better you attack, the more dangerous you are - the more the opponent has to defend their own goal - and the more you dominate the game.

3 core ideas that guide my coaching: 1. Football is a team sport. We start with how we play as a team. Every action starts with the team. Therefore, we improve the player WITHIN the team context. 2. By attacking together, we can move the ball faster than anyone can press us. This turns the game from "who has the stronger or better players?" into "who plays smarter and thinks faster?" That creates a long-term advantage because human creativity is unlimited, while physicality is capped to some degree. 3. We want to have the ball SO WE CAN create chances, not simply to keep it. And the better you attack, the more you'll have the ball as a byproduct.

No matter what age or level, my idea is always the same: attack the goal. As fast and as direct as you can. And if not, go back. And to attack the goal, you have three basic tools (with the ball): Passing, shooting, and dribbling. The game creates problems. And then, you help players adapt to the problems so they can score more goals. That's it. The key difference for younger players is that 11v11 overloads players at this age too much. They cannot process this amount of information effectively, which leads to overwhelm --> Can't develop passing, shooting, dribbling. The solution is to reduce 11v11 to smaller football games. So, the problems are manageable for the players. And then, you help them adapt to the problem.

Yes, train "hard." We want high intensity. But this doesn't mean to exhaust them and train tired. Tired players are slow. They communicate slowly. They decide slowly. They execute slowly. And when you repeat slow football, you develop slow players. But better football means playing at a HIGHER tempo. So, instead, train as intensely as you can. For as long as you can. Step by step, train a bit longer than they can. And when they start playing slowly, rest. Then, do it again. Train 100%. Or nothing. Step-by-step, increase playing your playing style at 100% capacity until they can do it for 90 minutes.

I've built my football based on simple ideas: 1. Football is a team sport. First, align all players around one simple team intention. 2. Goal-Directed Possession. Possession is not the goal, but a tool to score goals together. 3. Start your training from the game and work backwards. Then you will always train what happens in the game, and players can transfer training to the game fast. It's not complicated. Find simple, objective truths and build your football around them. (Simple isn't easy.)

Playing style is the tool for improvement, not the goal.