Pressure (Pressuring Defender)
The importance of immediate pressure on the ball cannot be overstated.
Why is Pressure so important? The longer time that you give any attacker to make decisions, the better decisions he will make. And, the less time that you give your teammates to get back to cover your own goal, the worse are your chances of successfully stopping the attack. So, immediate Pressure is applied to force errors by the attackers; slow down their attack; give your own teammates time to provide support; and, hopefully, to give your team the opportunity to try to regain the ball in a favorable part of the field. Just as in individual defense, the Pressure player's first job is to get into position to slow down the attacker and to remain in his way until a good opportunity arises to try to regain possession. The difference is that, once backup support has arrived, the Pressure player usually can stop being patient and can move to aggressively win the ball back, because his backup player can move in to take over if he is beaten. Thus, the availability of backup support often allows the team to get the ball back in better field position and at a time when the opponents are moving in the wrong direction to handle their own defense well.
Balance
The remaining teammates who are available for backup along the direct route of the ball towards goal provide additional support for the two primary defenders (Pressure, Cover), are called the Balance players or Third Defenders. The jobs of the Balance players involve many of the same basic skills and decisions as those made by the two primary defenders, so it is important to provide solid background in the Pressure and Cover roles before moving to substantial training on Balance.
• track attackers away from the area of the ball who are making forward runs
• squeeze space towards center of the field to “lock up” vital areas
• preserve balance/shape
Cover (Covering Defender(S))
The Cover player is the player who is the nearest teammate who is in the proper position goal side of the ball, or who can make the easiest run to get into this position. Proper positioning depends on the position of the ball on the field, as well as the position of any supporting attacker and the speed of the attacking group.
The Cover player has the following duties:
1. Support of the Pressure player;
2. Marking or closing down supporting attacker(s);
3. Stopping passes of the ball into dangerous areas behind the defense.
The positioning of the Cover player depends upon where the ball is located on the field. If the attacker is relatively close to one touchline, the defense will want to bottle the attacker up on the touchline (and use the touchline as an extra defender), just as in individual defending. Thus, the Pressure player will try to steer the attacker close to one touchline by positioning himself sideways on so as to make a funnel towards the touchline, and the Cover player typically will move to close off the end of the funnel. However, the Cover player often will take an intermediate step and provide backup along a line from the goal to the far post until the attacker has been moved fairly close to the touchline.
The Cover player must carefully gauge when to close the funnel and how distance can safely be left between him and the Pressure player, as the last thing which he wants to have happen is for the attacker to be able to cut in towards goal between him and the Pressure player (a tactic known as "splitting the defenders").
If the attacker has his back towards your goal, and is being heavily pressured from the rear by the Pressure player, then the Cover player has two choices. One is to provide fairly close support from the rear, to enable the Pressure player to move around towards the front to try to win the ball. The other is to become the Pressure player himself by coming in from the front, and allowing the rear player to provide Cover.
Finally, if the attacker has managed to turn towards your goal and is not near any touchline, then the Cover player typically will take a position about 2-3 yards to the rear and to the side (trying to add his body as extra coverage for the goal). The closer that the attacker is to goal, the closer the Cover player usually will position himself to the Pressure player, so as to be able to provide near-instant Pressure if his teammate is beaten.
When providing defensive backup, the Cover player must make an assessment of the relative speed and skill of the attacker. In general, where the attacker is considerably faster or more skilled than the defenders involved, the Cover player must drop off farther, so that he will not be beaten by the on-ball attacker or by a speedy runner to whom the ball is passed. The relative distance between the ball and the last backup defender is called "depth" of the defense. A defense which has a lot of depth defensively is often safer. However, the amount of depth to provide in any defense is a product of multiple factors (and, obviously, there are times when defensive support may be so far away that it is not useful). All defenses tend to compress in depth as the ball comes into scoring range, both because the defenders have run out of field and because the proximity of the attackers to goal requires that the defenders get closer so that they can react more quickly.
Once the Cover player is at the correct depth, where should he stand in relation to the Pressure defender? If the ball is located toward the sides of the field, a good rule of thumb on support angle can be reached by drawing a line from the far post to the ball. The support defender moves up or back along this line. The reason for adopting this angle is that the body of the Cover player fills up any passing and shooting lanes to the far post, while the body of the Pressure player fills up passes/shots to the near post. In essence, even though the defenders are separated by several yards, they will appear to be almost shoulder-to-shoulder from the attacker's viewpoint (as if they were making a wall across the goal).
In the center of the field, there really is no "far post", because the ball may be equally distant from either post. What then? In this case, the supporting defender may wish to pull up within a couple of yards back and to the side of the Pressure defender, in order to create the illusion of a horizontal wall which is blocking the ball. If in scoring range, he may pull up even closer. In general, the Cover player will pull up to the side which blocks a shot by the favored foot of the attacker (unless other factors, such as another attacker, make it more sensible to position to the other side).