With preseason underway, Bob Bradley has begun to implement his vision for Toronto FC.
A new coach will always bring some new ideas, but the best ones understand that building a team, instilling a method of play is a process.
“The starting point is always to get on the field and start to establish some ideas,” explained the new head coach last week. “Already today players will tell you that there was a lot of detail. Detail in terms of ideas when we have the ball how it can move quickly. There's moments where I want players looking forward. I really want to establish some ideas on how we get attacking players on the move and we get to goal, get in the box, do things that good attacking teams do in order to create chances.”
“And then I really believe that everything you do when you have the ball connects directly to what happens when you lose it and how you defend and so the establishment of those connections,” he continued. “The idea that the choice of passes, the distances between players, those things are really important so that when you lose the ball you have players in position to defend right away. A lot of that already started being mentioned today in training.”
X’s and O’s on the whiteboard and video clips in the build-up to Day One play their role, but the game is played on the pitch.
“We did a little bit of video last night just to lay some groundwork, so that's a work in progress,” summed up Bradley. “But just getting football started, that's how you do this.”
“It's not a formula. It's not a PowerPoint. It's not page-by-page in a book. It's with a picture of how a team can play,” he levelled. “There will be certain things that get determined as we go. Every team has to find the balance between how you control games and how you still can go forward quickly and create chances and we have to determine what that's going to mean for us. Some of those details aren't clear yet, but you start trying to work in that direction.”
Given the struggles last season there will be an added focus on the defensive side of the ball.
The 66 goals TFC allowed, just shy of two-per-game, was second worst in the league, bettering FC Cincinnati by eight, but ten more than any other side in MLS.
Allowing the opponent to score twice in a match is never a good foundation for winning games.
No matter how many dangerous attacking players a side has, collective defending must be a part of the picture. It’s something that the best teams the world over know well.
Bradley pointed to some of the dominant sides in recent history – Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Manchester City – as cases in point. Whether possession or pressing was the play, the offense was a constant danger, yes, but the defense was smothering and both elements came together in balance.
He has some ideas to build on at that end as well.
“Encouraging people to step up and move up as a team defensively and get closer to the first guy who has the ball, so that as a team we can move up the field and not defend so deep all the time,” Bradley highlighted, pinpointing one of the difficulties in 2021. “That doesn't mean that you're pressing every situation, but trying to get everybody on board that when we lose balls we defend in a compact way, that everybody is part of that defending.”
“That is something that I see in all the best teams,” he added. “No matter how many great attacking players they have, all of those teams defend as a unit. I don't spend a lot of time going back and talking about last year, but I start establishing here's how we're going to play this year and here are things that we need to do right to become a really good team.”
