Kick offs, throw ins, goal kicks, corners and free kicks. They happen in every game. From coaching your U8 grassroots team to watching Premier League and WSL games on the TV. But how often, and where on the pitch do they happen?

This Summer, we were all lucky enough to watch with great excitement as England brought it home.

We analysed how possession started across the whole tournament, from the group stages all the way through to the England v Germany final. As we have already mentioned above, there are five ‘dead ball’ ways that a team can start possession; kick offs, throw ins, goal kicks, corners and free kicks. During the tournament, throw ins represented 15% of all possession starts across the whole pitch, the highest amount for any dead ball situation. In fact, throw ins occurred nearly four times more than goal kicks and corners, and they occurred more than twice as often as free kicks. On average, there were 23 throw ins per team per game, 5 corners per team per game, 8 goal kicks per team per game and 10 free kicks per team per game. So, a lot of throw ins – but how much importance do you place on coaching this area of the game?

These five dead ball situations represented 31% of all possession starts. But what about the other 69%?

Hopefully, as you are reading this blog, you are thinking ‘well, what about transitions?’ Everything that is a turnover in open play, we have defined as a transition, and they are the only way your team can start possession in open play. Our analysis shows that nearly 7 in 10 of all possession starts across the whole pitch were from transition. This amounts to 114 per team per game! Is this similar to or more than what you would have thought?

We can then start to unpick what possession starts look like when we separate the pitch into the three thirds – defensive, midfield and attacking.

Some dead ball situations can only occur in certain thirds of the pitch. For example, goal kicks can only happen in the defensive third, kick offs can only happen in the midfield third and corners can only happen in the team’s attacking third. Throw ins, free kicks and transitions can occur anywhere on the pitch.

During the tournament, possession starts from throw ins DOUBLED from the defensive third into the midfield third. On average a team had 5 throw ins per game in the defensive third, and 10 throw ins in the midfield third. The number of free kicks also increased from defensive third into the midfield third. With this in mind, how often do you start your practices from these situations in these areas of the pitch? Transition, however, stayed consistent, at over 70% of all possession starts in both thirds.

What about possession starts in the attacking third?

The insight here shows that a lower percentage of attacking third possession starts come from transition (61%).  This is a significant difference from the defensive third (73%) and the midfield third (72%).  On average teams were winning the ball back a total of 23 times in the attacking third compared to 44 in the midfield third, however, although the number is smaller, teams are rewarded with greater goalscoring opportunities by winning the ball back in the attacking third.  As a result, this may mean that teams are less likely to risk possession by playing out from the back and may look to play longer instead.  The decrease in frequency may also link to a team’s strategies and tactics to win the ball back in open play.  How would you set your team up to win the ball back?  High press to win the ball in the attacking third, or mid-block to win the ball more centrally on the pitch to transition to attack from deeper areas?

Coaching considerations:

How can you now better understand how possession starts with the teams you coach?

How do you currently start and reset your practices?

How do you incorporate transition into your own practices?