Tactics

According to the rules of the rondo, whoever made a misplaced pass had to go into the circle and take over as the defender. Griffiths stepped into the center of the circle with a dark scowl. He had just traded places with Du An. Standing on the outside ring, Du An looked at Griffiths, his mind crystal clear. He remembered vividly how Griffiths had deliberately tried to stitch him up earlier, eager to watch him make a fool of himself. Of course, the others had also singled him out to varying degrees, though none had gone quite as far as Griffiths. The football kept circulating along the outer ring, the tempo quickening with every touch. Griffiths darted back and forth across the middle, pressing relentlessly. Several times he missed by mere inches, his face growing darker by the second. By the time the ball rolled toward Du An's feet, Griffiths happened to be just a few paces in front of him, poised to step up and intercept. Du An deliberately delayed by half a beat, holding off on playing the ball. The pause was timed to perfection, giving Griffiths the illusion that the newcomer was slow to react and that the ball was ripe for the taking. In an instant, Griffiths lowered his center of gravity and lunged forward, thrusting out a leg straight for the ball. Yet at the very moment he committed, Du An stepped forward and poked the ball away. The pass skimmed right past the other defender in the middle and landed squarely at Adam Pepper's feet. Adam hadn't expected Du An to thread such a pass from that close to an incoming defender. Stunned for half a second, his feet were a beat too slow. He nearly had it stripped by the recovering defender, but his reflexes were sharp enough; hooking the ball with his toe, he flicked it away to keep the sequence alive. The players circling the drill took it all in, understanding immediately. This Du An was no soft touch. Griffiths had tried to embarrass him, and now Du An had paid him back in kind. A raw newcomer? Like hell he was. Several senior players exchanged glances, reading the surprise in one another's eyes. This newly arrived Asian lad looked quiet and reserved, yet he refused to take even the slightest slight lying down—and more importantly, he had the ability to back it up. They realized that given Du An's display, they couldn't afford to push things too far. It was better to get on his good side; before long, he might very well become their teammate. Griffiths lunged into empty air. His balance wobbled before he managed to steady himself, looking thoroughly disheveled, his expression darker than ever. He glared venomously at Du An. Du An ignored him entirely, keeping his eyes on the ball. Over the next ten-odd minutes, the rondo rotated continuously. One player after another was sent into the middle to play the monkey after misplacing a pass, yet Du An remained on the outer ring the entire time. His first-time passing was outrageously steady; no matter how aggressively the defenders closed him down, he cleanly delivered the ball every time, maintaining an astonishingly high completion rate. *Tweet!* The whistle blew as Aslett raised a hand, calling an end to the drill. "All right, that's enough for the rondo. Next half hour is open training. Grab a ball and loosen up—work on whatever you like, or partner up if you prefer." This training method was meant to give free rein to the players' creativity. The coach set no fixed routine, leaving them to work on their own. The squad scattered across the pitch, each taking a ball to knock about. Connor strolled over from another grid, clutching a ball, and leaned in close to Du An with a grin. "I saw what you did back there. Brilliant stuff." He truly admired Du An. He had assumed Du An would embarrass himself, only for the lad to handle it effortlessly. "When I first joined the U16s, the first rondo ran me ragged like a proper idiot. I was gasping for air and couldn't even touch the leather. You come in on your first day, stroll through it like a walk in the park, and even take the piss out of Griffiths. I genuinely respect that." Du An gave a slight shrug. "He wanted to make a fool of me, and I didn't care to let him." During the rondo, he had felt glances falling on him from time to time, one of which came from Griffiths, thick with unmistakable malice. After all these years, Du An had developed a keen intuition for looks like that. Connor wasn't sure how to respond to that. While he understood, he couldn't truly empathize with what a person of color went through. The open session didn't last long before the morning's pitch work drew to a close. The squad reconvened at the touchline. Aslett surveyed the group before speaking. "Head to the tactical meeting room. Spend the rest of the morning listening to Coach Heighway's tactical breakdown. This afternoon we'll do targeted drills, followed by an intra-squad scrimmage." The players nodded in acknowledgment. Du An followed the group forward. Connor groaned with boredom. "Ugh, another dull tactics lecture. I'd rather just play." Du An, however, was intrigued. He wanted to understand how football truly functioned on the pitch and what each player was supposed to do. Inside the tactical meeting room, a clear 4-4-2 formation was drawn on the whiteboard, with various lines marking passing lanes and off-ball runs. Once everyone had gathered, Heighway began the lecture. "Today's tactical session covers only one thing: passing. "Don't go thinking passing is simple. Anyone can kick a ball to a teammate. But using passes to tear a defensive line apart—that's real ability. You must remember that passing is never the end goal. Mindless passing is an utter waste of time. Manipulating the defense, stretching space, creating openings—those are the true purpose of passing..." After speaking for a moment, Heighway sketched a local triangle on the board. "First, our positioning must form a stable supporting triangle. Any player in possession must have at least one lateral passing option and one vertical passing option beside him. Three points form a plane; that way, the ball never dies. If a single opponent presses you, having two passing avenues prevents him from lunging rashly. That is the most fundamental principle of safe positioning. Why is Alonso's distribution in the first team so steady? Because he always has Gerrard and Riise as two passing options. The opposition's press can never bottle him up. "Second, you must know how to use lateral circulation to drag the defense's collective movement." Heighway drew a long horizontal line connecting the left and right flanks on the whiteboard. "When the ball shifts repeatedly from left to center to right, the opponent's entire backline and midfield line are forced to shift horizontally with you. Human beings require reaction time. Once the opposition's defensive block slows in its movement, gaps will appear between their defenders. That is your window to slip a through ball. Shuffling the ball side to side indefinitely is pointless; lateral passes are merely the setup for vertical penetration. You must hammer that into your heads. Never pass just for the sake of passing; that achieves nothing." He then drew a diagonal arrow slicing through two defensive lines. "Third is passing quality. That quality doesn't rely solely on the passer; half of it comes down to the teammate's off-ball movement. It's not that the man on the ball is brilliant—it's that the runner knows how to find the space. When do you make your run? The very instant your teammate touches the ball, you move. Where do you move? Into the blind spot behind two defenders, or into the seam between the midfield and defensive lines. Once you arrive in position, the pass will naturally follow. Waiting on your heels for the ball only stagnates the play; the ball must find the runner to pierce a defense..." Du An stared at the whiteboard, utterly absorbed. Until now, all he had practiced were on-ball fundamentals; he knew nothing of the concepts Heighway was describing. Every sentence Heighway spoke opened a brand-new door before his eyes. As he listened, the ambient noise in the room grew distant and muffled. The lines and symbols on the whiteboard blurred, dissolving into a living pitch. His consciousness felt as though it had drifted into the air above a stadium. Below him lay a pitch, where eleven red-shirted copies of himself stood aligned against eleven indistinct black figures arrayed in a standard 4-4-2. Heighway's voice seemed to drift in from far away, yet every word remained razor-sharp. With every tactical point explained, the eleven red figures on the pitch adjusted accordingly. When he discussed supporting triangles, the red figures naturally fanned out to form stable passing angles; as the ball circulated between them, the pressing black figures came up empty every time. When he spoke of lateral stretching, the ball shifted rapidly between flanks, forcing the black defensive block to shuffle repeatedly until seams began to fracture across their shape. When he addressed vertical penetration, a red figure suddenly darted through a gap in the defense on an angled run. The ball floated cleanly over the backline and dropped into his path, leaving him clean through on goal. Du An was completely immersed. He could perceive the field of vision from every single position simultaneously, anticipate where every pass would land, and cleanly register every minute flaw in the shifting defense. The tactics Heighway described became startlingly intuitive on this visualized pitch. He understood. Passing wasn't about scanning with your eyes to find an open teammate; it was about using the pass to stretch space, using movement to create opportunities, and using the pass to dictate your teammates' runs. Just as he followed the simulation, watching the red figures execute a complete flank-to-cross sequence, the image shattered without warning, vanishing into thin air. Du An snapped back to reality. The sounds of the meeting room rushed back into his ears. Heighway was still speaking: "...Remember, the instant an opening appears, you must be decisive. Hesitate for half a second, and once the defender recovers his position, that gap is gone..." It was as if nothing had happened. Du An tried to focus his mind, attempting to regain that sensation of looking down on the pitch and manipulating eleven figures in tactical simulation, but he could no longer reach it. Yet the tactical instincts he had just gained remained exceptionally sharp. Only the visual imagery was gone. At that moment, the three beads in his vision surfaced on their own. Two transparent beads on the sides, and a single red bead in the middle. The blue bead had been drained completely empty!