We’re about five games into the spring and summer youth soccer season, and while my U12 girls team has yet to win a match, we’re finding the positives. They’re a pretty direct bunch, on and off the field, which makes for some interesting moments. At their best, they’re a counter-pressing machine that strikes fear into the hearts of the opposition. At their worst, they pepper me with questions about anything other than the game we’re playing. How old are you? What time is it? When’s our next game? Well, I’m not telling you that, it’s time to pay attention, and let’s play this game before we ask about the next one, okay?

Please?

Through all of their questions and my desperate pleas for them to listen, I know something gets through every now and then. We’ve grown quite a bit recently, discussing the best ways to use the ball, the right times to press the opposition, and how to identify a good attacking opportunity. By embracing their (and my own) natural directness, we’ve settled on a game plan that often sees us cede the dominant share of possession in favor of playing with purpose. Sound like any teams you know?

In a previous lesson, we talked about playing in transition, touching on counterattacking and maintaining possession after winning the ball. Today, we’ll be diving into a pair of tactics that take a direct approach.

Exhibit A: MNUFC

If you’ve been following the Loons in 2025, you’ve seen them win despite averaging about 36% possession in any given match. If this blows your mind or confuses you, never fear; Coach Kyle is here. If you’ve already figured out the reasoning behind this style of play, just read the article anyway. I’ll remember your kindness, and who knows, you might even enjoy yourself.

How often have you seen the Loons knock the ball around the back? How many times have you seen them drop the ball to Dayne St. Clair to keep possession? Maybe a few for each, but not many. In fact, how often have you seen the Loons put together a ton of passes just to shift the point of attack? You’re lying if you said a lot, because MNUFC has collectively attempted the fewest passes in MLS this season (4,914 is more than 4,000 passes fewer than Columbus’ 8,937). What does that mean?

Well, after putting together the second-best start in the Western Conference with the league’s lowest possession and passing stats, we can only say one thing definitively: The Loons don’t need to keep the ball to be successful. Does that mean they’re incapable of keeping it? No, it just means that every time they have it, they’re looking to do something productive with it. Heck, they send every throw-in they win in the final third straight into the box. They’re trying, quite successfully, to play direct.

Playing direct involves advancing the ball quickly, moving toward goal as soon as opportunities arise, and doing a lot of work off the ball. While possession-based game plans aren’t commonly referred to as playing “indirectly,” one could think of the difference between the two as similar to the difference between direct and indirect kicks. You can — but won’t always — score straight from a direct kick. Someone else must always touch the ball before scoring from an indirect kick. When you’re playing directly, you take more risks that may result in loss of possession. When you play “indirectly,” you tend to make the extra pass to preserve possession and wait for a high-percentage opportunity to arise.

Counterattacking

As we’ve talked about before, there are three phases of the game: attacking, defending, and transition. If a team is playing direct, there are a few strategies that can make them extra effective at it, depending on personnel, of course. In possession (attacking), playing direct is pretty easy to identify. Think about all the times you’ve seen the Loons progress the ball quickly, whether via a long through ball to either Kelvin Yeboah or Tani Oluwaseyi or by spreading wide and using the channels to carry into open space.

Counterattacking is all about taking space quickly and catching your opponent out of position. By transitioning fast and creating a goal-scoring opportunity before the opposition has time to recover and pack in, counter attacking teams hope to capitalize on a little bit of chaos. In this kind of system, the central idea is that speed creates a sense of urgency for the attackers and disorder for the defenders, creating a goal-scoring cocktail that your Loons have cashed in on several times this season.

Counter-Pressing

But playing direct isn’t just about what you do with the ball. When teams are defending, they can opt to use their shape and pressing intensity as an effective means of turning defense into attack. By putting pressure on players as soon as they receive the ball, direct teams can try to pin their opponents into their own defensive third. Then, it’s just a matter of forcing a mistake, collecting the ball, and capitalizing on the chaos they created by stepping high. Different teams use different triggers to prompt a press, like a backwards pass, poor control in the back, or any number of small mistakes that give time to move forward and seize possession.

Counter-pressing is an extension of the overarching idea of pressing that focuses on a specific trigger: losing possession. As soon as a counter-pressing team loses the ball, they immediately try to take advantage of the transition moment that’s just been created. Rather than allowing the opposition to smoothly move into possession, the idea of a counterpress is to win the ball back quickly, setting the team up to capitalize on two quick reversals in transition to create a scoring opportunity.

The best teams in the world are capable of playing direct. That doesn’t mean they always play that way, nor does it mean they necessarily use counter attacking or counter pressing as their main methods of doing so. Your Loons certainly don’t counter press all that much, but they’ve done it before. Some teams are more direct with possession, others are more direct in the way they defend. Everyone approaches the game differently.

When there’s a sense of urgency, you need to score, or you’re trying to set a precedent for how you want the game to unfold, you’re naturally going to want to generate some threatening play relatively quickly. When you’re 12 years old and your coach is wrapped around your finger, you can play direct whenever you feel like it — or not.

Next time you watch the Loons, see if you can identify when they’re playing direct and when they’re opting for a less direct approach. Then, record everything you notice, tag the club on your favorite social media platform, and I’ll grade it. We gotta have homework sooner or later, I put school in the title of these things, didn’t I?