 Now I'm sure you've heard the same before. The ball is faster than the man. And what that means is the ball can move much quicker across the field by passing than you can by trying to dribble as quickly as you can up the field beating as many players as possible, okay? So if you want to be able to play quicker, you have to learn the importance of letting the ball do the work. Now I'm sure you'll see, Barleson will want to make all these little triangle passes and sometimes they'll even be just like this and they make these little five-year passes, they do it three, four times and you're like, why would they even do that? That's almost like a waste of time. Why wouldn't they just try to dribble forward or kick it up the field? Okay, the reason that they do that is because they know that the ball is going to do the work for them. So if I pass the ball here, everyone is forced to react to that, especially the defensive team. So even if we make this little five-year pass, these guys are gonna close here, we're all gonna start to shift here and as they shift, the ball's gonna be sent back out here. Now what happened with that little five-year pass? We created space, we created tons of space because we let the ball do the work. If instead I was on the ball here and I decided to hold onto it, instead of playing this simple five-year pass, making the defense shift, instead I decided to hold onto it and wait for something to happen, wait for something to open up, what happens then? I get closed down like this and my passing options get closed down as well. Okay, so let the ball do the work. Even if you don't feel like you're getting closed down, move that ball quickly. If at least I take a couple of touches, dribble with it quickly, but when you can, move that ball quickly. Okay, let the ball do the work because as the ball moves, the defensive team is forced to shift with it. Okay, as it moves, they're forced to move. So when that ball gets played out to here and everyone's there, we wanna let the ball do the work. We can play this pass here, switch it out and go this way, or you can even play that long ball across. When you know everyone's cheating to this side of the field, play that long diagonal over the top and attack there. And that's where we wanna play. We wanna play where the space is. So the reason they play these little passes is because they wanna suck the other team in. And when they do suck that other team in, that means that there's open space somewhere on the field. Okay, so learn to let the ball do the work. The other thing I wanna talk about and Barcelona was so good at is passing and moving. If you want 12 weeks of in-depth coaching, covering every area of player development, daily follow along training routines to improve your skills, fitness and confidence, 12 weeks of professional match analysis and access to every advanced course I've created in the past, check out the link in the description below. Okay, you've probably heard this a lot, but it's so important, pass and move. It's a simple game. There's a quote, I think it's from Bill Shankly, a legendary player, and that was, football is a simple game. We as men make it very complicated. So if you can learn to play simple, pass and move, play two touch, get the ball, pass it, move into space, pass it, move into space, pass it, move into space. And it sounds ridiculous, but it's very true. Okay, the simpler you play, the easier this game is gonna be for you. So pass and move, pass and move, pass and move. As soon as you make your pass, don't stand still. Because again, this guy's gonna get shut down, your passing angle's gonna get shut down. And if you stand still expecting him to do something, you're letting him down. So as soon as you pass the ball, you must move into space. Because remember, people react to the ball. So if I move into space, I'm more likely to get it back. So when you pass the ball, think about, where's the next passing angle? Where's an option? Where can I get into space to get the ball back? Okay, you are not done after you make your pass. Don't stand there and admire your pass, do something about it. Move into the new space, get the ball back, and try to get on the ball so you can create something. You can make something happen. Next, I wanna talk on the defensive side of things. And that is Barcelona's high pressing game. Okay, this was much more evident under Pep Guardiola. Now they've lost it a bit, but this is still their mentality. As soon as we lose the ball, so you're not always gonna make the right pass. Let's say we tried to play into here and we made a bad pass and we lost the ball. What do most teams do? As soon as they lose the ball, they get back into this defensive shell. They leave them, they leave those players up there and they say, oh, we lost it, let's get back and defend. That's not Barcelona's mentality. As soon as they lose the ball, they wanna get it back as quickly as possible. That's the goal. As soon as you lose it, press the ball to get it back as quickly as possible. So let's say this ball was played into here and we lose possession. We're not gonna sit back. We're gonna pressure that ball. We're gonna pressure the next pass. We're gonna pressure this space. We're gonna move up and force players offside. We're gonna cut the field in half, okay? So now look at this, where can this guy play? Maybe he can play into here, but I mean, we got a three on one. We're feeling pretty good about handling that option. In reality, he's either gonna pump it up the field or he's gonna play back to his keeper or he's gonna make a bad decision and we're gonna win the ball there. So think about pressing the ball as soon as you lose it. As soon as you lose it, how quickly can you get it back? And the way you're gonna get it back is just by pressuring the defense, especially as a striker, you can be reckless running in here because if you get beat, if he does make a touch past you, we still have on a real board, we still have probably nine, 10 players, eight players behind the ball, okay? As a defender, you can't rush in like that, but because we're pressing, starting defending with our attackers, this makes the job of the defenders much easier because they're not gonna be left out to dry, they're not gonna be in three on one situations because we're pressing the ball and we're winning it up higher and different and higher and more dangerous areas on the field. Okay, the last thing I wanna talk about with Barcelona is regardless of their situation, their mindset stays the same. So it doesn't matter if they're winning 3-0 or they're losing 3-0, they know what works for them and they stick to that mentality. A lot of teams, when let's say it's 0-0 or they're up 1-0, they play really nice stuff, they're passing it around, everyone's confident, they're all trying to get on the ball, they're all trying to play the right way, but as soon as they go down 1-0, 2-0 and things change or it's the last minutes of the game and they need to get a goal, their whole game plan changes, they start booting the ball at the field, they start panicking, they start playing without composure. Barcelona doesn't do that, it doesn't matter if it's the 90th minute or the first minute of the game, it doesn't matter if they're down 5-0 or up 5-0, they play the way they know how to play and that is by keeping possession, passing and moving and when you lose the ball, pressure to get it back as quickly as possible. Okay, so that's a lot.