Your individual game plan
Hopefully your 5-aside team now has a plan on how they’re going to play, but how do YOU plan to play? What are your strengths and weaknesses? What scenarios do you want to recreate within each match? Football is chaotic, and we should aim to create little elements of order so that we can make sense of the game. We can do this by thinking about what our ideal scenario in a match is and then how we can recreate that with help from our team-mates and with the opposition trying to stop us.
Let’s use an example to illustrate this: a forward player, who’s comfortable with their back to the opposition goal and is strong but they aren’t a great dribbler. They would struggle if they were facing up one or more defenders. This type of player almost certainly wants to have a defender tight to them, with space in behind the defender so they can try a quick turn. That’s probably not a scenario that is easily available, so they need to try to manufacture it with their movement and actions on the ball.
Red 9 can receive the ball into feet, but blue 2 is stood off so there isn’t much space in behind. In this scenario they would be better off keeping the ball and passing it back to red 2 or inside to red 10. Red 9 can do this multiple times until the preferred scenario presents itself - this also has the advantage of ‘setting up’ the opposition defender.
If red 9 keeps coming short and playing the ball inside or back to their team-mates, the blue 2 is likely to mark the red 9 tighter in order to try to disrupt their play. They’ll try to ‘cheat’ and push up even earlier as they don’t expect red 9 to try to turn them. This is when the opportunity that red 9 is waiting for will present itself.
Blue 2 has pushed high to mark red 9 tightly. The wide positioning of red 10 means blue 3 has pulled a bit wider, which leaves space centrally and in behind for red 9. Red 9 can either; spin in behind for a ball over the top, receive the ball into feet and use their body to let it run to attack the space behind blue 2, or receive the ball into feet and wait to feel blue 2 applying pressure and then turn the defender.
This guide focuses on the forward position with a hypothetical skillset, but this approach can be replicated for each position and skillset. Often the same scenarios present themselves multiple times in the same match, so the more you play, the more you will be able to recognise these scenarios. It might take you playing numerous matches before you can analyse your strengths fully and how you can use them to take advantage of specific scenarios.
As with most things in football there is no right answer, different approaches will work against different opposition. The main thing here is that you have an idea or plan of what you are trying to do - this is something that you can then build on or change if it’s not working.