Beat the Press with a Box Midfield

Build Up Play and Sessions from Guardiola, Alonso and Arteta’s Tactics

This book analyses how Guardiola, Alonso, and Arteta build play under pressure — and provides tactical detail and ready-to-use training sessions to help you coach those methods with your own team

Whether your team struggles to build under pressure, or you want to give your players more structure and clarity when playing out from the back, this book provides a practical tactical framework to beat the press and build confidently from deep areas.

UEFA 'A' Licence Coach and award-winning author Athanasios Terzis delivers a detailed tactical analysis, with structured solutions and 47 practices across 7 ready-to-use session plans — making it easy to apply modern build-up principles in your sessions right away and see the difference on the pitch.

What You’ll Gain as a Coach:

• Play through high presses using structured box midfield rotations
• Create overloads in key areas to break pressure and progress play
• Exploit space with coordinated movements and passing combinations
• Build from the goalkeeper into the final third with control and intent

Whether you coach youth or elite players, this book gives you a proven, match-relevant framework to 

play out under pressure, beat any press, and dominate possession with confidence.

What’s inside?

• Tactical solutions for building up play against different pressing and defending styles
• Proven models for both 3-at-the-back and 2-at-the-back box midfield build-up systems
• 47 detailed training practices with progressions to simulate match-day pressure
• Step-by-step coaching points and progressions to build team intelligence in possession
• Position-specific detail to improve player decision making and timing

Beat the Press with a Box Midfield Tactical Solutions included:

• Positional Rotations to Play Out from the Goalkeeper
• Breaking Lines Against High Press Zonal Defending
• Goalkeeper’s Passing Over Pressing Lines
• Build Up Against a High Press with Zonal Defending
• Build Up Against a High Press with Man Marking
• Build Up Against Ultra-Aggressive High Pressing
• Build Up Against Full Pitch Man Marking

This book will help you develop your team's composure under pressure, help players recognise pressing triggers early and make better positional decisions - using proven tactical solutions and patterns from Manchester City, Bayer Leverkusen, and Arsenal.

Practice Examples:

• Combination: Passing Decisions to Break Lines Depending on Opposition Pressing
• Functional: Goalkeeper’s Passing Over Pressing Lines and Decisions to Play in Behind
• Beating a Full Pitch Man Marking Press with a Long Pass and Support Runs Functional Combinations
• Possession Game: Exploiting Numerical Advantage to Find the Free Player Continuous Possession Game
• Small Sided Game: Exploiting 4v3 Numerical Advantage 3-Team Small Sided Game
• Large Game: Box Midfield Build Up with Equal Numbers and Switch Play in a Dynamic 3-Team Game

 Full Book Contents