The Art Of Final 3rd Exercises With Pep Lijnders

In this week's MSC Breakdown, we take a look at Manchester City assistant coach, Pep Lijnders, and his ability to design realistic and creative attacking exercises at the elite level. Lijnders has just joined City after spending time as assistant coach at Liverpool with Jurgen Klopp and head coach of Red Bull Salzburg. The exercise we focus on is from an open training session that Manchester City hosted before the season kicked off. You can watch the full breakdown below, plus some bonus content also.

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Creating realistic attacking sessions can be challenging. I discovered Pepijn Lijnders' work several years ago when he was coaching a youth team at FC Porto, and I was immediately impressed by the creativity and variety in his training sessions. Below is an example of Lijnders training young Porto players in bicycle kicks and volleys. It was the first time I had seen these skills practiced in a group setting, which made me reconsider the limitations we face in session design and structure.

"I think that Pepijn Lijnders is one of the modern game's greatest player development coaches." - Jed Davies

 The elements of his design that jump out to me are the way that he can challenge players in his sessions, both in terms of technique and opposed work, as well as how he navigates the flow of an exercise. If you get either wrong as a coach, positional work can disengage players or the tempo can drop and all of a sudden the realism can disappear. In each of the videos below however, I believe it is a great example of important tempo is and how each exercise looks to have the Liverpool players performing at their maximum speed. Below is a quote from Pepijn Lijnders that I felt was fascinating in how he looks at session design in terms of "create and contextualise." For me, this means similar to a tactical system, there are principles that he wants to stay consistent with, but allowing ideas to evolve means that you are constantly looking at new ways to challenge and inspire the players. This is an extremely skillful process for a coach to master.

Five-Ball Shooting Exercise

From an organizational standpoint, this exercise is fantastic in terms of the flow and the different timings involved in the exercise. In just one set, there is a shot from a central area and then two diagonal passes at the same time, one resulting in shot and one in a cross. Then there's a finish from close range which is similar to a pull-back, and finally a combination which leads to a cross and a finish. With five balls per set, it can be extremely difficult to balance complexity and simplicity, but Pepijn Lijnders manages to strike it perfectly in this exercise. It gets players thinking while still prioritizing instinct around the box, and every finish looks to be a specific to what they could expect from the game. You can watch the breakdown and Liverpool doing the exercise below.

The exercise can also be tapered to work with smaller groups (see below) where it becomes more positional work than a team finishing activity. Again, you can see the detail in Pepijn Lijnders' work with regards to timing of the activity. Every action is planned to precision so that there is no waiting around and this achieves the realism of a match-day in terms of tempo and intensity.

3v2 to Goal Multi-Functional Activity

This is another multi-functional exercise with a creative design. Two players play a diagonal pass at the same time for two forwards to finish from wider angles. In order to prevent both forwards finishing at the same time, one takes an early shot while the other dribbles and finishes a 1v1 with the goalkeeper. This gives the goalkeeper a chance to save both efforts, which keeps the level of challenge high on the forwards. Immediately after the second finish, the two servers now play with the help of a neutral in a 3v2 scenario to goal. Finally, the two teams switch roles with the defenders becoming attackers and the attackers becoming defenders. The neutral player remains in the overload. The difference in this exercise is that it is opposed and therefore quite physically demanding, particularly for the initial group of forwards. You can watch the exercise below.

Shooting and 1v1 to Goal

This activity again challenges the attacking players to score from a variety of different finishes. The set-up is quite simple with a central shot on goal, followed by the central player combining with the wide player to shoot from an angle. Immediately following the second shot, the wide player then turns and sprints to the other goal where they receive a ball from a coach to go 1v1 against the goalkeeper. I really like this addition because 1v1 finishes are sometimes difficult to incorporate into sessions and as a result, are not practiced as much as they potentially should be. You can watch the exercise below.