What Are Patterns Of Play? (And How To Coach Tactical Patterns)
The vocabulary of football has expanded massively in recent years, with terms like transition, press resistance, and half-space all entering the popular lexicon of the sport and allowing casual fans to impress their friends with technical terms like never before.
One of the more simple additions to the way people speak about the sport is the phrase 'patterns of play', which you'll now regularly hear on popular football podcasts or in-depth tactical discussions on Sky Sports.
In this article, we'll be explaining what tacticians and pundits mean when they refer to patterns of play, and we'll give you some key examples of their broader significance in modern football. We'll also offer some guidance for budding coaches about the best techniques for building up patterns of play in training sessions.
What Are Patterns Of Play?
Most successful coaches in the modern era have a very specific style of play that they are aiming to deploy each time they send their players onto the pitch. Some managers will favour an intricate tiki-taka style system structured around short, sharp, passing triangles. Others will want to go more direct, using targeted crosses and long balls to work the channels and occupy and stretch the opposition backline.
These playing philosophies are just broad outlines, styles to aim for whenever possible, and most coaches accept that they won't always be able to sustain a distinct style of play throughout an entire match.
But most high-achieving tacticians are so keen to establish control over a match that they will coach their players to conduct even more specific, targeted moves in certain situations, in order to play into this broader philosophy. This is what we mean by patterns of play.
Patterns of play are rehearsed sequences of movement on a football pitch, involving targeted passing and strategic movement both on and off the ball, with the aim of creating danger, exploiting weaknesses, and nulling threats from the opposition.
The term 'patterns of play' is a deliberately broad one that allows for plenty of interpretation, and different managers will approach formulating their tactical plans in very different ways. Patterns of play vary depending on numerous factors including the philosophy of the manager and the formation being utilised by the team in question.
For example, while a 3-5-2 system might lend itself to targeting wide areas of the pitch, a more compact 4-4-2 formation might lead coaches to focus their patterns of play in more central areas, generating overloads in the middle of the pitch.
In the next section of this article, we'll dive into this aspect of the game in more detail with some tactical analysis of different patterns of play used by managers in the Premier League and other elite-level competitions.
Examples Of Patterns Of Play In The Modern Game
From a young age, players in academies start learning how to move and pass strategically depending on the game state they find themselves in.
By the time a player reaches the professional game, they're likely to be so well-versed in exercises and training sessions built around principles of play that they can reproduce specific patterns confidently during games.
When watching high-level football, it can be interesting to try to spot which patterns of play teams have been rehearsing in training, and why they've been taught in this way.
Pep Guardiola is a coach who has pioneered a hugely influential playing philosophy focused on a potent mixture of possession and positional play. At Manchester City, he has tended to operate with extreme width, using full-backs like Kyle Walker and wingers like Jack Grealish or Jeremy Doku to stretch the opposition wide, pull them into one area, and then switch play to the other side and create an overload.
Guardiola has numerous patterns of play in his locker, but one thing City have repeatedly done during his tenure is complete a targeted series of passing triangles in one wide area before switching the ball to the opposite side of the pitch and launching a dangerous attack in space. This is a great example of a club using a pattern of play to create chances and score goals.
One of Guardiola's most notable tactical disciples is Arsenal manager Pep Guardiola, who himself has consistently shown a knack for developing patterns of play that can hurt the opposition.
Arteta's team uses very structured build-up play, with defenders like William Saliba and Myles Lewis-Skelly patiently playing out from the back and stepping into midfield positions to overload the middle of the pitch.
Once midfield overloads have been created, there are various patterns of play Arsenal can use to bypass defenders and get themselves into dangerous areas, with playmaker Martin Odegaard tending to orchestrate these moves using a passing playbook that involves right half-space exploitation, quick switches to the left wing, and more.
Further down the football pyramid, intricate patterns of play are just as important. On Coaches' Voice, the experienced EFL coach Michael Appleton dissected a specific pattern of play he uses to destabilise opposition centre-halfs.
The video explains how "When his team have possession high up the pitch in a wide position, Appleton coaches the Number 10 to attempt to receive the ball in either of the boxes in zone 3, on the corners of the area.
This movement gives the opposition central defender a decision to make: whether he follows and is drawn outside the width of the goal or whether he holds his position, potentially allowing the Number 10 to turn in the penalty area."
Essentially, by dragging centre-backs outside the width of the penalty box, attackers can play cat-and-mouse with the opposition and create dangerous gaps in advanced areas of the pitch. This is why half-spaces and their exploitation are so crucial to modern football.
What Is An Automatism?
Some of the game's leading thinkers have taken to describing patterns of play using a new word, 'automatism'.
In football, automatisms are rehearsed patterns of play based on the four key moments of the game: in possession, out of possession, defensive transitions, and attacking transitions. Former RB Leipzig and Southampton manager Ralph Hasenhüttl is well known in the game for his range of vocabulary, and he was one of the first people to popularise this term.
According to The Athletic, an automatism is "a trained teaching, based on his players understanding when it’s the right time to engage their press. The triggers to put pressure on the ball should be semi-automatic, responding with a well-synchronised press to appropriate situations in a given game."
And it's not just about pressing — an automatism is any pattern of play that has been instilled in players by a coach and trained to the point of them being able to deploy the pattern when the right moment arises.
Coaches like Antonio Conte, who is known for his high levels of organisation, offer good examples of automatisms in modern football. According to Analytics FC, one of Conte's prime automatisms is the "premeditated (or blind, depending on your perspective) ‘round the corner’ pass in other areas of the pitch [where] the winger and striker will both know what is coming – the team have trained this combination to death."
How To Coach Patterns Of Play
As a coach, the first step is to identify and develop a specific playing style, and think about which kind of passing structures can allow you to implement it to the best of your ability. Once you know which patterns of play you want to drill your players into deploying, it can be useful to set up small-sided games designed to replicate in-game scenarios.
Xabi Alonso takes his Bayer Leverkusen team through a series of patterns of play that end with attempts on goal… 🇪🇸🔄#Bayer04
— Coaches' Voice (@CoachesVoice) January 28, 2025
Scaling things down allows you to get closer to the players, breaking up and restarting play with ease, and offering guidance without disrupting the flow of a larger-scale match. Seeing as attacking patterns of play tend to focus on a targeted area of the pitch, using a small-sided structure often makes sense here.
It's also worth zooming out to the full soccer pitch, particularly for patterns which involve switching the ball or utilising width. Coaches will often train patterns of play by setting up an attack versus defence session that replicates the formation being played on the weekend (whether it's 4-3-3, 4-2-3-1 or 3-5-2).
To really drill down into how to build up play in a specific way (and how to defend against the opposition doing the same thing), a coach needs to be actively engaging with the players during this session, offering advice and stopping play to hammer home key points when necessary.
Ultimately, the most important thing when coaching patterns of play is repetition. Players need to be drilled repeatedly in a certain way of doing things, to the point that they can pull it off naturally when the moment comes in a match.
It's also important not to overload the players with too much information. Focus on a few set moves that are key to your playing philosophy, and drill down on these patterns of play to make them a natural habit for your side. By doing this, a clear tactical plan and a strong team identity can be developed.
If you want to learn more about the detailed tactics involved in high-level modern football, check out our guide to why playing out from the back is so popular today.
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