1v1s Outside the Box
Here's a question I want you to sit with for a second.
A 1v1 in a real game lasts a matter of seconds. It doesn't always end in one player beating another. There's pressure coming from behind, support arriving from the side, a decision to be made about whether to take the player on at all. It's a moment — brief, contextual, connected to everything else happening on the pitch.
So how do we replicate that in training without constantly resetting, rotating, and removing all the context that made it a meaningful moment in the first place?
That question is what led me to write 1v1s Outside the Box — and it's what this episode is about.
The problem with isolated 1v1s
The way 1v1s are typically trained, you get two players, a bit of space, and a go signal. One attacks, one defends. If the attacker loses, they restart. If the defender wins, they rotate out.
The problem is that none of that reflects how a 1v1 actually happens in a game. In a game, the 1v1 is never truly isolated. There's always help — for both sides. The attacker has teammates making runs and creating space. The defender has cover and balance behind them. The decision to take someone on is made in the context of what else is available, what's behind you, what the score is, how much energy you have left.
Train it in isolation long enough, and players become very good at isolated 1v1s. Put them in a game and they freeze, because the version they've been practising doesn't exist.
What the book covers
1v1s Outside the Box starts where I think every coaching resource should start: the game model. Before you can design a training session around 1v1s, you need to know what 1v1s look like within your team's way of playing. What does a 1v1 look like for your striker compared to your fullback? What's expected of each position when a 1v1 moment arrives?
From there, the book moves through positional profiles, the four moments of the game, and the principles of play — giving you the framework to understand not just what a 1v1 is, but where it fits within the bigger picture.
Then we get into planning. Specifically, how you use constraints to replicate game situations more accurately. Ben Bell has talked extensively about this — different goal types and game shapes elicit completely different behaviour from players. Change the goal, change the game, change the decision. Most coaches don't think about that deliberately. The book makes it deliberate.
The bulk of the content is session plans — a progression that starts with isolated 1v1s (having first challenged you to question whether isolation is what you actually want), then moves into small-sided games from 3v3 and 4v4 all the way up to 8v8 and 11v11, all working on the same underlying 1v1 concept but within increasingly realistic game environments.
It's my model — adapt it to yours
I want to be upfront about something. The session plans in this book are built around my game model, my philosophy, and my players. If you read it cover to cover, you'll basically have my playbook.
That doesn't mean you should use it exactly as written. The challenge of the book — the reason I wrote it — is to make you think about what you're doing and why. Take the parts that fit your environment. Adapt what doesn't. Push back on what you disagree with. The coaching community grows when coaches engage with ideas critically, not when they just borrow sessions wholesale.
There's also some periodization in there, at a level I can understand and explain — which, as the saying goes, is one measure of whether you've actually understood something.
The challenge
Don't just read it. Try something. Even one session. Even one constraint. Tell me what happened — what worked, what didn't, what surprised you. That conversation is how we get better, and it's the whole reason I put this out.
1v1s Outside the Box is available on Amazon.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 52 — 1v1s Outside the Box
@LeeDunneSoccer