Knowing when not to counterpress is the harder skill

Chasing the ball back immediately is trained to the point of reflex, and the reflex loses matches against teams built to break it.

Six seconds of frantic pressure after losing the ball has become close to a moral requirement. It is coached everywhere, praised constantly, and there are matches in which it is straightforwardly the wrong thing to do.

The counterpress is a bet. You are wagering that three or four players arriving quickly will win the ball back in a disorganised area, and the stake is your defensive shape, because those players are no longer in it. Against a side that panics under pressure it pays out repeatedly. Against a side with a midfielder who can receive under contact and release one pass, it does not merely fail, it hands over a four against three with your defence unset. The downside is much larger than the upside, which is precisely the shape of bet you should be selective about.

So the skill that separates good pressing teams from teams that merely press is the abort. Someone has to decide, in about a second, that this particular ball loss is not recoverable, and the whole unit has to stop and retreat together. If two players carry on chasing while three drop, you get the worst of both. That is where most goals against pressing sides actually come from, not from being outplayed but from an unsynchronised decision.

The trigger is usually the first touch of the man who won it. If he controls it cleanly with his head up, the moment is gone. Press him anyway and you are running at a player who can see you coming and has a teammate in the space you vacated. If the ball is bouncing or behind him, go.

Teams that do this well have a spoken signal for it. Actually saying a word out loud, because you cannot expect eleven people to reach the same read simultaneously in a stadium.

The reason it is rare is cultural rather than tactical. Aborting looks like giving up, it draws a groan from the stands, and a young player who stops chasing will be told about it before he gets to the tunnel.

So he keeps running, into a space nobody is defending, and it will be described afterwards as a lapse in concentration.