A press is the most expensive defensive action a team takes. It commits players forward, narrows the pitch, and trades structural safety for the chance to win the ball in a dangerous area. When it works, the team regains possession with the opposition out of shape and a clear lane to goal. When it doesn't, the team is exposed in exactly the area it just abandoned. There is no neutral outcome.
Pressing analysis is the work of separating those two outcomes. Coaches who only review the moment of contact, the striker closing the centre-back, miss the structure that made the press succeed or fail. The relevant question is rarely "did the striker press well?". It is "did the second line follow, did the back four step up, and did the wide players close the switch lane?". A press is a coordinated act. Any single player out of position turns it into a sprint.
Four failure modes dominate the analyses we run. First: the trigger fires late, so the first presser arrives after the receiver has already controlled the ball. Second: the second line doesn't follow, leaving a passing lane into midfield. Third: the press is unbalanced, the ball-side is compact but the far side is wide open for a switch. Fourth: rest-defence is set up for the wrong scenario, so the moment the press is broken, the opposition has three players running at two defenders.
This page lays out the framework TACTIXGRID uses for pressing analysis: how to identify the trigger a team is using, how to check whether their cover is structurally honest, and how to grade the outcome of each pressing sequence. It links to the transition and rest-defence pages because the cost of a broken press is paid in transition, not in the press itself.