Positioning is key

Indeed, now that you know how to play the ball we are going to talk about what to do when you are not playing the ball, which is, in most cases, actually more important than anything else.Like the title says, positioning is key. This game is played by one single rule; the best defense is a good offense. If you don't let the opponent start a move towards your own half of the pitch you will score sooner or later and at the same time you are not letting them score against you. If you can keep the ball in their half as long as possible you will exhaust them, they will run out of boost and end up making mistakes that you have to be able to translate into a goal. Let me show you how.As mentioned before, the longer you play this game the more natural the following strategy will feel and you will notice that it's the only logical way to position yourself in relation to your teammates. People call this "Rotation", it is actually what happens but I'll explain later why I don't like that term.Lets create a 3v3 environment to explain how correct positioning looks like. The first thing of all is, you should never ever be on the same spot as a teammate. There is not even one situation where this can be helpful and yes, not even in net, it is a waste of resources. Now, as mentioned before, in relation to positioning people like to talks about rotation. A healthy rotation in a 3v3 game looks like this, where Player 1 (P1) is playing the ball in their half, for example along the right wall:In this scenario Player 2 (P2) is the backup for P1, meaning he has to position himself to be able to react to two possible outcomes of a play made by P1; P1 either manages to center the ball, or a defensive player clears the ball. P2 has to be positioned in such fashion that he is able to react to both outcomes of P1s play. Player 3 (P3) isn't very active yet, because he is acting as the last line of defense.As soon as P1 ends his play either by centering or losing the ball, every red player has to reposition himself according to the new situation. Let's ignore the possibility of a successful center and discuss what would or should happen in the case of a clear by the opponent. The blue player closest to the ball clears over P1, what now?I know this starts to look very technical, but bear with me. P1 is now out of the active play and has to back up, since he can't do anything useful from his position. P2 was his backup the whole time, so P1 doesn't have to bother about the ball anymore. At this time P2 is now the one playing the ball and since P1 is completely on the other side of the field, P3 ins now the backup for P2. If we take a short look at the blue team, the same happened there. You can see one player playing the ball and one being his backup. The blue player in net doesn't have to move because A) He doesn't want to disturb the player in the middle that is working as backup and B) When the ball is in your half, there ALWAYS should be somebody in net, more to this when we talk about goalkeeping.If now P2 manages to hit the ball into the corner, P3 will follow him at a reasonable distance. P3 is the backup now, so he again needs to be ready for either a center or a clear by the next opponent. This repeats itself in every situation, every place on the field. It's always one player on the ball, one backing him up and the third one repositioning himself according to the other two players.Back to why I don't like the term "rotation". As you have seen, the basic structure of this strategy relies heavily on communication between you and your teammates, right? Wrong. If you think about it, this is the only way to play effectively and it can be achieved without even talking to each other. There is no other way to be more effective than trying to predict what will happen with the ball next, and position accordingly. There's only one solution for every problem in this game. If your teammate is closer to the ball, you are the backup and you have to position accordingly. If you have the ball, play it as hard as you can to achieve that center or even shot on goal. If you whiff it, your teammate will be in a way better position than you to hit the ball, he was prepared for it, so get out of the way. Don't just drift back and slam aimlessly into the ball, you are probably facing your own goal by now, how can hitting the ball into your own half be a good decision? Think about that. In the past picture, do you think P1 should boost right back into the ball? That can only go wrong. What I'm trying to say is that if everybody knows how to position themselves correctly, the rotation happens automatically. In my opinion, it sounds like rotation can only happen if you play with two friends on Teamspeak, when in reality it works perfectly with randoms without voice chat, as long as they follow the basics of positioning of course.Now this is a very basic explanation of how the system works and how you should think when approaching a certain situation. We all know that every round of Rocket League is different from the next one but the example I showed before happens pretty frequently doesn't it? Positioning is key, if you are always at the exact location where the ball is going to land, your opponents wont even be able to take a shot on your goal.