Auto Position: Assign Players to Exercises in Seconds
Every coach knows this moment. You've built a great exercise — reds versus blues, 6v6 in a pressing zone. Now comes the part nobody enjoys: dragging 12 real players, one by one, into the right slots. Then you move on to the next exercise and do it all over again. Multiply that across a full session with 20+ players, and you've spent more time on admin than on actual coaching content.
What if one click could handle all of it?
Introducing Auto Position for the Exercise Designer — a feature that takes your session roster and intelligently assigns every player to every exercise slot. No dragging. No hunting through names. Just fast, position-aware assignment so you can get back to what matters: designing great training.
The Problem: Repetitive, Tedious, Time-Consuming
Driblo's Exercise Designer lets you build training exercises visually — placing players, cones, goals, zones, and arrows on a pitch canvas. When an exercise is linked to a training session, the session roster becomes available: real players with their registered positions (GK, CB, CM, ST, and so on).
The canvas shows player elements in team colors — 6 red slots, 6 blue slots, maybe a couple of jokers. Each slot needs a real player assigned to it. The traditional approach? Manual drag-and-drop. One player at a time.
It works. But it's slow. And when you're building 4–5 exercises per session, those minutes add up fast.
The Solution: Auto Position
Auto Position is a one-click workflow built directly into the Exercise Designer. Open the assignment modal, choose your mode, hit apply — and every empty slot fills with the right player.
It works with your real session roster — the actual players attending that day's training — and uses their registered positions to make smart decisions about where each player belongs.
Two Intelligent Modes
Split Evenly
The fully automatic option. Split Evenly takes all available session players and distributes them across empty slots on the canvas. It balances position groups — goalkeepers, defenders, midfielders, attackers — evenly within each team color.
If your exercise has 6 red slots and 6 blue slots, each color group gets a balanced mix. Defenders don't all end up on one side. The result is a realistic, training-ready setup without any manual input.
Best for: Quick setup when you want balanced teams and don't need specific position control.
By Position
The coach-controlled option. By Position lets you decide which position categories belong to each team color on the canvas.
For example:
- Red team = Defense + Midfield
- Blue team = Attack
The algorithm first places players whose actual position matches the selected categories. If slots remain, it fills them with any unassigned players from the roster. This gives you precise control over which players end up in which roles — ideal for exercises where the defending group needs to be actual defenders.
Best for: Position-specific exercises, phase-of-play drills, and situations where team composition matters tactically.
Why Coaches Love It
- Saves real time — Minutes of dragging per exercise, multiplied across every exercise in every session. That time adds up across a season.
- Position-aware intelligence — Defenders end up where defenders should be. Attackers go where attackers belong. The assignments make football sense.
- Respects team colors — The system understands that red, blue, green, and joker groups are separate units on your canvas. Each gets its own balanced distribution.
- Works with real rosters — These aren't generic placeholder names. They're the actual players from that day's attendance, with real positions and real names.
- One-click workflow — Open modal, choose mode, apply, done. Four steps. Seconds, not minutes.
Where It Fits in Your Workflow
Auto Position lives in the Exercise Designer, which is part of Driblo's session planning tools. The typical workflow looks like this:
- Create a training session and confirm your roster
- Open an exercise in the Exercise Designer
- Place your player elements on the canvas (team colors, positions on the pitch)
- Click Auto Position to assign real players
- Fine-tune if needed — swap a player, adjust a role
- Move to the next exercise and repeat
Because it works at the exercise level, you can use different assignment modes for different exercises. A possession drill might use Split Evenly, while a phase-of-play exercise might use By Position with defenders on one side and attackers on the other.
Still Fully in Control
Auto Position is a starting point, not a final answer. After the automatic assignment, every player can be swapped, moved, or reassigned manually. The feature handles the tedious bulk work so your energy goes toward the tactical decisions that actually require a coach's eye.
Auto Position is available now in Driblo's Exercise Designer. Stop spending your session prep time on drag-and-drop busywork. Let smart automation handle the assignment so you can focus on building exercises that develop your players.
