Performing football actions - does the player or coach decide?

“Switch…Press!….Pass….Tackle….Head up…..”, the list could go on. From reading those words, you may understand what they mean. For those that don’t, you may hear a coach shouting them during a game this coming weekend. Blurting these words next to the pitch won’t guarantee success and it could well cause your team problems, while confusing the players that are on the receiving end. Some could think that this respective coach has a playstation controller on the side of the pitch, while others may think the coach is ‘crazy’. Is this ‘crazy’ behaviour now the norm, or are the majority of coaches controlling their behaviour from the touchline??

Some of the patterns that I’ve recently seen are, when the team has the ball there is a sense of panic and continuous shouting. The team then loses the ball and they are now defending…what then happens? The same thing, complete panic with the coach shouting random words.?

How could this coach have more control over these situations in the future though? They could say nothing? Or, they could have clear team intentions outlined and an understanding that players are in control of their actions and how they perform them.?

During training, the players should be preparing themselves as best as possible for the upcoming match day. In my previous articles I’ve spoken about team intentions, training considerations and methods you may use to score.

While all the above points are relevant to your team, the players themselves have to perform football actions in order to achieve any objective in the game. As we know, the over arching objective on game day is to win and score at least 1 more goal than the opposition. The ball will dictate the function of the game you find yourself in, as this is the main reference point and the tool you use to score.?

The hierarchy of football looks like the following;

The Game

Football (11 v 11 (age dependant) - 2 goals - 1 ball)

Team Functions

Attacking?

Transitioning to defending?

Defending?

Transitioning to attacking

Team Tasks?

Building up - Creating goal scoring opportunities (Team task - attacking)

Scoring - Converting goal scoring opportunities (Team task - attacking)

Counter defending - (Team task - transition to defending)

Disturbing the build up - Preventing goal scoring opportunities (Team task - defending)

Preventing scoring - Neutralising goal scoring opportunities (Team task - defending)

Counter attacking - (Team task - transition to attack)

To achieve success in any of the above functions of the game, each player will have to perform football actions. During attacking and defending these actions will be different, with the position on the field that you occupy and where the ball is, influencing the actions. During transition moments, the actions will be the same as when you’re defending and attacking.

Some of the football actions players perform, are;

Attacking

Passing?

Shooting?

Creating Space

Dribbling?

Defending?

Pressing?

Tackling?

Challenging

Intercepting?

While this list isn’t complete, these are some of the examples that everyone will be familiar with.

In order for the players behaviour to be conditioned how you so desire, it would make complete sense to perform in training, like they would in a game. For example;

• Would a centre back take 15 shots during the game?
• Would the centre forward be constantly tackling?
• Would the goal keeper dribble at every opportunity?

Depending on what your team intentions are, this will lead your players into a direction on what their decisions may be and how they may execute them.

If your team intention is to close the centre of the field, in front of the front line, the centre forward may execute defensive actions such as pressing and intercepting, more than tackling for example.

When attacking, this same player may shoot more than dribbling, or run with the ball more than passing (within context).?

If you invest time properly as a coach, you can allocate time to analyse your team and see if these team intentions are successful. As a consequence of this, you could also analyse the most common football actions that are used in these situations.?

• Do you wish for your centre back to build from the back line, after the goal keeper passes the ball to them? What football action would mostly be used while doing this?
• Once your centre forward has exploited the space (has ball possession) behind the backline, what action here might be commonly used?

Hopefully these questions lead you to reflect and consider what your players are doing during training and what outcomes you get on a match day. Is it similar to what you (hopefully) predicted, or is it the polar opposite? By training ‘X’, you would hope to see some, if not all of it on match day. You wouldn’t for example want to practice ‘X’ and just see ‘Y’.?

By training players relative to real life game situations, they will perform the same football actions that they may experience on match day. This will create stimulus response patterns and assist with quicker decisions being made. If a player better understands a certain situation there is a higher chance that they are able to apply the correct response that the team so desires, thus meaning more predictability (better team communication).

The importance of what information you’re downloading into your players brains, should not be underestimated either. If your coaching actions and team intentions are clear, and delivered on a consistent basis, this will give your players unconscious ease which leads to less unconscious stress. Without the stress, the brain will preserve energy and be able to come up with more solutions quicker, to that given scenario.

Although all of the decisions are the player(s) responsibility, they can also impact each other and contribute to the team intention. If the goal keeper has the ball at feet, the intention here will be to kick it at a certain moment. Where the ball goes is irrelevant (for this example), but what we do know is that the player receiving the ball will have to be an ‘open’ progress option. Other players around this situation, can create space and impact whether the ball can be progressed or not.?

Why is this relevant to improving your team??

We want to prepare our teams as best as we can for their upcoming match day and when this day arrives, they will be participating with each other and have opponents trying to stop them. If we don’t train together or have opponents present, we’ll be providing our players with an inaccurate stimulus, that will provide an inaccurate response. Do your players practice the relevant stimulus response patterns in training and do they build internal communication lines to make the team more predictable??

As discussed in one of my previous articles about performing football actions, the environment you create as a coach is vitally important in provoking these. Today, I’ve delved a bit deeper in their importance and the impacts they can have on the team intentions and fellow team mates.

So, back to this hypothetical example and our coach shouting from the sidelines. If they were to read this article, would it help them understand about football actions and how the players may perform? Who knows?

What we do know though, is when you next walk back onto the training pitch and occupy the touchline, you have a choice. You can play the playstation or let the players live the game in real life…..

Spencer Fearn Jack Brazil Bart Caubergh Alexandru Bourceanu Alexander Flattum Harrison Gilkes Saban Uzun Alex Stylianou Christos (Chris) Themeliotis Nico Koch Julius Riemann Anshul Kumar Tamta Darren Murray