Tactical support - unique service for football players

Telling about the service, how it works and who we work with.

Earlier we have already told about our experience working with the GK of "Varnamo", top tier club in Sweden, also about the work with our young player Vlad and general things about individual tactical development.

Understanding the Tactical Development of Football Player - link

Young players development - A2M vision and approach - link

Personal analysts, what is their job about? - link

How have we developed the service? Our team.

Initially, we were specialising on tactical preparations for goalkeepers: pre-match and post-match analysis. Apart from Filipp Voytekhovich, who plays in Sweden, we have been preparing pre-match reports and making post-match analysis for several goalkeepers in the 2nd League of Russia: Filipp Maraev from Dynamo Vologda, Nikita Drobyshevskiy from Essentuki and Danila Ermakov from Saturn (Khimik-august recently).

In november we started our cooperation with Ignat Epifanov , who started taking over video analysis in the agency. At that moment we were working on tactical development of our young player to prepare him for trials at Moscow football academies. At the same time we started our cooperation with the physical conditioning coach Grigory Kurakin.

Tactical knowledge of the player can be improved but it should be done simultaneously with physical development, so the player can effectively use and apply received knowledges at the field to execute his ideas. Giving an example.

Our young player Vlad Kalinichev plays on CM or CAM position, constant scanning of the field is crucial on those positions, perceiving information and using it for further decision making on field. This component was the one we needed to develop in order to progress to a higher playing level. We have showed examples of scanning from top-level players, explained how to "turn" head and which specific information needs to be scanned to make and execute further decision on the field. We have included this element in individual development plan so the player will obtain an ability to use new skill: the player was completing physical exercises with extra cognitive load. The player has been learning how to "turn" his head and was getting extra load on his vestibular system. Without specific preparations the player could have ended up in situation where he is trying to use field scanning more frequently but due to extra intensity of that element he could not keep up with the new type of workload.

Full support of our young player led us to a development of a full service. When we had received a request for a full tactical support from Bogdan Stolboushkin who plays in England, we have had already known how to fulfill the needs of the player. Players request was very clear, he wanted to improve his game through tactical understanding and as a result move to a higher level team.

Recently we have also started working with Dmitry Pletnev, homegrown player of FC Zenit who plays right now for FC "Arsenal" Dzerzhinsk in First League of Belarus. We are going to explain how the tactical support service works on professional and semi-professional level using examples of Bogdan Stolboushkin and Dmitry Pletnev.

How does it work?

The title doesn't reflect all the speсtrum of services received by our clients. As we have mentioned above apart from tactical education we design a plan of physical development and technique trainings. The tactical part consists of three main elements: individual analysis of playing profile, pre-match and post-match analysis.

Players get access to cloud storage where they have folders with video-analysis of previous matches, educational videos by position, developed training plans and other useful material. For a constant contact and control of players we create whatsapp chat, where we keep in touch, track player's conditions and his feelings, exchange educational materials and receive videos of player's trainings to correct them if needed. We use the biggest providers of statistics on the market to analyse players at professional level, also we use analytical software to code matches and apply graphics. Let's go step by step.

Word to our Senior Analyst Ignat Epifanov :

I distinguish three main principles of our work:

First. Individualisation of educational process: forming a unique trajectory of education for each player, defining appropriate speed of movement along that trajectory and methodology of training sessions. We refer to how a player perceive information, make conclusions and how fast he applies it at trainings and matches. Work notebook which includes presentation, videos, training plans of individual sessions is a collective job of coach-analysts and the player.

Second. Defining subordination: we always say that the most important opinion for a player is the opinion of the head coach and coaching staff. We only focus on players ability to analyse their own game deeply, recognize own actions and as result perform better the role they have on the field. We must avoid any conflicts with the coaching staff of players and if questions to our job are rising we are always opened for dialogue. We all have the same objective: fully expose potential of a player.

Third. Complex approach: very briefly, personal coach-analyst helps to improve the quality of decision making on the field. Not going deep in neurobiology, the scheme of making and executing decisions looks this way.

It's obvious that psychological and physical conditions of a player at the moment of making decision playing key roles, coming along with technical abilities that relate to execution of that decision. During analysis of player's actions it's important to identify what is the main reason of "bad" decisions and make analysis of them taking all the context into account.

Transfer from youth football to professional remains a big problem, no matter how much it is discussed. A big amount of talented youth players end up not prepared for professional football due to different reasons. Having my career as an example, I can say that I had a lack in professional mentoring during transition periods of my career.

I strongly believe that modern football agencies have to think not only about player transfers but how to adapt and develop their players in all directions. It relates not only to young players but to players of all ages. We know many examples in modern football how players of mature age have been reaching top-level.

How do we structure the work?

The first thing we begin our work is defining the playing profile, evaluation of his strong and weak qualities, defining playing aspects we are going to work on. We are trying to involve our player in this process: discussing together their qualities and asking them to define themselves the strong and weak sides of their play. We are finding out who were the role models for them in childhood and which players they like in recent time, which teams are more close to them and which football they would like to play. Defining their role model help us to build the development route we will follow. In Bogdan's case we have also made functional tests, to see which physical abilities we need to improve.

After defining the vector of development we start designing our tactical sessions and additional training sessions following training microcycle of the player and the team.

In the beginning of the week the player receives PDF-file with a weekly plan and all training plan attached to symbol legends. In the first days of new microcycle we usually plan our post-match analysis. We provide the player with video footage to discuss it with the player, closer to the end of the week we have tactical education session and analyse future opponent if needed. Our sessions take place in Zoom and for the analysis we use one of the best softwares on the market - HUDL Sportscode / HUDL Studio.

We record all our session and store them in player's folder at Dropbox, same place we store all footage from post-match analysis, educational videos, training plans and other materials. Players have permanent access to cloud storage and can review any material they need.

For a constant contact with each player we also use chats in Whatsapp, where players report on how they fell after completed trainings and share other information, receive educational material. In case of Bogdan we also track how he is completing additional trainings. The player record all drills on technique and physical workout and our team makes corrections in the process if needed.

Let's ask the players, what do they think about our work. Bogdan has been using our service more than 14 weeks now, he definitely has what to say (subtitles inside):

Bonus

One of the main objectives for us is to work with top-class players, here is an example how the post-match report can look like for a player at the top tier.