As with many jobs, one of the best things about coaching is the ability to interact with other coaches; discussing ideas on the game, on player development, on training methodology, on the professional games of the past weekend. There is a shared commonality for the passion of the game and the want to make players better. No two coaches have the exact same thoughts on a given topic, at least not beyond the broadest of topics. The complexity and nuances of the game are what make it the most interesting and most divisive amongst coaches. There are so many variables to even the simplest questions as to whether a coach’s game model and style of play is direct or composed in build up play and beyond the coach-to-coach discussions, the job of a coach is to relay information to players as best we can and it matters what information that is.

At the club level in the United States (where I coach), in general, a coach sees players three times a week: two trainings and a match. Sometimes a team will train more during the week, sometimes less. During that brief time together, coaches must use their time efficiently and be able to educate their players. During my time as a coach and director, whether in my work or on courses, I have had the opportunity to observe sessions run by coaches, technical directors, and directors of coaching, working with various age groups and skill level. Through my observations, it seems there are two main issues in how coaches approach their training sessions: a lack of context given as to why and when (with something like receiving a ball) and a lack of understanding from coaches as to how a particular activity relates to the game model that the coach has looked to develop for the team. The latter is more problematic at the older age groups, as opposed to the younger ones where the focus should be that players are taught good technical ability (perceive, decide, execute).

Contextualising Training

I have seen many sessions where there is little or no talk about the game itself. To improve at football, you must train different aspects of the game and play football. Simply because a player is young does not mean you cannot talk to them about the situations that occur on the field. Yes, you have to simplify certain aspects for the youngest players, but on the weekend they play the game and can relate to those experiences. It is the job of the coach to communicate to them in an effective way and to understand that they can learn from their in-game experiences.

The trouble that I have seen is that some coaches design an entire training session on solely the execution of a technique and do this for every single training session during the year. These players will arguably improve their technical ability, yes (if coached and performed well!), but will struggle in all other aspects of the game. Technique is not only about the execution of action (this is not to say that repetitive, unopposed training is bad or only training execution of technique, but the best unopposed exercises should have game context.) For example, striking a ball with the instep, with your toe slightly up, and your ankle locked is certainly good execution of the technical ability to pass the ball, but within that there has to be a perception of what is going on around you and a decision has to be made and on top of that the isolated execution of that technique is done so in an opposed situation (note: not necessarily without pressure). Beyond the execution of instep technique, the coach has not been helpful to the player. There are different methodologies on how to properly teach technique, a topic I will delve into in a later post, but all methodologies have to include the coach telling players why they do things and when they should do them. The best coaches include a mixture of opposed and unopposed exercises in their methodologies rather than one or the other, but there are certainly polarising opinions on the matter.

This ‘why’ and ‘when’ is what is lacking in a lot of youth football training sessions. Passing lines (Players 10 yards apart passing the ball back and forth), for example, do not offer the players any sort of context as to why they should be passing the ball or when to pass the ball, it only tells them this is how you pass a ball. As coaches we have to relate our exercises in training to the game. We need to not only tell players why performing an action in a game is beneficial, but why and how the exercise we are doing is overall relatable to the game and a method of making them more successful within the game.

Can we take passing lines and make them applicable to games? I am a fan of passing patterns, but the patterns I utilise are ones that I made formation-specific (this player is the holding midfielder in a 4-3-3, that’s our right back, etc.). With my U18 team, we played a 4-3-3 and a 3-4-3 (with the four being a diamond) and I had passing patterns for each that were good for the players to keep the execution of their technique trained, but the progressions forced them to see what was going on around them and make decisions: a pass to a right foot or left foot was a trigger for this, a player’s movement triggered that, the amount of touches the player before you made it better for you to do this than that. The progressions became demanding and complex and they were also snapshots from occurrences that I had seen in games and allowed the individuals and team to improve in those situations. From there it would become an opposed situation, with the players encouraged to read the actions of the player on the ball and understand what they should do and what situations work best when they get the ball. During that part of the session it was still a snapshot of the game and everything was relatable to what we, as a team, wanted to see and be successful with on game day.

A stripped down version of that opposed situation could be a rondo, another tool that coaches use, but that many use without context. Rondos seemed to become a much bigger part of training sessions with videos circulated of Guardiola’s Barcelona and Del Bosque’s Spain doing rondos. There of course different types of rondos and different reasons for rondos. Many times the ones we see are a group of eight to ten players in a circle, with two players in the middle and the ball is zipping around and it seems like a good warmup for the session, but also just a social tool for the players because, at some point, Juan Mata will make Raul Albiol never want to report for Spain duty again and everyone will love it.

However, rondos can be much more than that, they can be created to give our players some context in the game. Below is a snapshot of a game I had with my U18s at the Region 1 Championships in 2016. The holding midfielder had gotten the ball from the opposite side of the field and passed it over to the right centre back. Now look at the setup: right centre back on the ball, right back on the touch line, the holding midfielder coming across and a more advanced midfielder getting positional superiority in relation to the two defenders. This is a rondo, a simple 4v2, but it is gives the players so much more information if I paint this picture for them and then have them do the 4v2 exercise than if I simply put them in a square and have them play 4v2.

I always give my players the why, the when/where, and the how in each exercise during a session, regardless of age group. Yes, the communication and complexity of the ideas is different depending on the age group as are the exercises themselves, but the players still need to be given that information. Execution of technique without context is not enough to fully develop your players. They want more from us as coaches. Players want to know how to best use the technical abilities we give teach and they want to use them to make them more successful on game day.

Remember that we want our players to be able to make their own decisions on game day especially, but during training it is important for coaches to guide them to understanding the best decisions that they can make. We should not tell them what the best decision is, but through giving players context and relating to situations in the game, it will help them frame their decision making in a much more cohesive manner.

Relationship to the Game Model

The other issue that takes form in youth training sessions is the session design itself. I have worked with coaches, directors, etc., that would tell me they would spend significant amounts of time on Google and YouTube looking for sessions to run with their teams. For me, there are a number of problems with this. The first being that, no matter the session, regardless if you are at a club where all coaches ‘do the same thing,’ how a coach communicates ideas to the players is incredibly important and no two coaches can communicate ideas to a player in the same way. Beyond that, as previously mentioned, there are of course going to be variations about what the expectations are of players in their decisions, so not only do you first have to understand that, but even if coaches expected the exact same decision outcome, the communication to get there is always different!

From a different perspective, the issue with simply finding sessions that other coaches do (besides not being able to communicate the session the same way) is that there is typically little analysis as to whether that session actually fits your game model. The session may look good, but it might be contrary to what the coach actually wants to see from their team and players on game day. Perhaps the first issue here is a lack of game model. Far too many times, coaches are asked how they like their teams to play and they answer with a formation: 4-3-3 or 3-5-2. This is certainly a subset of a game model, but a formation in itself is a very vague and can represent varying game models.

Again, anecdotally reflecting on sessions I have observed at a club that strived to play ‘total football,’ I saw coaches do exercises that in no way supported that game model. One example was a session based around getting high crosses into the box from wide areas, so to put this is a game-like situation, the coach had a centre midfielder stand at the halfway line with a ball, play a long ball into the corner, and had a winger deliver a first time cross into the box for the centre forward and the centre midfielder that had played the ball make runs into the area to get on the end of the cross. This in itself has flaws in terms of the session: what is the level of success with that first time cross into the box? How often is the centre midfielder going to be able to be at the halfway line, play a ball to the corner, and then get into the box for the cross they helped set up?

The bigger issue, is that it was in no way reflective of what was being asked of the players on game day. It was contrarian to have a session with these objectives, but then on game day to ask the players to be patient with the ball in the opposition’s half and try to keep the ball until openings came. It is an issue that is all throughout youth soccer: coaches ask for one thing in training and then ask for and picture something different in matches. Coaches teach one thing in training because they have gotten the session plan from YouTube or Google and expect to see a different style of play and their players making different decisions based on an overarching club philosophy. They want to see their players ‘press, press, press!’, but never worked on pressing in training so all the players are disorganised and simply chase the ball. They want their players to ‘keep the ball!’, but have never really worked on body shape to receive with pressure in a 1v1. They want to see their team’s play like they have been trained by Guardiola, but will gladly pick up a training session created by Tony Pulis.

This is all not to say that you should not be resourceful as a coach; you absolutely should and have to be. If you want to improve you have to challenge your own ideas of the game and a good way to do that is to observe others. Obviously a very easy way to do that is to find clips on YouTube or find sessions through Google and ask questions about them, but the last thing you want to do is to simply utilise these tools without a critical thought process about how they apply to you players and your game model, and the overall relationship to the game. If you don’t understand why you are about to do an exercise with your team, chances are you will not be giving much information to the players during that part of your session.

Below, Jose Mourinho take things a little bit further. He says that coaches should not look for sessions so they can be ‘like Mourinho, like Guardiola, like Simeone’ because then they are not actually thinking about what they are coaching. He says that coaches that having access to these things is making coaches lazy, as they are not thinking about what they deliberately want to be coaching.

Always Improve

Just as we ask of our players, we must always look to improve and the above points are two examples that are lacking at different levels of youth coaching and that can be used to improve the coach and, importantly, the players.

There is a phrase ‘deliberate practice’ that comes from the research of K. Anders Ericsson, a professor of psychology at the University of Florida (US). The phrase is often used during discussions about isolated technical training and game-like, holistic training methods, but is applicable to this discussion as well: to be a better coach you have to continue to work at it (coaching more), analyse and evaluate your work (reflect on sessions you have delivered and games you have coached, and get feedback from it (from players, from other coaches, from watching footage of your own sessions).

As youth coaches, how we deliver a message is as important as the content of our communication. We must always strive to make exercises, skills, and ideas related to the game. Sessions need not be direct replicas of a game at all times, but must be a snapshot that can give players context and let them know ‘why’ we, as coaches, as things of them and ‘when’ and ‘how’ they are applied to a game. First, however, before the session even begins, we must ensure that what we are about to ask of our players, regardless of age, will help them achieve what we ask of them on game day, which at the younger ages, is about the individual’s development and then the team’s development.

Make sure there is always context to your content.