we had a good team on paper.unfortunately, the game was played on the grass– brian clough –
Today I would like to talk about a personal reflection related to football methodology and training. Although the title of the article may seem to be for coaches, my intention is to share this with everyone who wants to know more about football and want to have an opinion on different aspects. Let’s get started!
The world changes and everything evolves rapidly now. It happens in any area and football is no stranger to these changes. Coaches should be aware that upgrading new methodologies is necessary to be able to give footballers a training program that allows them to reach their full potential. There are more resources and studies now and it is important to continue learning and studying so as not to become obsolete in old ideas and beliefs.
Looking back, it is easy to remember training methods based on high physical sessions, where the player reached important fatigue points, even dangerous ones, and training tasks with little cognitive demand. There used to be a lot of tasks with a lot of repetition of technical exercises without any decision-making and, if you were lucky, at the end of training session you played a game. The goal was to prepare physically the footballer in the best possible way. Most part of the training was aimed at conditional improvement of the player and this was done with long continuous running sessions and physical exercises. The idea was clear; the harder you got a training, the better you will be. The ball was often not the protagonist. And neither was learning.
After have been trainning during all the week the important day arrived: the match day. It was on that day when coaches tried to put on a tactical board everything that would be necessary to win. How to attack, how to defend, where to play … the coach hoped that the player would understand all information and his plan would be successful. However, what was not taken into account was that players had received such a large amount of information, that the information reached the player at an inappropriate time due to having the match shortly (possibility of stress) and that everything asked to the player was not trained during the week. It was very common to see many coaches in games with high degrees of frustration and shouting slogans from the band that players could hardly understand. Players, instead of having fun, played with the fear of failing and making more upset their coaches. And my question is, “Did coaches take advantage of the week to prepare for the game?” I have no doubt that the answer is negative.
The science in sports, particularly in soccer have been enhanced and the training systems have then been improved a lot. There is more knowledge about the way to work, about the demands of the footballer and how to optimize performance. New areas of study have come to change old paradigms, such as psychology and neuroscience. More and more coaches try to equip their players with a deeper knowledge of tactics and this involves doing tasks where there are decision-making.
In my opinion, it is important that coaches give their players tools to interpret the game and ways to discover which are the best solutions. This can be done only in a training, working on tasks where the player keep trying over and over, even making mistakes, finally succeed and have feedback. This entire process will allow them to grow as a football players. For this reason, it is very important to know the types of existing tasks and be able to use them in an adequate way.
Now, I will tell you 3 types of exercise that coaches can use in training sessions:
analytical exercises
This type of exercise is characterized by repeating the same technical or physical gesture many times. There is usually no opposition since they are exercises without any type of decision-making.
(e.g.) a driving exercise where the players are driving the ball between some cones.
These are tasks closer to the reality of soccer. Those are exercises where player will have some collaboration (partners to interact with), an opposition (rivals to overcome) and a series of objectives where different game principles are worked on. These tasks usually present rules that aim to reinforce a series of technical-tactical behaviors in the players.
(e.g.) possession game in a delimited square with two teams of 4 players and with two players as jokers (outside). The team with the ball tries to move the ball from one joker to the other joker without being stolen by the opposing team. Every time they do, they get one point. The aim of this exercise is for the players to get used to circulating the ball from side to side through the movement of the ball, supports and changes of orientation.
These are tasks closer to the reality of soccer. Those are exercises where player will have some collaboration (partners to interact with), an opposition (rivals to overcome) and a series of objectives where different game principles are worked on. These tasks usually present rules that aim to reinforce a series of technical-tactical behaviors in the players.
(e.g.) possession game in a delimited square with two teams of 4 players and with two players as jokers (outside). The team with the ball tries to move the ball from one joker to the other joker without being stolen by the opposing team. Every time they do, they get one point. The aim of this exercise is for the players to get used to circulating the ball from side to side through the movement of the ball, supports and changes of orientation.
contextualized exercises based on the game model
These exercises are the ones that are most assimilated to the reality of soccer. They are usually tasks that seek for the player to have experiences that are as real as possible to what is going to be found in the match. Players usually play on the position that they use to play on the game (forward, middle, back side …) and often face an opposing team that has a game strategy similar to the one they will later find in matches against other teams (teams with a certain strategy system, teams that play in a specific way, etc.).
(e.g.) Situations of attack – defense. One team defends with a line of 4 defenders and 3 midfielders and the other team attacks with 3 midfielders and 3 forwards. The team with the ball must score a goal, but for this to be valid the goal must be scored throw a cross from the side (there will be a space delimited with cones). The defenders should try to steal the ball and score a goal in a small goal post installed in the middle line of the field.
As you can see on this exercise, coaches try to create an experience for players to prepare a reality they would face in a real game sometime. One team attacking through crossings from the side and the other defending really close to the goal and trying to counterattack after they stole the ball. (For this reason, we put small goal posts in the middle of the field, simulating that a pass is made to space towards a striker who goes out on the counterattack).
Based on everything said above in this article, I conclude that nowadays the player should receive training sessions that actually stimulate his brain and decision-making ability. It is necessary for the coaches to offer the players tasks that serve them to learn about the game, understand what its logic is, and based on trial error, acquire a bag of experiences that will help them make the best decisions in the future when they are in similar situations.
But it doesn’t mean that the analytical exercises of the training sessions should be suppressed. On the contrary, it is important that the players practice their technics through analytical exercise and coaches will encounter many times that he/she needs to use analytical exercises in order to allow the player to repeat a technical gesture over and over and ensure that its execution is perfected. Probably in initiative stages, it is necessary that a part of the training include this type of exercises. But I sincerely believe that it is also important for the player to experiment with global and contextual exercises, no matter how old they are. It is important to set up the situations for weekdays, where the player experiences this type of work followed by a player-coach dialogue to improve learning.
It is also important that the coaches specify his game plan and know how to explain it to the players. It’s crucial that what a coach require is properly delivered and trained. Without previous experiences, it would be very difficult for a player to be successful in the actions on the field. At the same time, the coach must be consistent with what he asks for. When you provide exercises during the week aimed at having the ball, passing short and playing from behind, it wouldn’t make a sense at the next match that you’d ask players to do something irrelevant from the previous training for the week days.
Lastly, this type of training doesn’t mean that players are not physically prepared for the game. A coach should focus his work on making exercises that would bring physical fatigue with almost same degree that players would have in a real game. However, it’s important that the physical exercises are combined with cognitive and mentally fatigue. When a player has to think and make decisions, this means he’d also get tired afterwards because this process also consumes energy. It is obvious that the player will have to deal with something he does not get used to unless the player is trained in the said process. That is why the convenience of contextualizing is necessary during the training sessions and make the training session as real as a real football match.
It’s possible that you can enter into the debate about whether the player will be able to work to the limit of his physical possibilities with a ball or not. It may be then we agree that certain physical activities may be far from what soccer reality is. Today it is essential that players prepare in gyms to strengthen their muscles and avoid injury. It is also suitable to enhance resistance and you can work in a decontextualized way, without a ball in between. However, you would agree that if this is done, the stimulus must be as close as possible to the reality of football. A game like soccer is full of interruptions, sprint & slow down, shoulder tackle, jumps, changes of direction, etc. Does just running so many laps over and over in the field sound similar with these movements? I don’t think so. This sort of repetitive analytic exercises makes you and your team to spend your valuable time for physical preparation in such a different way from the actual football game situation.
As I always say, this is my personal opinion and there is no reason you have to agree with me. I thank the reader for having reached this point and I will be satisfied if I awaken any internal reflection. My only intention is to awaken a more critical mind among all with the sole purpose of seeking an improvement in the training and training of footballer.
Thank you for your attention and wish you a great weekend!
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