Tag: Autonomy & Decision Making

Understanding ball, opposition, teammates and space

by Rhys Desmond, posted in Coach Education, Masterclasses, Most Recent, Sport Psychology

Nothing can exist in football without perceptions of ball, opposition, teammates and space (BOTS for short if you want!). While there may never be one unequivocally correct answer to any given footballing problem, players can more adequately assess for decision making through muscle memory, experience, automatisms, sheer intelligence, and studying the tips in this article. But those same players, analysts and coaches must also recognize the deeply-rooted tandem bike quadracycle nature of the four elements of the game, and how they all co-exist to work in harmony.

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Football is more about psychology than tactics

by Rhys Desmond, posted in Coach Education, Coaching, Masterclasses, Sport Psychology

This is not a headline that you would expect to see from a website so devotedly focused on tactics and analysis. But as complex and debatable as this may sound, football is more about psychology than tactics. The best coaches are not always the best tacticians. But the best coaches are always the best motivators. The likes of John Herdman, Emma Hayes, Jose Mourinho and even Jurgen Klopp, rarely ever speak about tactics when expatiating about the game. Instead, they pontificate about the psychology of their teams and players, and their attempts to get the best out of their mentality.

Train of Thought – The value of playing with touch restrictions

by Travis Norsen, posted in Coach Education, Coaching, Masterclasses

The mental side of the beautiful game is at least as important as the physical side, but is often neglected by coaches in training sessions. In this series, Travis Norsen, author of Play With Your Brain, will discuss small tweaks to standard training exercises and the large positive effects they can have on players’ decision-making and soccer intelligence. This week, Travis explores the value of using one-touch restrictions in your sessions.

Train of Thought – Situating training exercises in their appropriate place on the pitch

by Travis Norsen, posted in Coach Education, Coaching, Masterclasses

The mental side of the beautiful game is at least as important as the physical side, but is often neglected by coaches in training sessions. In this series, Travis Norsen, author of Play With Your Brain, will discuss small tweaks to standard training exercises and the large positive effects they can have on players’ decision-making and soccer intelligence. This week, Travis explores why you should situate your training exercises in their appropriate place on the pitch.

The Art of Persuasion in Coaching

by Rhys Desmond, posted in Coach Education, Coaching, Masterclasses, Sport Psychology

The art of persuasion is a useful tool that all coaches should understand. Social psychologists identify two basic ways to persuade people: through what's called "the central route" and through what's called "the peripheral route". This article examines both, in the quest to help coaches understand the art of persuasion and the best approaches to motivating their players to perform.

Restricted vs. Conditioned Games – Coaching Soccer

by Rhys Desmond, posted in Coaching, Sport Psychology, World Football

Many coaches often add restrictions to games. Restrictions like needing to complete three passes before the team can score or players being locked into different zones on the field can be valuable to teaching certain topics to young players. But restrictions need to be used wisely. Instead of restricting behaviours, coaches should look to encourage behaviours and do so more carefully through encouraging something to happen, rather than restricting it. In this article I will outline why restricted games should be more scarcely used, and why the term 'conditioned game' should possibly have a change of meaning to urge coaches to encourage the behaviours of their players in games without restricting their players.