The days of yelling at players for not making it to first base are over! Or at least, they should be. Coaching has changed dramatically over the past twenty years. There is a new-wave of coaches that understand how they would want to be communicated to as athletes, and bring that to the forefront when they work with players of their own.
As coaches, we must recognize that players have an array of qualities that make them unique on the pitch. We must also recognize that each of these unique pillars need to be paid attention to with dedicated attention and care.
Next week, I wrap up my second time teaching a Coaching & Leadership course at the university level for a class of enthusiastic undergraduate students. I haven't had much control over the syllabus or in-class learnings either time I've taught the course, and one of the key areas missing happens to be the only form of coaching I currently do - online coaching. More coaches could take advantage of the online formats available to them, even if still working in club environments. Many endurance coaches, mental skills specialists, therapists and counsellours are already coaching almost exclusively online. Other sports and realms will start to catch up. It's only a matter of time before the online coaching boom begins to blossom, so you might as well start to practice your skills in this realm while it's still relatively new.
When deployed correctly, the 3-1-3-1 can be one of the most fluid, flexible and fantastic 9v9 formations. Like anything in the beautiful game, team tactics, style of play and intricacies can only evolve within the realms of a team's own unique characteristics (including players involved, level of opposition, coaching preferences, and more). But if I had my pick of the litter within my squad, this is how I would deploy the 3-1-3-1 formation at the 9v9 level.
The game is deeply rooted in all five aspects of the common coaching model, and in fact, every decision a player makes boils down to all five elements simultaneously. Here's why the technical, tactical, physical and psychological aspects of football are all deeply intertwined.
How do you release the footballing demons (a.k.a. all of your thoughts on the beautiful game) out into the world? I know you have those thoughts, bursting inside of you, desperately clinging to the edge of your cliff brain, just waiting to get out. Do you share your thoughts on Twitter? Through podcasting? Writing? Do you bottle it up inside and never let it out? Regardless of whatever it is that would constitute as your "jam", why not start your own website? Seriously, why not?
Off-the-ball movement is, of course, the most important facet to the game. But saying that all passing patterns or attempts to make decision making automatic are "stupid" fails to account for the fact that these things don't have to be trained in isolation. After all, if they were stupid, why would coaches like Jurgen Klopp or Ralph Hasenhuttl deploy them as training methods?
As coaches, analysts, players, fans, and football obsessed individuals, we all want to grow our tactical understanding of the game. In fact, it's one of the top five questions I get thrown my way on social media or email (links at the end of the article), where people either want to know how I developed my degree of tactical knowledge, or want to know how they too can take their tactical and analytical understanding to the next level. Here is a structured process that you can follow to develop your own tactical knowledge, and continuously learn about the game on repeat.
Set-pieces are vitally important to the modern game, with a high percentage of goals being scored from set-pieces in the Premier League, Bundesliga, La Liga and Serie A this season. However, we are a firm believer in giving players creative autonomy and freedom to make choices in football matches. Allowing them to have a voice in attacking set-pieces is the perfect spot to allow them such creative input, as set-pieces can often be so different to everything else the team puts together in their formation, style of play and game model. With that said, we want to help your team score more goals from set-pieces, especially if you're going through our game model examples, only to see that we don't focus all that much on set-pieces. So with that, here is my favourite corner kick routine, which can easily be used at both the senior and professional level.
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