There are coaches in soccer that live and breathe tactics and love to teach strategies to their players. However transferring the knowledge to the athletes in an understandable way poses a big challenge and can even make a decent coach struggle. Bad organization and even worse display of tactic documentation is one of the main reasons for failure, especially on an amateur level.
In the course of the game, things can change so quickly. The team is trailing, there are 10 minutes left in a game - or - a team is holding onto a 1 goal lead and then there is a red card for the best defender. The next moment, the coach making wild gestures. He’s shouting the new tactical instructions all across the field, which ultimately brings even more confusion to the own players. They hear some of the coach’s terms for the first time. A team can be as talented and technically adept as it gets, if they are not up to par on the tactical part of the game, they will most likely lose that game. You would think that up to the present day the tactical quality of soccer would be extremely high, across all skill levels. Unfortunately that mostly only applies for the highest stages of professional soccer. The lower the level of play, the more tactical aspects of the game get neglected. On an amateur level the tactical education of players mostly doesn’t go beyond basic knowledge, like starting formations. Most coaches’ organization of tactical documents is bad and a lot of players have never seen a well-wrought set play on a piece of paper or let alone on a digital display. Neither have they received any kind of tactical game plan from their coaches. It might not apply to all coaches, there are a bunch of exceptions out there, just as other sports have shown for many years how to develop players on a tactical level. Game situations in soccer can be highly complex – 11 opposing players that can basically move across the field in hundred different ways. Preparing for such tactical scenarios comes with a high amount of extra effort. But it seems, that while physical abilities, shooting techniques, balls or even soccer boots get over-optimized in a way, tactical aspects of the game are almost completely ignored. And yet it is more a fundamental problem of preparation than a technical one. It is important to develop a coherent , well thought out and explained game day tactical plan. There is no perfect guideline to creating a tactic plan. However the first step, after establishing a basic strategy, is to make “scouting your opponents” the foundation of your tactical assignments: Coaches so ask themselves questions like
Once the coach has found answers to those and other crucial questions, the development of a game day tactics plan can start. Note – sometimes it can be beneficial to think outside the soccer box. In this manner, different strategies should be prepared that will work for your team in different situations, for instance when falling behind or being outnumbered due to a red card. Possible changes of tactic assignments during the course of the game can be coded with different terms. Corners and free-kick variations should be set up and documented as well. The entire game day tactic plan should be handed out to the players, in order for them to prepare sufficiently for the upcoming opponents. Doing this is crucial, because there is no point in preparing tactics as a coach, if the knowledge is not transferred to the players. In many sports, a so called “Walk Through” is an integral part of each training session before game days. Coaches and players will walk through any possible game situation and tactics on the pitch, for the first 20-30 minutes of a practice. As always, just my thoughts.
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AuthorAfter many years of coaching at various levels and with different teams, I thought I would share some of my experiences and thoughts about coaching. Archives
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