Which formats bring out which skills?

Hi everyone, welcome to another edition of the coach insights newsletter. Lots of different themes this week from game formats, to leaderships skills, change in defending from stats, and practice design. Enjoy….

---

The Top Ten

1. Do you know the advantages of each game format and what they help your polayers achieve? If not, here thre FA’s England learning team take you through the differences between 3v3, 5v5, and 7v7. https://community.thefa.com/coaching/b/insights-analysis-blogs/posts/exploring-technical-returns-from-different-game-formats

2. Tweet from Dan Abrahams on the how to be a transformational leader. How many of the six points do you do? how many can you start to do?

   Daniel Abrahams @DanAbrahams77

   A transformational leader: -takes interest in each player -spends time to get to know them -stimulates them to think more deeply about their game -motivates players to work hard -encourages players to prioritize the group goal -inspires players to reach beyond expectations

3. I swa this tweet from Shay Fenlon a few weeks backl and went though some of the answers, I’m glad he’s been able to create a thread from some of the best ones he came across. have a read yourself and see what you think.

   Shay Fenlon @Shay_Fenlon

   Last week I asked the question… “If there was one thing about coaching you would change, or a coaching rule you would break and rewrite, what would it be and why?” Here’s what people had to say 🗣 (I’ve very roughly tried to theme the answers) 🧵 @Leap_BMK

4. An interesting article I came across on patience and it’s relevance to football. Our need to and craving for high press, fast football, coupled with a societal shift to quicker gratification has created a loss of patience in football fans but is it actually a key skill we need to maintain in our players? https://medium.com/road-to-positional-success-1-strikers-no-more/what-is-patience-in-football-ae23a75c64a6

5. The expansion of data in sport and in particular in football has started to really influence teams in their persuit to perfection. From the Moneyball (getting value for players where others don’t see it) to influencing where people takes shots or cross the ball. This article outlines an apparent change in Liverpools approach to defending. What do you think and would this influence how you set your teams up? https://medium.com/@chris.summersell/are-liverpool-breaking-a-sacred-defensive-code-8c5f806a4c41

6. Thought-provoking thread from Tom Hartley on the role and and our perception of parents. Are they a probnlem or an opportunity? Great question and the thread really got me thinking, how can I bring the parents along the journey instead of seeing them as an obstacle.

   Tom Hartley @thomaswhartley

   Do the parents of the children you coach cause you a headache? 🤯 If so, open this… 🧵

7. Another thread, sorry this week has quite a few! This time from David Garcia, who is asking us to think about the how we train our players and if what we do is fundamentally wrong. according to the research he has looked at, this may be the case. Instead of training thinkers should we be training predictors and pattern recognisers?

   David Garcia @IJaSport

   Is the way we think about football and the methods we train football fundamentally wrong? Neuroscience suggests so. It starts with debunking the belief that we are in control of all of our decisions, once we accept this we can approach football differently 🧵👇

   

8. Peter Motzenbecker here with a really nice infographic on press resistence. Which is the ability to perform under pressure from high pressing teams or situations. Some really important points to try to implement into your sessions.

   Peter Motzenbecker @petemotz

   Press resistance has become an even more important quality for players to have in the last decade, particularly for midfielders that play in teams looking to build attacks from deep positions. Do you coach your players to possess these qualities? @SundayShare10 #SundayShare

   

9. Another one from Tom Hartley. This time on coaching behaviour. In the thread Tom outlines how your behaviour should help you achieve your success, how it influences the players, how the context matters, and other influences.

   Tom Hartley @thomaswhartley

   Coaching behaviour is only one of two things we can control as coaches. On the whole a high % of coaches have a low awareness of their behaviours, while the players can describe what their coaches do more accurately. A very short 🧵 about things that could effect coach behaviour

10. Lastly here is Philip O’Callaghan with his five principles for practice design. How many of representative learning design, manipulation of constraints, attentional focus, ensuring functional variability, and developing relevant information-movement coupling do you make sure are always in your sessions?

    Philip O'Callaghan @Mr_Tennis_Coach

    1) The most sought after skill in coaching: Effective practice design. Coaches spend lots of time and 💰💰 attending courses but they do a terrible job teaching it Here are 5 practice design principles that will save you hundreds of hours

    ---

    Thanks again for joining us this week. As ever, if you know anyone who would be interested in our newsletter please share using the buttons below. Have a great weekend and week.