Method

How I teach the game.

Players learn faster when every coach at a club teaches the same game. These are the ideas I teach from, the standard I hold sessions to, and the questions I put to coaches about young players.

FIG. 1Team intentions, from the ball's point of view.

01The ideas

Six ideas underneath it.

Perception and decision come before technique. Everything on this page follows from that.

Framework01

CDE

Communication, decision, execution: three components inside every action, all happening at once. A technically perfect pass to the wrong player is poor execution of the decision.

Built on Raymond Verheijen's Football Periodisation.

Game model02

The four moments

Attacking organization, attacking transition, defensive organization, defensive transition. Each moment carries an identity, such as available and threatening, a mentality, such as forward first, and match targets.

Team03

Team intentions

Exploit the space behind the last line, in front of it, or through the next line. When none of those is on, use the width until one of them opens.

Player04

Individual intentions

What a player's action is for: finding the progress option, being the progress option, or creating the conditions for progress.

Use the free, be the free, create the free.

Support05

360 support

The map from team intentions to individual ones: in behind, in front, through, alongside, underneath, opposite half space and width.

Insight06

Range and pinning

Range asks whether a player's position and distance suit the intention. Pinning is being free in front of or behind the opponent's last line, or creating that space for a teammate.

02The session standard

Four tests every session has to pass.

They're also where my coach workshop, Four Pillars in Practice, begins.

58 to 90%

How much of their session coaches guessed the ball was in play. Few had timed it, and the ones who had came in lower. The gap is where coach education starts.

01
Ball rolling time
How much of the session the ball is actually in play.
02
Intensity
Sessions at the speed and effort of the game.
03
Looks like football
Practice that resembles the game it is preparing players for.
04
Defensive problems
Every session gives players a real defensive problem to solve.

03Coach education

The Player in the Game.

We ask six-year-olds to dribble and look up at the same time. How much of the game can they actually take in? And who decided they were a defender?

Seven questions from my coach workshops, each set against what the research says and where it runs out. It's written to start an argument in your coaching room, and to settle a few.