Players Become Students

The phrase “student of the game” is often used to refer to coaches who study the game tirelessly to better understand it to be effective teachers of the game. Part of this process involves analyzing games played at the highest level. When you use the term “analyze” to describe what the coach must do while watching a game, it requires much more thought and critical thinking about the events of the game than what normally takes place.  This is a powerful tool to help coaches better understand the game, but it is critical that young players take part in similar activities to become students of the game from an early age.

I wish I would have known what I know now when I was a player. When I get the opportunity to play, I am slower and older than I was 10 plus years ago, but at times, I feel the game has actually gotten easier for me to play. While my physical and technical skills deteriorate with age (sadly), my mental side of the game continues to improve the more I learn about the game.

Can we expose players to the same type of “coaching training” that coaches get to help their overall understanding of the game when it can help while they are still playing?

This is an easy activity for players to do on their own, or something a coach can arrange for players on a team to do together. With the internet and media resources available, it is very easy to get access to a game that players can watch several times. The players need to be able to stop and rewind to see things again and review important parts of the game for this to work. At the end of the process, the players should have a new perspective on the game and a lot more information about how the game is played.

GAME ANALYSIS:
Have the player(s) watch an entire professional/college/international game (maybe pick their favorite team), while focusing on just one of the teams. If you are doing this as a team, it can be done with one of the team’s games. I suggest having the players analyze the other team versus their team considering some of the questions they will need to answer. This can bring discussion back to what their team did well or not well in regards to the other team’s performance. The player(s) will write out and diagram the answers for the following questions:

1.What formation did the team play? (Diagram the formation)

2.Attacking Considerations:

• What did the formation look like when the team had the ball?

• What type of runs/movement did players make in different positions? For example: How did the forward typically run/move to get the ball or create space?

• What did the team do well to create scoring chances?

• What did the team struggle doing to try to create scoring chances?

• Who was the most effective/standout player offensively? Why?

• How did players in different positions interact with each other? (Passes, movement, runs) Example: How do the right defender and right midfielder work together?

3.Defending Considerations:

• What did the formation look like when the team lost the ball?

• Where did players move when possession was lost? For example: Where does the forward move to defend?

• What did the team do well to deny scoring chances and to win the ball?

• How did the team struggle to deny scoring chances and to win the ball?

• Who was the most effective/standout player defensively? Why?

• How did players in different positions interact with each other? (Pressure, Cover, Balance)

For all of these questions, the player should draw out what they saw to support their answer.
The player should watch the entire game without stopping it taking down notes of specific things that stand out to them. Again, this is just focusing on one team, not both teams. The players should analyze what they see one team doing throughout the entire match. Then, the player should step away and watch the game again the next day, with the above questions in mind. This time, the player can stop, rewind and take as much time as needed to help answer the questions.

If this is done as a group, it can lead to a great discussion about the game. This type of thinking will get the players doing more than just watching the game and it will begin to reinforce many of the concepts and ideas they learn at training with their teams.  With this information, the players will be able to draw easy comparisons between what they are being taught and what the high level players are doing. This will help create more tactically advanced players which can help them be more successful at higher levels of competition.

Although a technical and physical foundation is required, simple activities like this will give players “tactical” training to go along with all the technical and physical training that is done on the soccer field. It is another, simple but powerful tool, to help players improve their overall level of performance.