In his latest article, Fulham’s BEN BARTLETT explains how simple tweaks and constraints can influence outcomes and help support your club’s playing ethos
In my last two articles (SCW Jul 1 & Aug 5), I explored the value of larger-numbered games as a way of supporting players to learn soccer, and exposing their human systems to a range of different experiences.
This third and final game continues to layer in the complexity of soccer, and the human beings playing it, while the organisation of the teams draws together the principles underpinning the ways we have agreed we aspire for the team to play.
This continues to be shaped by the individual players in the team, connecting our coaching to our ever-deepening understanding of the players in our care - which is synthesising with the complexity we layer into practice and game experiences.
Greek philosopher Heraclitus said: "No person ever steps in the same river twice, for it’s not the same river and they are not the same person”.
If my team plays your team today, and then again three days later, even if we play on the same pitch, with the same players, in the same formations, in front of the same crowd, in the same climactic conditions – it still isn’t the same game. It will play out differently.
Experience continually influences the person we are and the ways we interact with the game and those within it.
Moments in each game also shape the immediate future; if we score early, the rest of the match is likely to play out differently than if we miss and the score stays 0-0 for longer.
"If we score early, the the match is likely to play out differently than if we miss..."
Learning, like humanity, is evolutionary. Our existence, and that which our parents gifted us, is continually adapting and being shaped within every interaction we are exposed to.
So, although this third game has very similar principles to the previous two, it isn’t the same. However, it’s an evolution, not an incompatible, irreconcilable inconsistency.
This game will be described using some of the environment design principles introduced within my book, Constraining Football.
The Reds, constituted of similar players to the previous practices, is organised into a 3-3-1. It is important the midfield three and central forward have had exposure in these positions during the previous practices.
In moments, this 3-3-1 can connect to being representative of a 3-box-3 and, in other moments, a 4-2-3-1.
The Blues have a lone midfielder in a 3-1-3; this can be a very able midfielder, exposed to a significant overload that challenges them to connect clever movement and quick decisions while being fleet with the ball.
It also allows the Reds to release from their underloaded midfield onto the Blues’ defensive line, linked to the principles of our aggressive pressing while retaining a sense of organisational balance in deeper areas.
As illustrated above, the Blues’ three-player defensive organisation further develops the opportunity to decide how to build up play with three central defenders.
On this big pitch, the players’ experience and connected decisions will be influenced by the distances they are from each other, their opponent and the goals.
These larger distances will be perceived differently by players than when the pitch is smaller or when there are a greater number of players on a pitch of the same size.
Subtle, perhaps more implicit, planning choices by coaches have the power to support players to experience difference that is, principally, similar.
If the distance is slightly bigger, a Reds midfielder has to travel further to initiate the press, possibly run quicker and decelerate over a longer distance, while the Blues defender may have longer with the ball and be required to pass over longer distances.
Even relatively small shifts in pitch dimensions will change the way players learn to move and play soccer.
The manipulation of these type of constraints are important, and still achievable for coaches who work with space restrictions.
Bigger pitches, typically, lead to greater variability in the types of movement and the coupled decisions that are made as a consequence of the larger space, generating greater freedom. This isn’t good or bad, just something to be conscious of.
For the purposes of this particular game, movements that the Blue players may make as the ball is switched may need to be commenced earlier than when the pitch is small.
Additionally, those on the ball may have more opportunity to weight passes into the space in front of their team-mates, due to the additional space, rather than passes that are played tighter to team-mates’ feet with smaller margins for error when playing within tighter areas.
Finally, the bigger pitch enables space behind the opposition defensive line for both teams to seek to penetrate on both a switch of play and a regain generated from a successful press.
"Even small shifts in pitch sizes will change the way players learn to move and play..."
The pitch is organised with two additional parameters, selected due to the nature of the intended challenges the game presents.
Thoughtfully and consciously deciding how to organise the players, pitch the game and then parameterise the environment enables us to connect the combination of the constraints to the team’s playing approach and individual player needs. This is preferred to arbitrary and unconnected conditions being indiscriminately imposed.
The pitch is split into horizontal thirds with a vertical line down the centre. These parameters are to support players’ decision-making and awareness of the pitch geography. This aligns with our aspirations to encourage players to switch the point of attack and press to regain high.
The design elements are more implicit aspects of the environment, yet they are connected coherently to the more explicit demands that are agreed with the players.
There are two team-focused demands within this particular game. One utilises the demand principle referred to as ’restrict’; the other ’reward’.
To give players the opportunity to switch play from one side of the pitch to the other, supporting the use of space on the opposition’s ‘weak-side’, the Blues are restricted to entering the final third on the opposite side of the pitch from where they left the defending third (see above).
The connection between the parameters and the demands provides some reference for the players, reducing the options they have at their disposal.
It can be argued that restrictions of this nature make the game unrealistic. However, by constraining games in these ways, player choice is reduced without impoverishing the nature of soccer.
In this instance, the constraint only applies to circumstances when we build through the thirds. If the Blues regain the ball in the middle or final thirds, they can attack the final third in any way they deem appropriate.
This is because the restriction only applies to attacks that at some point leave the Blues’ defending third.
In using ’restrict’, and removing some choices, it is important to still leave sufficient options for the players, allowing the practice to be representative of the game itself.
Conversely, the Reds are challenged by a reward. The vertical line down the centre of the pitch is a guiding parameter for this team.
Their task is to win the ball back on the side of the pitch the Blues’ attack starts from - if they score, they are given two goals.
This task constraint supports the Reds to seek to prevent the Blues from switching play; forcing play in one direction, towards the nearest sideline, and connecting to the work this group have been developing across all three of these larger-numbered games.
While the two more explicit task constraints or demands are focused on whole teams, reconnecting individual players to some of the tasks, conditions and verbal coaching points that have been evident and more eminent in previous games within this three-article series may hold value.
Sustaining and developing a reciprocity between the individual interactions and the team ones, across time, connects learning through multiple events rather than being a focus or learning objective for one experience.
Considering learning and coaching in this way supersedes the historical dogma of moving from subject to subject, lesson to lesson or soccer theme to soccer theme each time we progress from session to session.
"Their task is to win the ball back on the side of the pitch the Blues’ attack starts..."
Alongside the nature of the game of soccer, and our connected human systems being evident in our session design, our coaching behaviours can retain breadth and consistency.
Throughout these three larger-numbered games, coaches have been asked to consider the layering of our coaching behaviours to develop complexity over time.
Game 1, introduced in SCW Jul 1, furthered the notion of encouraging players to explore varying solutions to similar problems, arming players with multiple possibilities which are inevitably influenced by, and applied within, specific contextual circumstances. This was combined to the idea of 1v1s being much broader than the direct challenge of me vs. you.
Game 2, in SCW Aug 5, further developed the ideas from the first game, while focusing attention on individual player needs in which we, as coaches, make thoughtful decisions about player organisation (what we keep in and what we leave out) to heighten certain aspects of the game of soccer over others.
The third and final game, this month, embodies the use of both more implicit and somewhat explicit environment design ingredients, which coaches can thoughtfully and intentionally shuffle and combine, connecting to our team intentions and individual player needs.
The decisions we make in integrating all of these associated coaching behaviours will be subtly or significantly different from day to day and from context to context.
Context is a critical and, perhaps, defining characteristic in shaping our behaviour. It is context that guides the curriculum and influences it as a living, breathing, ever-changing reflection of the human beings within our club.
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