His players take their own warm-ups, pick the team and decide substitutions. ED JACKSON-SANKEY explains his limited involvement to STEPH FAIRBAIRN
Ed Jackson-Sankey started coaching at the age of 12, helping his mother run the after-school team at a local primary school.
That was 16 years ago. Now, Ed is in the final stages of completing his Uefa A and Elite Youth A Licenses.
His coaching journey, which has taken him to South Korea and seen him take up roles in England with Portsmouth and Oxford City, among others, was interspersed with a stint as a secondary school teacher.
Now, he bases a lot of his coaching methodologies on the principles he learned as a teacher. SCW caught up with Ed to talk about one principle he’s particularly committed to: player-led environments…
EJ-S: "I think it depends on the context you are working in, the group you are working with and the stage you are at in your coaching career.
"For me, in my current role, we’ve been working really hard on this for the last two years with the group that I’m with now.
“Player-led looks very much like players designing and leading their own sessions. My job for matchdays is admin - and that is it.
"I arrange fixtures and organise the kit. But on matchdays, we’re in a position now where the squad has been picked, they decide when we arrive, who is starting, who the substitutes are and who will run the line.
"They organise the warm up and lead it themselves, and they make substitutions during games. I’m very fortunate that we’re in that position with the group now.
"But player-led might also be something as simple as asking questions or setting scenarios in sessions."
EJ-S: “The idea has been with me for quite a while. I first heard the idea of player-led, or player-centred, environments when the FA rolled out the England DNA model about 10 years ago.
"Since then, it’s always been something that, with my teaching background, I’ve tried to incorporate into my sessions.
“Long ago when I was a teacher, we were always told, when it comes to young people and learning: ‘If you tell me I’ll forget; if you show me, I’ll remember; and if you include me, I’ll understand’.
"They decide when we arrive, who starts, who the subs are and who runs the line..."
"I’ve always tried to embed that into my own practices. Then I started to see modern examples of it happening in football.
"The first one would have been [Jose] Mourinho when he was at FC Porto. He tells a story about how a game in the Uefa Champions League wasn’t going very well.
"It gets to halftime and he’s ready to go into the dressing room, but one of his senior players says, ’No, you wait outside. We’ve got this, we know what you want’. And the players managed it. So I’ve always kept an eye out for it since then.
“[Real Madrid head coach Carlo] Ancelotti has gone viral on social media because in the Champions League semi-final against Manchester City - and you don’t get much more pressurised environments than that, with millions on the line in prize money - he’s asking Toni Kroos and Marcelo, ’who do you think I should bring on, lads?’.
“I was on the United Soccer Coaches convention earlier this year and [Leeds United head coach] Jesse Marsch said something that stuck with me.
"He said a coach’s job - whether you’re pre-academy, grassroots or in first-team football - is ultimately to create an environment where the coach is unnecessary.
“Now, obviously, in practicality, there’s never going to be a point where a coach isn’t needed.
"But the idea that a coach is developing a group of individuals who can collectively take ownership of game day, sessions, their own development, learning, processes and outcomes with minimal input or guidance from a coach is something that’s really cool.”
EJ-S: "Early on, it was not so easy. I think ego plays a big part, especially if you’re in a high-performance environment - you might perceive that the players are thinking you’re not doing anything.
"Or, if you’re in a grassroots environment and you’re giving players ownership over their gameday, you might be worrying about parents perceptions: ’Why are we letting this guy run the team?’.
“But it is not only about removing your ego, it’s about having a process in place that allows you to get to a point where you can have a completely player-led environment, or as close as possible.
"You’ve got to do it a step at a time and layer in activities. My group are young people who want to do well, they’re desperate to be successful, but they haven’t, for whatever reason, been given the tools.
"By that, I mean the soft skills - they weren’t resilient enough, communication was an issue and perception was an issue in their own local environments.
“So, at the very beginning, it was a case of [achieving] player-led warm-ups. I led everything for the first few weeks, and the first step was for them to manage a warm-up under my supervision.
"I’m there watching. I’m a safety net, ready to catch them. They haven’t even got to be creative. All they’ve got to do is copy what I’ve done for the last few weeks and manage it themselves.
"After that, it’s ’can you create your own warm up?’ - challenging them a little bit more, but again with you as the safety net, until eventually that starts to be incorporated into practices.
“It might be things like setting scenarios in training sessions. We have a game we use at the minute - a scenario lucky dip. I come out with an envelope with different scenarios, and each team gets to pick one.
"One team might pick out every single dead ball is theirs, and they have to figure out a strategy to use that to their advantage.
"The other team might pick out something like they’re only allowed to play a maximum of three passes before they have to score.
"So both teams are given ownership and responsibility around how they can come up with strategies to use the scenario effectively, while also having to figure out what the other team is doing and having to problem solve that way, as well.”
"One of the things I’ve stressed to them is that you’ve got to be authentic..."
EJ-S: "That’s a great question. One of the things that I’ve stressed to them is that you’ve got to be authentic.
"You’ve got to be yourself, there’s no point trying to pretend to be anyone else or anything else.
"You’ve got to be self-aware enough to recognise what your own strengths and weaknesses are as a person, as a player and as a character. And you’ve just got to play to those.
“If you’re quiet, I’m not expecting you to be the one who is rallying the dressing room and getting everybody up for games or taking the lead in sessions.
"You might be the one who is organising the equipment, if that’s a strength of yours. You might be going around and having chats with people individually and working with people that way.
“It’s not necessarily about forcing people into roles or forcing people to try and develop skills that don’t necessarily complement their character. It’s not about that.
"I think it’s more about developing a base level of soft skills and then allowing people’s individuality to flourish in their own way and allowing them to explore those skills in their own way.
"One of the challenges is pitching it just right for the players to be challenged, but still gain success with the task you gave them..."
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