Teaching modern football

By Salvatore Pappalardo

Modern football is nowadays played by thinking players that, having learned some principles, can read a situation and play it. To using a parallelism, you can think like someone who want to learn a language (maybe English), this person can learn some sentences and he will always use them, it is easy and fast, but what if the conversation becomes more complex? So, this would be like to play as old football school. Otherwise someone who spends a lot of time learning the words, he would spend more time and he would face more difficulties at the beginning, but in a long term you will see him to understand every conversation and be able to speak using and mixing different words. This is modern football.
Goal of this book is to give to you the tools to plan a learning and development process that permits to each young player to grow and to store the skills to play modern football, in other words: the ability of‘reading’a situation and to act/react consequently. In short: to shape ‘thinking’ players.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Salvatore Pappalardo
• Release date: Aug 29, 2019
• ISBN: 9780359848607

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Sommario

Introduction 2

1. Methodology 4

1.1 Training characteristics 10

1.2 Applied skills 13

2. Game principles 42

2.1 In possession principles 43

2.2 No possession principles 52

2.3 Transitions 61

3. Methods 67

3.1 Situational 68

3.1.1 1 v 1 68

3.1.2 2 v 1 73

3.1.3 2 v 2 74

3.1.4 3 v 2 83

3.1.5 3 v 3 89

3.1.6 3 v 2 + 1 92

3.1.7 4 v 3 93

3.1.8 4 v 2 + 1 95

3.1.9 4 v 4 97

3.1.10 4 v 3 + 1 99

3.1.11 Special focus on the possession phase 100

3.1.12 Special focus on the no possession phase 102

3.1.13 Transitions 108

3.2 Functional and analytical drills 112

3.2.1 Cruxes 113

3.2.2 Squares 128

3.2.3 Triangles 135

3.2.4 Others 141

3.3 Rondos and possession games 148

3.4 Positional games 160

3.5 Small sided games and theme matches 171

4. Planning and realization 185

Introduction

Football is a situational game. It means that every football match has its own situation and, furthermore, in the same football match you can see many (so many) different situations. Starting from this statement you might think, how can I teach something that is always different? Good point, well in football some coaches tried to diminish the variables by saying ‘’when this happens then do this’’ and they use this sentence trying to foresee all the situations they think can happen. This is an approach that doesn’t leave any option to the player but the one the coach said, so it is like the player is a no thinking robot responding to the coach’s instructions. Also, a coach can’t forecast all, so there will be always something that the coach didn’t predict.

Modern football is nowadays played by thinking players that, having learned some principles, can read a situation and play it. To using a parallelism, you can think like someone who want to learn a language (maybe English), this person can learn some sentences and he will always use them, it is easy and fast, but what if the conversation becomes more complex? So, this would be like to play as old football school. Otherwise someone who spends a lot of time learning the words, he would spend more time and he would face more difficulties at the beginning, but in a long term you will see him to understand every conversation and be able to speak using and mixing different words. This is modern football.

It is also a team game, so it is necessary to cooperate to play it. But in order to collaborate each player needs to know what to do, where to go, when and how. Last, but not least, football is, obviously, played by using feet, so mastering the ball is fundamental to be able to play it. Teaching football is, therefore, something complex considering the trend that this sport has been taken.

Tendency in football, as in all aspects of the world, is about to get more complex along with the years and the seasons. If in the past decades being good with the ball, being strong without the ball and, mostly, following the ‘rules’ dictated by the position held on the pitch was enough, nowadays more abilities have to be mastered.

The explanation of the new needs house on the history and the evolution of the game; with the intent to be short here, the main milestones are summarized as follow:

-Netherlands ’74, the position given at the beginning of the match is not a fixed role, but it changes by the situation that it occurs; using a literature parallelism: it’s like ‘liquid society’ (concept-ed by Bauman, 1999) where there are no more fixed reference points. So, depending on the specific situation every player adapts himself, given for granted that every player knows what he has to do; by this innovation descending two implications: 1) a player should know how to play in every position, 2) every player has to ‘read’ the situation to act/react;

-Sacchi ‘80s, the speed game accelerates, the team remains ‘short’ using three main tactics: offensive pressing, zone mark and offside;

-Back pass rule ’92, further speed up of the game, since this date with even less pauses;

-Guardiola 2008-12, possession and domain of the game are the new breakthrough.

Speed increasing emerges to be evident as the file rouge of the trend in football, along with more complex strategy, tactics and consequently methodology of coaching and methods of training. In order to meet new football players needs is common to find in a technical staff several professionals, each one deputed on a specific area of development: sport science, nutrition and performance, psychological comfort, technical and tactical specific focus. If your club doesn’t have the possibility to provide for these professionals, it is coach’s duty to know at least a little about these topics and to provide support to each of your players.

Today all the top teams know exactly what to do when they are in possession of the ball, what to do in case of losing possession and so what to do without the ball and finally what to do when they reconquer the ball.

Goal of this book is to give to you the tools to plan a learning and development process that permits to each young player to grow and to store the skills to play modern football, in other words: the ability of ‘reading’ a situation and to act/react consequently. In short: to shape‘thinking’ players.

1. Methodology

The ensemble of theories and grounds that permits to choose between different kinds of methods is what is named methodology; we talk about methodology because we need to know: 1) the grounds on which teaching is based, 2) the theoretical lines to follow to draw and delivery effective drills.

Teaching and learning are two sides of the same coin, therefore a little of knowledge about learning is needed to start to know about teaching.

Learning is that process that allows a person to add on or modify in himself something (knowledge, behaviour, abilities or values) and there are different ways to learn: by seeing and imitating, by doing and repeating, by exploring and reflecting. For examples: there are grounds of learning just by seeing one person doing a motion or a gesture (so called mirroring , Rizzolatti et al. 1995), think about how babies learn to talk; or it is possible to get more abilities/speed/strength by doing and repeating a drill; sometimes there is the chance to discover something new by exploring and thinking about it.

Because football is a game not only played by foot, but also (and maybe mostly) by brain, it is important to mix the different ways of learning (consequently of teaching). This is why, to help you to understand how to create new drills and customized exercises, some characteristics are suggested as pillars.

Football learning process depends on the age, each age has his peculiarity so the coaching approach has to be adapted. In this table you can find the activities, the focus and the targets wanted based on each age:

Coordinative skills are divided in two groups: 1) basic: it is the ability to learn new movements, to control them to reach a goal also to adapt and transform them to reach the same goal in different contingencies; 2) football specific: balance, orientation, differentiation, reaction, rhythmic, ability to adapt and adjust, interoperability.

The first is the ability to maintain and, in case, to restore balancing when pushed, after a jump or a tackle: you