Understanding the Tactical Development of Football Players “It is not a question of 4-4-2 or 4-2-1-3, it is a question of having a team which is ordered, in which the players are connected to one another, which moves together, as if it was a single player.” (Arrigo Sacchi) It is…
Why does someone want to become a referee? An excerpt from: Motivation – Why Would Anyone Want To Be a Referee? The pathway (above) from grassroots refereeing to the Premier League and Football League is not easy and requires time, dedication, learning, and practice. In other words, an individual must…
An excerpt from: Yellow Card | Influence on Discipline In February 2018, Real Madrid hosted Paris Saint-Germain (PSG) in the first leg of the knock-out stages of the UEFA Champions League. After the game, PSG manager Unai Emery stated that, “His [the referee] tendency was to whistle more in favour…
Chapter 2 from Building A Successful High School Sports Program Why Not Build a Program? As coaches, we often take over teams not knowing whether we’ll be there next season or two years from now. That is the nature of our profession; the volatility of the coaching environment, better opportunities,…
The ability to create goals is a vital part of the modern footballer’s arsenal. Creation is not just in the realm of forward players either. More fluid formations and patterns mean that assists could come from almost any position. While it is typically the goal scorers who are lauded as…
Forward Runs The goalkeeper serves to the side of his goal with two players. The receiving player feeds into the target player on the halfway line. The two players without the ball make forward runs beyond the target player. The solo player moves to receive a pass that has been…
Once every decade or so, a team emerges that amazes the world. And, once a generation, a team emerges that creates a new era in football. The new era leads to revolutionary tactics and ideas that break with the ‘status quo’ of the game and which drive new schools of…
Tactical Periodization is a training methodology that first arose over 30 years ago when Professor Victor Frade, through his experiences, began to question the training methodologies used up to that point. Understanding that football and team play cannot be understood through classic scientific thought (analytically and decontextualized) - given its…
The content on this page is taken from "Togetherness: How to Build a Winning Team" Using Collective Language The philosophy of this book focusses on harnessing the power of “us” and “we”. The language we use plays a pivotal role in the development of togetherness. For a moment, let me…
In this excerpt from Togetherness, we look at a team's badge or logo Our Badge Nothing exemplifies a club’s identity more than the badge. Clubs typically have badges at their inception. It may have changed over the course of history but, ultimately, it Represents “us”. It represents us in the…