How to improve your matchday observation skills

Laura Seth, FA performance analysis education lead, outlines why it’s ‘virtually impossible’ to take in all the intricacies of a game of football from the touchline and explains how you can more effectively analyse what you see.

Looking for everything and seeing nothing is quite often the result for coaches watching a game from the touchline.

Attempting to take in every detail and interaction between each player on the pitch is a huge task and complicated further by the amount of action that goes on.

“A typical game at the top level has 58 minutes of in play time, 156 headers, 40 interceptions, 42 tackles, up to 120 attacking situations, 19 shots, 16 crosses and 2.8 goals” explained Laura Seth, FA performance analysis education lead.

“If I was to ask you to repeat that now, what could you tell me? But we’re expecting someone to take all that in a game and it’s virtually impossible.”

Depending on the age range of your players and the format they play in, those numbers will be different. Despite that, the figures still highlight how easy it can be to get lost if you don’t narrow your focus, according to Seth.

“With the amount that’s going on in a game, it’s impossible to take on-board everything, so it’s a case of how can we break the game down, in order to have a clearer area of focus on different aspects.

“You can link back to what you’re currently working on in your training sessions, then look at what are the two or three things that your team needs to do to be successful in that area.

“You start to filter the game down to a particular area of the pitch, a particular theme and what is success for you as a coach in that theme. All of a sudden you’ve now got two or three things that you’re almost looking to see if your players can do. Rather than just turning up and watching a game, you’ve filtered back from a wide view to those particular areas that you’re working on.”