How to work effectively with individuals

Ben Bartlett, FA youth coach educator, outlines how working with individuals, rather than stopping the whole group, can help players stay engaged.

Mavericks divide opinion, particularly in a team sport environment.

The ability of people who function and think differently from the recognised norm can change the game, for the better or worse – hence why they divide opinion.

Football is a team game populated by a collection of individuals. The way we coach, set our team up and work with the players is our systematic approach.

Systems tend to behave in ways that are particular to them. Take coach education as an example. Assessment of awards, in football and other sports, often involves a coach following a coaching theme and approach that is determined by the awarding body. This systematically rewards standardisation and conformity. If we design a coach education system in a particular way to do a particular thing, we probably shouldn’t be surprised if it does it.

This can quell the development of the new and unorthodox and generate a culture where top down standardisation is king. This principle can permeate to the way coaches coach players. Narrow profiling of the things that we would like players to do can be accompanied by player de-selection if they don’t look or do the things in the way the coach believes they should be done.

How might we unify individuals in a sporting sense, providing the opportunity for different players, playing in the same system and ‘identity’ to look and play differently?

The video below provides an example of how combining the ‘design’ of a piece of work with the ‘demands’ placed on the players can constrain individual practice within a team framework. The constraints the players are exposed to enables the practice to run uninterrupted which can be useful, particularly on cold, wet evenings.

People who enjoy playing football don’t often like to stop playing football to listen to someone talk about football. Players, quite often, like to be supported to get better at football though. This video example might provide an example of how players can be challenged and supported to practise getting better whilst being physically active for a significant amount of the time they are at practice.

In the clip, you can see that the pitch is wider on one side than the other. This provides space for the right centre back (Marc) to practice his passing range and link this to the right forward (Dan) practising stretching the game by threatening the space behind.

Conversely, the left centre back (Sam) is playing on the narrow side of the pitch. The tight space on that side and the nature of his task restricts the ways he can step into midfield – leading him towards his task without explicitly telling him how to solve the problem.

The two centre backs play in the same position (albeit one left and the other right) but bring different characteristics to the game. Left sided centre backs are also interesting to watch. Last season I watched 33 games of 11v11 football. There were 66 left-sided centre backs playing in those games. Only one of those 66 was left-footed. The task that Sam is working on enables him to practice being a centre back, who steps out, while improving receiving on his back (left) foot, which might support him to be less predictable to opponents (who could lock him onto his left foot if he can’t use it very well).

This notion continues across the whole team. The session lasted 35 minutes as part of the delivery on a coaching course. The players played for 25 of the 35 minutes (71% of time playing) with 5 x 2 minute stoppages for the players to talk with a coach or a mate about how they were getting on, join their task up with a team-mate's challenge (if appropriate) or spend some time thinking about how it was going.

Each player is part of the wider team learning how to play in a 3-5-2. The ways these tasks are agreed and decided can allow players to develop their own unorthodox and different ways to play the game as part of a larger entity. It also enables differentiation where the ‘standard’ that people are working towards is individual to them.

The FA aspires to do the same for coaches and their education. Support each individual coach to recognise the needs of their environment (including the individual characteristics of each of their players) and support each coach’s own unique development in relation to them and their context. The desire for players to be adaptable decision-makers who can self-manage should be reflected in the ways their coaches are encouraged to flourish.