Why Coaches Who Make Black and White Statements Are Stupid
I don’t like doing passing patterns in training. It’s painfully dull to watch and there isn’t much coaching being done. Passing from A to B doesn’t require a good coach (which is why so many coaches rely on these patterns.)
But…
There is value in doing these exercises and they must be done in the correct environments.
We are going to revisit my previous article on this subject “Why Passing Patterns and Automatisms Are Stupid” and discuss why making black and white statements is not good practice for coaches.
Passing patterns and automatisms don’t prepare players for football
I still strongly agree with this take. I don’t believe unopposed work is best for preparing players for anything other than three things:
- Activation/Cool Down
- Load Management
- Preparing movements you want to see in your themed SSG
Activation/Cool Down
A dynamic movement and subsequent passing pattern is a great way for players to warm up before a session. It’s more engaging than walking or running in straight lines and then turning around to go back into a line and do it again.
Load Management
Unfortunately players are human and cannot withstand Murderball intensity level training sessions every single day. As a coach you need to protect your players. Especially ones in an elite youth environment (like Ascent Soccer in Malawi) or in the semi-professional and professional game as they’re training full-time or more than three times per week.
Passing patterns can remind players of the theme you’re working on in training while removing the risk of exertion.
Preparing Movements
Your small-sided game will be massively better if you give players the opportunity to practice the movements you want beforehand
A massive problem I have on a daily basis in Malawi is that my players simply cannot comprehend training games that give them freewill and choice. I will touch on this in depth later, but to be blunt, we need to remove choice for them because they can’t handle choices. They can only work with one option at a time until mastery before moving on to a new option.
So, a passing pattern that teaches an automatism is crucial or else I’ll just end up becoming frustrated with my players for not executing the idea clearly in the small-sided game.
Passing patterns and automatisms can be replaced by themed small sided games
I’m still against automatisms, at least in principle, because I want to give my players as much freedom as possible. It’s interesting that this idea can be viewed as unrealistic, like the idea I’m arguing against — total control.
Giving too much freedom to the players can be frustrating because players make mistakes. They don’t make the best decisions every time. Sometimes, these players need their hands held and to be told exactly what to do because their ideas, when given the freedom to use them, are bad.
Going back to what we talked about earlier, players need to be prepared for the small-sided game you’ve created. Giving players the conditions of your small-sided game before introducing them to the idea of the automatism can cause confusion amongst your players. A conditioned game with too many rules requires the players to focus on more than just the game and your desired automatism.
“There are no certainties in football. Stop preparing players for certainties and start preparing them for football.”
I said this in the original piece. I still stand by it. Automatisms and how we train them don’t produce players for the uncertainties of football. We can introduce an idea or automatism in a pattern or conditioned small-sided game, but ultimately the conditions in which the move can be executed are hard to control. Build up from goal kicks are about as controlled as you can get in football unless you’re at the elite level working with brilliant football minded players.
Most of you reading this will never achieve that, so stop defending your use of so much unopposed work.
Passing patterns and automatisms look nice for spectators and that’s it
I still agree with this wholeheartedly. I rarely see public praise for a small-sided game. Very few clubs and coaches share videos of their small-sided games. I think it’s because they view those as more valuable assets than the videos of the activation passing pattern they’re doing.That’s why we see so many passing pattern videos and not as many small-sided game videos.
However, unopposed work is the grotesque and monotonous work that needs to be done. Activation, load management and preparing for new ideas can be done effectively with passing patterns.
Teaching a new automatism can be done using passing patterns.
But players would much rather be playing football.
We can’t cater to the needs of every footballer. However, as a coach, is there any real work being done on your part in this pattern? How can you educate your players during this time in training, for example?
Every exercise needs a chance for the players to learn something new unless you’re working in an elite level environment. Once you get to the elite youth level and semi/pro game there’s less for the players to learn.
Every so often we see a video posted on Twitter or Instagram of a passing and movement exercise that a top five league team used in training followed by the movements replicated in a game that led to a chance or a goal.
This is outcome bias. Yes, there is definitive proof that the trained movement was seen in a game. However, these are elite level performers in elite level environments who have all their responsibilities dictated to them.
Is that what coaching is?
How often do we see passing patterns or an automatism being learned by a team and then not seeing it in a game? Most of the people who defend automatisms and unopposed work haven’t seen enough training ground exercises and subsequent games.
I have. I’ve watched youth national teams, semi-pro teams (League 1 Ontario), pro teams in the Canadian Premier League, top flight teams in the TNM Super League, my own players who are youth international players for Malawi, all train and then play in games.
The failure rate of these automatisms and passing patterns is through the roof. Simply put, we are defending an idea of training based on the results in elite level environments.
In any other area of work this level of support would be met with much more ridicule because of how skewed the sample size is.
Defending unopposed work and automatisms
My players in Malawi struggle to perform when given many options. The level of education is very poor in Malawi to begin with, add to the fact that our players are so good when we find them at 10–12 years old because of how much of the poor education they chose to skip.
Despite being some of the most agile and technically gifted players I have ever had the privilege of coaching, nearly 80% of them will repeat the same idea and mistakes, even after being corrected.
Many of my players likely have undiagnosed learning disabilities.
How do we solve this? How are we still producing excellent young people who are incredible footballers?
Unopposed work
We introduce the idea through unopposed work. We do it for two or three weeks. We have football classes that discuss the idea off the pitch. We then create themed small-sided games.
We make frequent stoppages and coaching points until we can execute the idea we are learning about effectively.
Only once we achieve adequacy do we move to a new topic.
The players forget the first topic once we get to the new topic.
This is solved by having an incredibly easy to follow game model that changes very little from U12 to U18. Marc Schwenk, Head of Academy Coaching at Ascent Soccer put it together.
Marc is a massive reason for the success we have with getting our players to understand and retain new ideas.
In our case, we need unopposed work. Some of the greatest flair I’ve ever seen is used so poorly because the decision making here needs constant guidance and fixing. That’s why we use automatisms. The caveat is that we use the same automatisms from U12 all the way to U18. There is very little change so that our players have more time to learn, relearn and hopefully remember the ideas we have taught them over their 6–8 year stay with us.
Our players can’t use freedom effectively. We need to create the environment for their flair to thrive because they can’t do it themselves.
Epilogue
Coaching with Ascent Soccer in Malawi has made me question a lot of what I know about coaching. It’s been eye-opening. We serve the players so that they have a chance of becoming professional footballers. However, I have to sacrifice my own beliefs to achieve this.
I don’t like seeing a passing pattern in training. It doesn’t feel like I’m teaching my players anything. I’m learning to appreciate the idea that my players are learning albeit differently than how I want them to.
After coming to these conclusions, I have started to accept that what I like may not be best. I need to remove my desires and opinions from fact.
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