The next two sessions (Saturday and Tuesday) threw up some food for thought. Both very tough physical sessions, Saturday
with some very challenging intense sprint work in particular. A slight
variation of the Thursday exercise involving shuttle runs and press-ups, this
time it was working in a group of three, with one player in the middle who
would work for 45 seconds sprinting from one cone to another where his
teammates have a ball. The physical stuff was either 3 sit-ups while at the
cone combined with headers or press-ups combined with headers. The ball was
eventually introduced to the player in the middle, dribbling from cone to cone
before exchanging passes with the end player but by this time we’d been so worn
out that even running with the ball was a real challenge. I managed to excel
myself in the following exercise – 12 laps of the pitch must be completed in 12
minutes. It actually turned out not to be too difficult, but I pushed myself a
fair bit and finished first out of everyone, in under 11 minutes too. The shouty coach/assistant manager was at his shouting again: “this is not good enough, if
you wanna play for this club, you’ve gotta push yourself!” during the 45-second
sprinting. Lines like these do have an element of truth - every player must push himself if he wants to improve, although I think most players already know that. Does being aggressively told you need to push yourself make you want to push yourself? Or make you want to push yourself even harder? Well, it's hard to generalise. I suppose I'm trying to say, transplanted further down grassroots football, do youngsters enjoy being spoken to like this? Talented youths dropping out of football is pretty commonplace - of course they have to know that a desire to improve yourself is required, but simultaneously the balance between that and driving them away from the game because it seems too much of an uphill struggle is a delicate one, not easy to get right, and I think we often get it wrong. (I will definitely talk about this particular area in more depth later on.) Anyway, after some games we did
something which seemed very similar to the 12-lap exercise but proved to be a
bit harder. We had to complete 10 laps in 10 minutes, but each stretch of the
pitch (i.e. byline or touchline) had to be completed in 15 seconds before we
would rest at the corner and wait until the next whistle. Naturally it was
easier to run across the byline in the time allowed than the touchline, so the
recovery period was greater when waiting to run down the touchline, which was
definitely needed. Pleasingly, during the 6 or 7-a-side games I found some good
form and put in my best footballing performance yet, which was hopefully a sign
of me reaping the benefits of hard work and shaking off the ring rust. However,
repeated in the next session, I began to question some things.
When we’d gone into games during training, I had been
waiting for ages for some idiot in my team to pipe up and start delegating
positions. I was surprised when three sessions passed without a hint of this,
but reality unfortunately struck on Tuesday evening. A first-team regular who had been at
all the training sessions but not yet in a team with me was
deciding positions before we kicked off and it was clear that he would do all
the talking and organising. Calling him an idiot above was just a throwaway remark for what it's worth - he's a really nice lad - but I don't like this approach for several reasons. At a
lower level especially (where you can't guarantee 100% turnout or have an unbalanced squad), in small/medium-sized games you will usually have an
overload of midfielders, strikers or defenders in one team, meaning that if you
give people fixed positions you have midfielders stuck in defence the whole
game, players who prefer the wings playing through the middle and so on. Obviously
players playing away from their favoured position is going to occur anyway, but
assigning players positions at the start gives the player a sense of duty to
that position, and it becomes an effort to have to ask a player if he wants to
swap over (and a player playing in his best position then being asked to move
away from it for the rest of the game will be reluctant to do so to say the
least). Not setting players to specific roles, on the other hand, allows
players to be fluid and take turns to move around and interchange positions. It
encourages versatility and adaptability to a range of areas on the pitch and
instils a sense of independence into a player rather than needing to be told
what to do or where to be by a captain or manager. Moving around the pitch
during a small-sided training game makes a player more comfortable in a variety
of areas and less likely to be lost in a role which would otherwise be
considered ‘playing out of position’. Because of this rigidity, when players do have to move around a few times
during a game because of injuries or whatnot, it tends to confuse them and
impact on their level of performance, because they aren’t used to that
flexibility – this even happens in professional football too, and stems all the
way from 11-a-side grassroots level. And there's the rub - players will want to play in their positions in training and managers will want them to because it's in line with the team's tactics for the upcoming game or indeed the season. It would be seen as a waste to for a team's star midfielder to play left-back in a training match, for example. Most players joining senior football at this level won't really be used to playing more than one or two positions, and it's very rare that a manager or coach will have the time or resources to retrain them to a different role. So why would a player proven to be decent in his position want to go somewhere else? And why would his manager want that? This is why assigning players positions as soon as they join a football team at the age of 8 or so is one of the worst ideas for their futures. It doesn't mean it'll stop a kid developing into a very good player, but it will reduce his flexibility across a system. It’ll be of little surprise to you that on
this occasion I was one of these players who was shunted out wide when
preferring it in the middle, playing a right-wing back role in a back three, so
having to get up the pitch to support the attack, press high up the pitch when
they built from the back and also tuck in centrally when they played through
the middle or the opposite flank – basically, lots of running! It wasn’t
particularly enjoyable but it was a good test of fitness and tactical
discipline and taught a lesson on how to conserve and channel energy by
deciding when and how fast to run, and also getting your angles correct when
play is switched, something I’m still having trouble with. This stuff you just
have to get on with, and it was a decent if difficult experience. I admit, I hate playing out of position to fill a gap somewhere - I'm willing to give my best and learn what it takes to play there but I basically know I'm not going to be anywhere near as effective. That might sound like I have a list of excuses for playing poorly in an unfamiliar role, and to an extent that's true, but isn't that the problem? Why are numerous players uncomfortable with the prospect of not playing in their best position? Probably because they haven't learned enough about or don't have enough experience of playing there in the first place.
Next part on this session will follow tomorrow...
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