As I touched upon in the previous
piece, complacency is one of the most dangerous traps in football (and indeed
in life in general). It can arise from the formation of an oversimplified view
that you’re of an adequate standard for a particular level because your first training
session with the team went well. This wasn’t the first time I’d been struck
down with this, nor will it be the last. The most costly case of it was back
some five or six years ago when I was on an extended trial for the youth team
of a Ryman Premier side. In my first session I’d had a stormer – it wouldn’t be
an exaggeration to say that with the exception of one lad (who oozed quality
and was a pleasure to watch and play with), I had been the best player on the pitch. I
justifiably went home that night with a great sense of pride, but the barrier
between that and complacency is so blurry, so much so that many have trouble
locating it and resultantly are insufficiently equipped to prevent part of the
pride manifesting itself. I strolled into the next session so sure that the
events of a few days back would repeat themselves and that, even if things
didn’t quite go to plan, I had surely impressed the coaches enough to win
enough favourability points. Of course, it wasn’t quite as simple as that, and
the reality was harshly different. I didn’t play well at all in the next
session and struggled to regain the standard I had set myself initially –
needless to say I wasn’t accepted into the team at the end and had to continue
my search for a club elsewhere. Somewhat disappointingly, I failed to learn my
lesson even half a decade later, when it should have been clear that a positive
start by no means balances the magnitude of settling into a team in a strange
country where you don’t speak a word of the language (and hardly anyone speaks
yours). The easiest way to identify the oversimplification here is to remember
that all training sessions are different – in particular two in the same week
are unlikely to contain the same content. In a weekly schedule, different days
of training will of course be assigned to working on different aspects of the
game, with no two situations identical. Just because the previous day I’d shone
at running and in a 6-a-side possession game, no manager worth his salt would
assume I’d be equally as adept at practising certain tactical manoeuvres
involving team play, for example.
After the standard running in the
warm-up, the tactical exercises were something new to me. The instructed player
movements and fluid interchanges and passages of play required certainly gave
the brain a lot of work. What made things immeasurably more confusing was the
manager shouting orders in a language of which I barely knew a word. This made
me appreciate the difficulties of being a complete stranger or outsider
somewhere and the hard-work and savvy required to acclimatise before you get
ostracised. The saying that in football everyone speaks one common language
isn’t strictly true – you are still free to express yourself on the pitch, yes,
but the surroundings can easily deprive you of that ability, especially when
you need to listen to instructions and prompts – these things have to be
grasped quickly if you’re to swim rather than sink. The first drill involved
shooting with a couple of parts of interplay preceding it – with players in a
line and then taking up different positions after one another, it’s something
that’s difficult to follow if you’re out of practice with it, even in your own
language. Two cones were stationed about 5 yards from each other and the drill
ran such that the player standing on the first cone ended up being the one
taking the shot. So the player at the front of the ‘queue’ would pass to the
man on the first cone who would turn and play a one-two with the man on the
second cone before taking a shot – the player in the queue would become the
player on the second cone, he on the second cone would move to the first and he
on the first cone (the shooter) would move to the back of the queue. The first
one wasn’t too difficult but required concentration to not make a mistake – it
certainly didn’t get easier.
I think the shooting drills became
more complicated by varying the sequences of passes and accordingly the
distances and directions the players had to move to get to their next station.
The introduction of a tactical wingplay drill was the real killer, though. It
involved players running in pairs through the centre (one initially playing the
ball and the other in a starting position on a cone a number of yards in front)
with somebody on each wing, with the concentrated wing changing back and forth
after each drill run. The good thing about these drills is that there are many
variations, and the manager made sure we went through a few possible sequences
of passing. The kindest way to describe it would be that it keeps you on your
toes – if you’re having to overcome a language barrier also, it confuses the
hell out of you. An example of one cycle of play would be that the starting
player passes it to the player on the cone, who receives the ball and plays it
out wide (according to which wing’s turn it is). The two central players then
progress forward and must make a ‘crossover’ run, so one of them receives the
ball from the player on the wing to play a one-two with him. After the one-two,
the two central players cross over once again and the winger plays across in
where one of the two central players tries to make contact and beat the
‘keeper. Some attempts to execute a flowing move were amusing to say the least,
and it proved that understanding what the manager says still doesn’t
necessarily guarantee a problem-free run, but it must help. Whilst not
enjoyable at the time if it’s not going well for you, I do enjoy in hindsight
how such practices make you think as a player with regards to your next move
and the positions of your team-mates on the field, something I wasn’t too used
to back home.
On to playing a 7-or-8-a-side match,
I made the mistake of using my performance the day before as a basis for the
belief that this would be a doddle. Contrarily, I found myself off the pace and
somewhat disgraced myself a little, faced with the additional weight of not
being able to use a language fluency to save face. The style in which the players
played reminded me somewhat of home also, with rushed, fast-paced attacking
play producing some incisive moves on the one hand and frequent turnovers of possession
on the other hand due to interceptions or the ball being passed out of play. I
suppose my expectations that a more patient game would be played led to me
being taken aback also, as not being ready for the pace of the game always
catches you badly off guard.
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