The greatest influence in his coaching has been reading Horst Wein's books, and he was lucky enough to participate in a course of his a year ago. Last week he participated in course run by SoccerServices, below are his notes on from that a great Barcelona training week, which I hope you find as interesting as I did:
Joan Vila, one of the
founders of Soccer Services, is currently FCB “director of
methodology”, I understood he is responsible for the training methods
and practices (but he is not coaching himself) from the smallest kids
up to the second team. Joan wasn’t present,
but two other founders were.
Horst Wein has been
working in Barcelona area, and his work was referred to often.
Especially considering at which age it is best to teach which topics. The phrase “player
development process” was mentioned often.
They said it seems in
Spanish football all works well, but the reality is different. There
are still playing formats of 7vs7 and 11vs11 available for most of
the kids - that is too hard a better model would be
3v3>4v4>7v7>9v9>11v11.
They do not want to win
games with junior teams. They want to develop players. Player development is divided in three stages: before 9 years of age is the egocentric stage, 10 to 14 years of age is the summative stage, over 15 collective stage As an example, u8 kids should not learn passing: They still live in egocentric
phase. It is me and the ball or 1vs1.This is important for these
kids, this is what they will learn easily. 10-14 year old players
are best able to learn combination play with their team mates. They
still think of themselves mostly, but they can see team-mates as
opportunities. 15 years and older they should learn special skills for position, they are ready for
collective benefits.
This development model
tries to optimize learning at each age. 999 out of 1000 players learn
best this way.
- Teach skills that the
player is the most eager to learn and practice at his current age
- Prevent teaching
skills that are too complex to that age > learning is not so
effective > practice time wasted
- Prevent teaching
skills that are too easy and already learned > learning is not
effective > practice time wasted
Position rotation of
players should happen until 15 years.
What to coach:
6-7:
- running with the ball
- ball protection
- tackling
- dribbling
- (less) control of
orientation (body position related to ball, field and other players)
- (less) kicking the
ball
8-9:
same as 6-7, but more
emphasis on control of orientation (body position with regards to
play)
10-11:
- dribbling
- control of
orientation
- supporting
- marking
- covering
- passing
- shooting
- unchecking (get rid
of your marker)
- positioning in the
zone (zonal play)
- wideness
- depth
- (less) header
- (less) crossing
12-13:
- passing
- header
- crossing
Note that passing as a
concept includes the whole team work in relation to opponent.
If you train according
to this, you will not necessarily win the matches early on. But the
players and the team will be much better eventually.
The coach should coach
the same topic(s) for e.g. 3 months, until the players learn it. Then
move to next topic. Do not coach the previous topic anymore. This approach was new
to me and most of the fellow coaches:
- they coach the same
topic area for like 100 or 150 sessions (can be 3 sessions in one practice hour). Then they move to next topic area.
- the training is based
on games. Always games, designed to learn the topic.
- only coach what your
theme is: e.g. if your theme is passing/creating space, you don’t
then coach the defenders, you don’t coach using wrong foot, etc.
You only coach the topic.
- the coaching is done
by asking questions from a single player who did not succeed (not the
whole group). it is not allowed to tell the solution to the player:
the player must think himself. It is much better to ask 20 times and
let the player think compared to just providing a solution.
- the players will not
be bored, because you only play 15-20 minutes of each game, then you
change the game. But the coaching theme should be the same (e.g.
passing/creating space)
Almost everything can
be coached with three basic game formats:
- keep the ball game
(with extra players)
- wave (attack with
extra player towards a single goal)
- 2 goal game with
extra players
- extra rules can be
added, and there can be also special zones, e.g. for keeping the
playing wide
Some notes from FCB
playing style:
- keep the ball, don’t
loose it
- look for space, look
for numeric advantage
- play from left in
order to attack from right (fool the defense)
- play from wings in
order to attack from the middle (fool the defense)
- team maturity can be
measured by the number of REASONABLE back passes
- pass back in order to
create space and depth (when the ball is played to front, the depth
is temporarily lost)
- direct passes and
indirect passes (via 3rd team mate)
- constant support to
the player in ball possession
- strikers need to keep
the game deep and wide
- midfielders needed
inside to provide passing options and to occupy space
- Diamond is the basic structure in the game and in practices. Triangle is not that good.
- Important in all the practice games, especially the keep-the-ball games: ALWAYS have a player in the middle also, to learn how the midfield is played.
Typical practice
session:
- warm-up
- keep-the-ball game
20min
- wave game 20min
- 2 goal game 20 min
They spent a lot of
time to organize the game so that the players play as they wanted so
that they can then start coaching the theme they had planned. Often
they adjusted the game rules for 10 minutes before the actual
coaching started. Especially in the
beginning they commented the playing speed of the kids in the
sessions was too fast. “Calm down, think!” “Don’t run, think!
Where is the best position?”
