A modern approach to coach education

 

I am, I guess, principally a football coach. I’ve spent the last 27/28 years working in football coaching and more recently probably in more sort of coach and player development roles; less directly responsible for the coaching of a team or a group of players and more responsible for trying to shape the program.

 

I guess my connection to Elite Soccer specifically goes back to probably 2015 when I submitted an article, which they. Published as a coaching conversation, stroke, a coaching discussion that went as a lot of my content does, at the back of the magazine. Most people wrote articles that were an answer to a particular question, whereas mine had posed more possible solutions as answers to a range of different questions and felt there would be value in exploring that as a book.

 

We wrote the first book Constraining Football, which I think to everybody’s surprise, sold reasonably well and seemed to be reasonably well received, such that we much to my surprise, we wrote a second book. I guess the sort of connection to Elite Soccer has gone through those things and the more that I guess principally a lot of that content has evolved and then probably aligned to that a lot of the sort of practical day-to-day work that I’ve done both at the Association at Fulham and more recently at Houston Dynamo probably lines up quite nicely with the content in the book, which hopefully means you get a dual process from a personal learning perspective. You get the opportunity to reflect on and learn about your work and be able to write it down, share it with other people, which I guess the old sort of cliche, if you wanna learn something more deeply, teach it to others, which is a pretty useful process for me.

 

I guess one of the things that I’ve reflected on more deeply in writing the books is that some of the messages that you write are received exactly as you intended them to be by the person that reads it.

 

Sometimes it isn’t the case. People read it and receive it in a completely different way from what you intended, which has been really useful feedback for me. ’cause you write some stuff and you go, someone gives you feedback. You go, that’s what I was saying. Someone else gives you feedback and not going, no, that wasn’t what I was saying, but that doesn’t mean that isn’t what you interpreted. And I guess the course provides a greater opportunity to more deeply enable other coaches to go through the process that I try to go to, which is more deeply understand what you’re doing, why you’re doing it, reflect on it, and then maybe change some of what you might do tomorrow, next season, next year, or in five years time as a consequence of those interactions.

 

And hopefully provides an opportunity for me and the other people involved in the course to interact with coaches as they’re going through that process such that you can ask them questions if they’re open to it, maybe provide them with some feedback that can shape what they do moving forward, and perhaps most importantly, enable coaches to build resources that best align with the intentions of them, the club or the environment in which they coach, which hopefully helps them develop a greater sense of who they are, why they’re doing what they’re doing, and hopefully shape and evolve it across time.

 

Yeah, I think the coaching award is intended to give coaches a broad, and at the same time deep exploration of the game of football player development, and then how to consciously and cognitively coach the players and the way that you see the game playing out across time. Coaching courses historically have often focused a lot on the what and the how.But haven’t necessarily helped coaches underpin the why, and I guess the course encourages coaches to explore and understand their why, what’s important in their context. Why is it important as a consequence, how does the game of football and play development look, I. To line up with the things that are important in your environment.

 

And in my experience of sort of formal traditional coach education, there isn’t a lot of exploration of the why. It’s, this is how to play a 4, 4, 2, this is how to develop your players rather than, there are probably not millions, but lots of different ways to play football. There are lots of different ways to support player development and there are lots of different ways as a consequence to coach it.

 

And probably trying to provide a range of different solutions. And I guess the sort of adage of build. Resources, not courses, means that through the course we are gonna provide a range of resources that the coaches can fall on and utilize to support their own development, but more importantly, encourage them to build their own resources such that they more deeply come to understand what’s important in their context and develop a whole range of tactics and approaches that will support them to deliver it Coherently is certainly not intended to speak ill of any other people’s product.

 

Many qualifications are mandatory, so you need to do a particular qualification to have the ticket to be able to coach in a particular environment, which is probably good from a standards perspective. But standards can often lead to standardization, which is a standard, drives everybody to do the same thing in the same way to meet the standard.

 

And a lot of the time a ticket gives you the opportunity to ride. It doesn’t actually give you a direction of where you might go with that ticket. And we believe that our product, particularly the way that we’ll approach assessment, enables coaches to examine the players in their care, examine the way that they want their team to play, and explore the ways that they then coach the way that their team plays and that their players develop across time and build.

 

I guess what’s effectively referred to as a dossier, which will hopefully become something that should they want to apply for additional jobs or be employed within the industry, it provides them with almost a kind of range of ways of being able to explain to, community director, a head of grassroots football, an academy director, the technical director at a football club.

 

These are the things that I stand for. Here’s the evidence of the work that I’ve done, and this is have come to better understand myself and my approach to coaching as a consequence. The course is delivered flexibly so it’s remote, it’s online. Coaches can connect with the content and in a timeline and in an approach and at a pace that works for them.

 

However, there is an expectation that people will commit to completing the tasks that the assessment asks of people. Not because assessment is something that you should do to pass, but that assessment is something -certainly through this course- that you should do to become more deeply aware of what you believe and to be able to express it to other people, and the more likely coaches engage with the content, the more likely they are to deepen their own understanding. But important to caveat that by saying the work that coaches will do is their work, which is "how does your team play football?" If coaches haven’t already thought about that before they come on the course, it’s probably an important exercise to go through before you start coaching six year olds, 16 year olds, or 26 year olds.

 

More deeply understand the players in your care. So profile your players and less of a profile from a perspective of saying, this player is a number six, where we can arbitrarily put numbers on people’s back. Or this player is like Kevin de Bruyner where you are almost trying to liken one player to someone that isn’t like them for a whole range of different reasons, but more deeply profile your players by coming to understand them as a human being, the type of player that they are, the things that might be important to them, both in and outside of football, that can’t not rattle around in our head when we coach them, and the more deeply we come to understand the human being, the more likely we are to be able to interact with them on an individual basis, shape our interactions as a consequence of what we come to understand about them, and see coaching as not only the coaching session. Where do we put the cones? Who wears what bibs? Which goal are we shooting in? What are the conditions that constrain what we do? But more have I come to understand these 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, boys, girls, men, women, human beings in a whole range of different ways. Hence when I’m coaching those things shape so many of the different ways that I think about my interactions as well as the actual football elements to the course.

 

And the aspiration for the course is that people that already have the mandatory required qualifications can more deeply sharpen their or and very much refine the way that they think about their coaching. Those that perhaps aspire to get access to some of those environments and those qualifications in time can almost deepen their understanding, which can aid future learning in more formal environments.

 

I guess the award. Is for a range of different demographics. I think it’s important to caveat labeling coaches to say an academy coach, a senior coach, a grassroots coach with the notion that the level or the quality of the coach isn’t only defined by the environment in which they work.

 

There are parent grassroots coaches who are engaged in other industries for their full-time occupation, who bring a whole load of depth of skill and understanding to their coaching environments, which can be equal to and at times, beyond people that are employed in a professional capacity. So certainly the environment that you work does not always determine the quality of the coach.

 

Invariably, those that are seeking to make career moves, that are seeking to be the next lead community coach, that are seeking to be the next pre- academy or academy coach. The opportunities that qualification or a course of this nature will open up, will in some parts enable coaches to express what they’ve come to understand about themselves and their coaching, perhaps to a greater level than many people that won’t have engaged with this content.

 

It will also demonstrate, I guess in any industry, people that are perceived to want to go above and beyond what most people or the majority of other people are doing, usually come with advantages. They’re usually perceived to be go getters, people that will do more, and that perception can hopefully be aligned, not just the perception of this person does more, but the understanding that this person has a greater depth of thought in their coaching, has a greater depth of existing skill in their coaching.

 

And for those that are maybe already employed in an academy environment or in a senior environment what can often occur, and I know I’ve found this at stages in my career, is that when you are coaching consistently 2, 3, 4, 5 years. You don’t necessarily become tired or lazy, but you can fall into a routine of knowing what works for you in your context, and you roll out the same stuff day after day, week after week, season after season.

 

And because of the chaotic nature of the industry, perhaps you don’t spend as much time reflecting on your work as you might like. The intention is that this award for already employed academy or senior coaches is such that they explore their existing work. So if they’re already organizing session plans, game days, player profiles, some kind of data or measurement that comes at the end of training sessions and game days, that.

 

Those processes can act as the building of the dossier. But what we will hopefully do and intend to do is enable a deeper set of reflections and challenges around the, around those existing processes to say, is what you’re doing optimal? Can what you do be. Better as a consequence, and I guess the new age of coaching is gonna be for coaches to be able to understand what’s important in their context and change some of their behaviors.

 

So as opposed to being a Pint-sized Pep, a Mini Mourinho it’s more deeply understanding what’s important in your context. And then more importantly, say what’s important for player A? What’s important for player B? What’s important for player C? And whilst remaining authentic, being able to change and adapt and morph your behavior as a consequence of what different people require.

 

That’s certainly gonna enable players to feel that the coach is more deeply trying to understand and connect with them. If in all walks of life, relationships are pretty critical to progress and a depth of understanding. That element of reflection that more senior or academy coaches can continue to build, can only help sharpen the quality that they have on the pitch and ensure that maybe if you are an existing academy or coach, that harbor’s aspirations of going and working in the senior game.

 

That some of those additional processes and commitments that you make may elevate you to the environment. Those senior coaches that are perhaps out of work or find themselves between jobs, this may be the type of content that they want to engage in to keep their mind bright, to regenerate their appetite to get back into a full-time role when the opportunity arises.

 

The syllabus contains four main aspects.

 

There’s the first aspect about playing football. Second aspect is about more deeply understanding players and player development journeys. Third aspect is how we then might coach that playing style of football with the understanding of those players in a coaching session, such that we coach football, but we also coach players and do the two things synonymously.

 

The final aspect is about measurement. And not measurement only from looking at numbers and data, but measurement from a, "are we doing what we said we were doing?" The curriculum intends to provide some backdrop about some ways that we might consider playing football. And we seek to use sort of three Rs to highlight what we think might be important.

 

That’s not to say that other coaches should think it’s important. We want other people to be able to say what’s important in their context. We need to have some clarity about what’s important to us. So we say we want the game of football to be responsive. And by responsive it encapsulates two elements.

Firstly, it’s responsive to the players such that our approach to playing football doesn’t just shoehorn our players arbitrarily into round holes. Assuming they’re square pegs, but the plan style adopts and adapts different approaches based upon what we come to understand about the players, and that is we more deeply develop our own individual game model.

 

We recognize that there are layers within it that we move between when the players change. And more importantly, the second point when the opposition change. Because if we have a relatively rigid approach to playing football, it’s not responsive to the nature of the opposition. So, when you are leading toil in the opposition, press higher, what are the solutions? When you’re losing two nil in the opposition sink lower, what are the solutions? And if we’ve only built one relatively rote or routine approach to solving that problem, the risk is when the problem changes, we don’t fall on a whole load of depth. So the first idea is that the game will be responsive to both the players and what’s going on in the game in any given day.

 

The second R is that the game will be rousing and by rousing, such that the plaza are exciting if the boys or girls, mom, dad, grandparent, a friend come to watch, but they’re excited, they’re connected. They feel a kind of effective connection to the game such that they’re excited. If people are working in an academy or a senior environment where people pay to come and watch that it’s rousing in the sense that people are excited if they put the television on, it’s good to watch. It puts bums on seats in non-league stadiums or in Premier League stadiums such that I guess increasingly the game, if it isn’t already a significant entertainment industry, it’s competing universally now with a whole range of other entertainment industries. So the game needs to elicit emotion when people watch it and by suggesting its rousing as a way of, highlight that importance.

 

And the third R is that our approach to planning coaching football is resilient. The idea of being resilient is not that it takes pressure and stays the same, but that it takes pressure and changes such that it changes across time.

 

So what we say is important today might be slightly, or significantly, different tomorrow because we recognize that the more that we show people what we do and how we do it, the more likely they are to adapt their approach to try to stop us. So to be resilient, we need to be able to change from day to day, but also for the industry and the game to be resilient across a number of years we need to continue to ensure that the players and the coaches that we develop bring so many of those exciting tools to the table that make people want to continue to engage with it. So we want our approach to play development, our approach to playing football and to coaching football to be resilient to be rousing and to be responsive.

 

And from a measuring perspective, we wanna make sure that whatever it is that we measure is what we value rather than valuing only what we can arbitrarily measure. So the reflection tool is very much: if we’ve said, we want our team to play this approach to football, if we think these things are important in the development of our players, and as a consequence, we want our coaching sessions and interactions to look like these, our approach to measurement and reflection should, as much as possible, line up with the things that we’ve said are important. Hence, it’ll become less of a comparative "my team gets more of these than your team", or "your team gets more of these than my team". But did my team get more of these today than they did yesterday?

When we’ve played the same opposition in a year’s time, have we improved our processes as a consequence of more deeply coming to understand and refine what we do?

 

The curriculum in that sense from a footballing perspective, has two aspects. It focuses upon the how we play model, so the how we play model for team tactics and team principles and the how we play model for individual tactics and individual principles. With the idea being that the team tactics and principles more clearly align with the how the team plays football and the individual tactics and principles more readily align with the individual player development are with a recognition that if we only develop team tactics and principles with the players, they may understand and be able to explain to us how you play a 4, 2, 3, 1, and when the right back comes inside or goes outside. But if they haven’t developed the individual capacity, skills, and movement abilities to be able to deal with the ball, to manage oppositions, to travel through space, to be able to pressure and deal with opponents, the risk is that this deep, broad, tactical understanding is built on a bed of sand because they don’t have the physical competence.

 

Or the technical and tactical ability to be able to do it on an individual basis. Those resources are built, in a kind of Russian doll capacity from big principles, start attacks, stop attacks, score goals through some specific strategies of the ways that you might finish attacks or score goals such as finishing attacks and combine movement to get into the final part of the pitch, and then embedding some specific tactics in the event that players and or coaches are interested in specific tactics.

 

So if it’s finishing attacks, there’s some focus on how we might do that in wide areas, how we might do that by attacking the opposite side of the pitch, how we might do that through congested central areas and how we may do it by penetrating the de the opposition’s back line from deeper areas such that big principles, give some broad ideas, strategies, consider some ways in which we might embed those broad ideas, specific tactics. Look at, in these situations, these are some of the things that you might do and the intention with the curriculum. And certainly those resources within the curriculum are such that it’s a go-to resource, not a work from.

 

So rather than say on week one, we would do this particular part of the curriculum. There’s a broad map of some of the things that a coach might consider in the development of their players that at moments in time they may go to. But the aspiration from the curriculum, from a coaching perspective is that if we coach more through game forms, through games with largely two teams, two goals, and one ball, it hopefully means that.

 

All of the principles that are both within our broad game model and a more specific plan development understanding are inherent through every coaching session. So we don’t say we are coaching, finishing attacks today. We may say we’re coaching our game model today we’re gonna focus on finishing attacks, but all of the other aspects are going on, and that the way we approach finishing attacks is responsive to what we’ve come to understand about our individual players.

 

The rationale for the assessment encouraging coaches to develop a dossier is to support them to develop a greater sense of clarity and coherence about why they do what they do. The dossier will enable the coaches to build a deeper understanding and build content around the four core elements of the course.

 

So the way that they and their team play football, what they come to understand about their players, and then what the player development program looks like for their players. To log and track coaching sessions across time that intend to combine the way that they want their team to play with their understanding of the players.

 

And then- as the dossier will in a macro perspective- in a more micro perspective, analyze and measure the degree to which we’re doing what we say we’re doing. And building such a dossier would mean that at the point that a coach goes to interview, that they’re asked to present if someone calls them, perhaps even offhand and asks them to talk about what they’re doing, why they’re doing it, and how that might make them suitable for a particular role, that clarity and coherence should be something they can present in a large form presentation, but also should just be something that enables them to speak offhand.

 

This is what I do, this is why I do it. Because they’ve come to more deeply understand it themselves. That’s something of a shift from traditional assessment in many forms of education where assessment is either everybody completing the same assignment or everybody completing the same test and being measured to the degree to which they fulfill the standard set by the awarding body to the assessment in this context.

 

Being coaches, presenting different approaches to playing football, to developing their players, to coaching, and to measuring how that’s going based upon their own context and all of those things being acceptable. But coaches being challenged to align the things that they do with the things that they’ve agreed are important. That means that people will present their dossiers in different ways. Coaches will come to the program with different degrees of skill. Some will present their dossier with a really slick, a portfolio or a really slick computerized presentation, some will have loads and loads of depth scribbled down on a piece of paper.

 

The quality of the dossier isn’t measured only in its appearance, but more in its depth. But more importantly, in the degree to which it brings to bear the things that coaches have explored both before the course and through the course, the intention is the course should, coaches wish for it to we’ll provide them with the opportunity to interact with their peers that are engaged in the same cohort as they are either on a more individual basis, should that work for them, or as part of a larger group, which should mean that they can explore their approaches to coaching and have them challenged by other people’s approaches to coaching such that people aren’t working towards lining up with other people, but more lining up with the things that are important to them. the aspiration is that once you have such a dossier is that you can continue to revise it, not because you are assessed against it from a course perspective, but because the course has encouraged you to build processes about how you play, how you profile, and understand your players and how you coach, which make it become an iterative process over time, that you are continually refining and shaping.

 

There are a range of different forums through which coaches will be able to engage both with the deliveries of the course and with each other. There’ll be consistent approaches to online, one-to-one interactions. There’ll be group interactions and as coaches develop their portfolios opportunity for them to test their content against their peers to say, "this is what I’ve built, what are your views?" Such that they’re gaining a whole range of different perspectives and being critically analysed as they go through the process. Not critically analysed as to that’s wrong or that’s right, but critically analysed as the degree to which what you are doing is right for your context.

 

Whilst the course is online, mobile. It will retain its interactive nature. Coaches will have the opportunity to engage both with the people at the front of the room, but also with their peers, such that the social interactions become a critical element of the course alongside the content that coaches are exposed to complete this award and you will be the future of coaching.

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