TOVO's Strive for True Development: Interview with Todd Beane
In the fall of 2017, I was fortunate enough to start working at TOVO Academy in Barcelona. In the following year and a half that I worked with Todd Beane, TOVO Academy founder, and the rest of the TOVO staff, I was able to lay my foundations as a coach. I had done my UEFA A and B licensing prior to working at TOVO, however, the experience with the TOVO methodology gave purpose and intention to my coaching education I had received from the Spanish Federation.
As you will see in my interview with Todd Beane, TOVO starts and ends with pure football development, and more importantly, it provides applicable tools, both to coaches and players, to stay true to that. Todd’s message is refreshing to those who feel like they are lost in the jungle of youth football.
From the very first time I met Todd, I was struck by his humble nature. Perhaps it's because he considers himself simply a messenger (although for those that know Todd, he is much more than that) of Johan Cruyff’s message which is how TOVO began years ago.
Todd worked with Johan Cruyff for 14 years to create the Cruyff Institute for Sport Studies and to deliver total football training programs to professional clubs worldwide. During his time with Johan, he was fortunate enough to gather as much wisdom as he could. Speaking with Todd, he’ll often recall of experiences when Johan provided insight about football and player development. One of those anecdotes was the seed that bloomed into what TOVO is today.
As Todd has told me, Johan once described that the only way to achieve true, sustainable success when it came to developing players was by starting with a clear philosophy and driving it through all parts of an organisation. It has to course through the veins of a club, or in this case, an academy. The second piece to the TOVO Academy foundation was attempting to recreate the legendary La Masia Academy for players outside of Spain. Todd wanted to give players from all over the world a similar experience that La Masia provides FC Barcelona youth players. An environment that is all-encompassing and touches on all facets of a player’s development. And so, TOVO Academy had its beginnings.
In this interview, we delve into the TOVO methodology used to develop intelligent footballers, creating a pure development environment (or as pure as possible), coaching with purpose and clarity, and everything in between.
I thoroughly enjoyed speaking with Todd for this one, and as you will hopefully see, Todd’s words are inspirational. They give you the desire to go out and provide a pure environment for your players. I left this one with an urge to continue honing my craft, and in my opinion that’s what a good coach educator needs to do.
Thank you Todd.
“For us, an intelligent player is one that finds solutions with vision, precision, and pace. That to me is intelligence when we speak of football intelligence.”
David - I am glad that we are finally doing this. It’s been nearly three years since I left TOVO and moved back to the U.S, and now I realise that we were working in an idyllic environment when it comes to the TOVO train abroad program. Let’s talk a little bit about that.
Todd- First, I want to recognise that we are in a train abroad program where we have control over, not only the training, nutrition, academics, but also the rest and recovery protocols, the social integration, the cultural events, and so forth. We call that at TOVO Academy a “pure development” environment. We do not have pressure beyond the main objective to maximise a player’s potential when he or she is with us. We know that. We recognise that. That’s not a typical environment. We’re privileged to work with players in a pure development environment.
However, when we think about what that means for a common coach without that environment, we make a distinction between what we can influence and what we can control. What we can influence perhaps is the behaviour of the parents, the way that they take care of their children with respect to nutrition, sleep, rest, recovery, and hydration. We have influence without control.
We have control over a training session. I would suggest that, unfortunately, perhaps it puts more of a burden on a coach to maximise the four and a half hours per week that he or she may have with the players. That is the only team training time that we have 100% control over and by extension the only time we can nurture players of great intelligence, competence, and character.
We have to make that time count and in order to do that we have to triage anything that is wasted energy. We need to stay true to the activities and the language that enables a player to play more intelligently and more capably. It’s challenging but it means for those four and a half hours per week you’re going to have to be razor-sharp and laser-focused. I recognise the challenge because I’ve been there. I am in a luxurious environment now because I have more time and energy to control many more factors, but it just means that our training sessions as coaches out in regular environments have to be that much better and that much more productive.
When you start to think this way, it actually starts to become a fun challenge. It means that an hour and a half of practice has to be an amazing practice. Dynamic, really engaging, and very practical. If you can nail that, you become one of the better coaches quite quickly and the players will have a positive experience with you.
“Are we giving our kids the opportunity to learn to pick up cues, which cues, and how to act upon them. And if we are, we are building intelligent players. And if we’re not, we’re just doing compliance training - they obey and that’s not really faithful to the match, is it?”
D - So let’s dive into a little bit about the decision-making model. The Scan-Choose-Do model. I am a reflective person and I like to try new ideas. One point that I keep going down, do you think that decisions are conscious actions or thoughts, or are they unconscious - are they just reactions to patterns that we see - and if so, how does the Scan-Choose-Do reflect that?
T - I’m not a neuroscientist. When you start using certain terms it becomes a matter of semantics. I had a Ph.D. tag me and say ‘Well, no one’s really perceiving anything in life, because at the neurological level something else is happening’ and I couldn’t understand because it was Ph.D. talk. You can go down the rabbit hole of semantics.
But I don’t think what will change is this - as a human being - without football or with football - we live within our environment, and every second we are picking up cues from the environment. We are making choices within that environment. So whatever words are associated with that, I think we can agree that as human beings, we pick up cues from our environment, we start to get a sense of familiarity from certain environments that we see repeatedly, and those patterns give us the confidence to perform more capably.
The responsibility of a coach is to give a player the opportunity to see patterns that they will see in a match, gain a sense of confidence that comes from that familiarity, and be able to execute their actions with more precision.
It’s almost like conditional algorithms, these “if-then” scenarios. If I want to read, I get a book. If I want to eat, I go to the refrigerator. So we’re creatures of these patterns - if, then. If I see this, then I do that, and football is no different. If I’m in this environment and I see this situation arise and I’ve seen it before, there’s probably a good chance that it’s going to resonate quickly and I will act almost automatically. I know that’s not really exactly how it works, but ultimately, picking up cues and then acting upon them fluidly is critically important.
Are we building intelligent players?
If we’re not, we’re just doing compliance training – the players obey and that’s not really faithful to the match, is it?
D - You make a very valid point. At the end of the day, whatever words you use, whatever terminology you use, a coach needs to place a player in the environment - a situation - that they will see over and over and those patterns. So yes, maybe it’s not Scan-Choose-Do but maybe it’s more of a mental model that a coach uses to reflect on how a player gets that information - perceive that information - and it comes out in an action that we see.
T - You know how I feel about this because we have worked together. I have a very simple litmus test. In the exercise that I’m running in my session, is it the player thinking or am I thinking? It’s almost that simple. Is the player making a choice or am I making it for them? Do the players have free will to execute their choices? If they do, I am developing a player’s intellectual capacity. And if they are just complying with what I say in a circuit drill, or they are just obeying what I say in a line drill, then they are not developing their capacity to work with their environment with some sense of autonomy.
We know that in a match, players have to demonstrate their intelligence, precision, and pace so we might as well train it if we expect it of them. That’s where I take a stand against traditional training. I really believe we do our children a disservice in this regard. When we break up the matrimony between perception and action, then I don’t think we give them the tools to put it back together when it matters most under pressure in a match.
D - Absolutely.
T - As I said, semantic battles aside, are the athletes making decisions, or are you making all the decisions for them? That’s a good litmus test for any exercise you do in a training session; be it for 8,12, or 16 year-olds - high level, grassroots, it doesn’t matter.
“All these things are learned over time from exposure in training and that’s where you get a Xavi and Iniesta and say, “he’s so innate”. Well, he’s put in a lot of hours.”
D - Football at the end of the day is a player-centered game. There are other games where there are more time-outs or stoppages where coaches have more influence on what is going to happen in the game. In football, that’s not the case. The case is you play for 45 minutes straight before the coach has any sort of influence on what happens on the pitch, and your training should reflect that. Is that about right?
T- If you look at American football, a play is about 6 or 7 seconds and then players are given another instruction on what to do. How many 6 or 7 seconds segments are in a 45 minute half of soccer? Every player is like a quarterback without a play being called. You think about the complexity that’s in soccer. What we do at our training is build that cognitive complexity over time so that they are better equipped to handle that and make it as simple as possible. We make those patterns seem familiar.
Here you start talking about creativity, or about an intuitive player, or a natural player. That’s not true. They’re not natural. What they are, is very good at picking up cues with some precision, what others don’t see or can’t do. And that’s what a creative player is. Someone who sees things with vision and then can execute that on the pitch and do so at a pace quicker than others. Then you have an intuitive player.
All of these things are learned over time from exposure in training. That’s where you look at Xavi or Iniesta and say “he’s so innately gifted”. Well, he’s put in a lot of hours. I believe Messi used to say, “I spent 17 years to become an overnight success.” These guys and women put a lot of time and energy to maximise their potential with guidance from some good coaches along the way. It almost does them a disservice to say “he was just born with it.” That’s just not true.
“It’s not about you and I as coaches, the protagonist has to be each child that is on the pitch enjoying a fantastic afternoon. ”
D - If you don’t mind, let’s talk a little about the coaching side, and more specifically your new book. I had the privilege of reading it a couple of weeks ago. The phrase that stuck with me the most is one that you used towards the end of the book. It gave me a good phrase to keep in mind as I work with young people. It’s “I stand, I rise, I fall”. Every player has their moment in the spotlight and are you going to be the coach that takes that spotlight away or are you going to let them shine? Can you talk a little bit about your book? Why did you decide to write? What are some of the key points that you want people to get from it?
T - Unless you are a professional author, which I am not, you write a book to put ideas out into the universe. I did not write because I expected Amazon to pay my bills. What I wanted to do is force myself to articulate a process that any coach could follow, including myself.
David, you were with me. You have seen me fail at making poor decisions or run a session that didn’t go as well as we thought it would. Maybe I didn’t use the right word at the right time, or whatever it happens to be. There’s no pulling wool over the players’ eyes. There is no perfection here from me or my staff, or anyone on a pitch anywhere.
What I wanted to do is say, 'Is there a process that any coach could follow that could give them a running start into coaching or while they are coaching that could really drive development?’ So I called the book “Clear Coaching: Harness Clarity to Drive Development.” I tried to be simple. There is no fancy stuff. It’s just about harnessing clarity to drive the development of the children. In order to do that, I’ve presented four steps: clarity of purposes, clarity of expectations, clarity of actions, and clarity of leadership.
Of course, I don’t have time today to go into all the details, but I really believe if we are clear in our purpose, in our case we choose to promote learning and joy, then we are on our way. Others can choose why they coach.
And then we start to set expectations which to me is a promise to a player. We will nurture your ability to play football. At TOVO, we develop players of great cognition, competence, and character. We make that commitment, we make that promise, we make that pact. So we are very clear in the expectations and then we move into actions.
That’s when I come back to, “What are we doing with the players intentionally?” In our case, from what they eat, what we do, when we take a day off, when we play on a Cruyff Court, when we play on the cement surface, when we focus on academics. All of these variables are intentional because we are trying to reach those expectations so our actions have to be intentional and clear.
Clarity of leadership is modelling the ideal. We detail our why, define the ideal, train the ideal, and then we model the ideal. Those are the four steps.
I wish I had those four steps articulated to me when I was a younger coach and I might have avoided many mistakes. If you have those four things in place, I think you will do a better job of harnessing clarity to drive a player’s development.
“There are so many false metrics that just become about noise. When we are in there, we lose sight the child has to come first. ”
D - Honestly, as you said, it’s a light read and it’s written in a way - you can tell that you are an English major - it’s very easy to read and it’s enjoyable, entertaining. More than anything else I think it’s such a clear message. You have to start with the ‘why’. If the ‘why’ is anything other than helping this child, then you’ve already started off on the wrong foot. That message is really important and I think it almost should be obligatory before any coach starts. Before they sign a contract, we give them this book. I really do think that you have done great work in putting these ideas really clearly.
T - It’s interesting you say that because we have a couple of clubs that are doing just that. We also have ice hockey coaches involved. It’s not a soccer coaching book. This is a coaching book. These are four steps to define why you are doing what you are doing, what you are doing, and then moving to how to do it. I actually only referenced football coaching on two occasions. One to honour Johan Cruyff and the other Menotti and the rest are stories of other athletes, other people, and researchers that give us that clarity.
As you said, the players have to stand, they are the ones that have to sing and yes, they will fall. And our jobs are to pick them and take care of them when they do. And if we do that, at the end of the day, the children will remember the relationship. They will remember the energy that was created around your season probably more than they will remember wins or losses. Either they leave with an energy that inspires them or they don’t.
I’ve coached teams competing for state championships and another team where we won one game, and I don’t know where I was a better coach. I think I may have done a better job coaching the team that only won one game. We had a blast. We were always up against it. I can tell you that when we won that first match it was as if we had won the championship, so much so that when we won that match that people were looking at us like we were crazy. They didn’t know our objective. We were trying to get better and have fun and that was the culmination of something wonderful. Yes, we were the last placed team. I might have been a better coach at the bottom of the table than the top of the table.
I love what you said about noise (Before we started the interview, Todd and I were informally talking about the difficulties of youth soccer and I referred to all perceived external difficulties as ‘noise’.). There are so many false metrics that just become about noise. When we are in there, we lose sight of what you mentioned, the child has to come first. In our case at TOVO, we say footballers first, but it could be athletes, musicians, artists, or any student. They are the ultimate protagonists. It is their journey, not our ego’s journey to get some badge or showcase wins. It’s hard because there is a lot of noise, and it’s very seductive.
It reminds me of Odysseus being seduced by the sirens. As a young coach, it’s even more difficult to discern really where you are sailing because you can really get caught by these seductive voices that have nothing to do with why we coach. That’s why when you come back to your ‘why’, it literally keeps you focused. “That’s noise. That’s ego-driven. That’s me at my worst moment. This isn’t what I’m about. There I made a mistake.” I think about this literary analogy, the hero’s journey, but in this case, the child’s journey is the one that is most important and we just have to make sure that they are on course and avoid the seductive sirens derailing us from our purpose.
D - There is one paragraph that I highlighted that is such a good tool to keep you focused on what actually matters. It’s the paragraph where you describe imagining that your player at the end of the year is evaluating you. This is a good thought experiment because it gives you a picture about who you want to be. As you have said, some things can pollute your environment and you can always go back to this thought experiment and say “Am I being the person my player wants me to be?”
T - This is not rocket science. Imagine if you wrote down your ‘why’ in a journal. I have done this with probably 1500 coaches around the world that we have worked with. Not once has any coach in the world said that their ‘why’ is to belittle a child, humiliate a child, win at all cost, throw values at the window because a trophy is more important than ethics or integrity. Not once.
The common purpose is about nurturing values, instilling passion, sharing the joy of the game, nurturing young people to their greatest potential. And I’m talking about an Ajax coach to a humble coach in rural New Hampshire. We all share this purpose.
Imagine if you write that down where you could refer to it regularly. After a match, or a difficult conversation with a parent or director you could ask yourself in self-reflection, “Did I do that today? Did I stay true to my ‘why’?” Personally, I know there have been many times in a heated moment when I lost sight of my purpose.
It’s so simple but I have rarely found coaches that write it down and hold themselves accountable because of the noise you mentioned. For example, I was a winning coach but that doesn’t mean my behaviour was my best at all times. My ‘why’ brings me back to my best self whether I win, lose, or draw. It’s so simple but it’s so rare. You’re still young David, but I wish I had done that exercise in my twenties rather than wait until later because it would have kept me on course.
But that is the journey.
D - That is probably a good place to end that. Let’s encourage coaches to do that now after reading this article. Write their ‘why’, and put it somewhere where they will see it every day.
T - I love that imagery, how do you avoid chaotic noise? The seductive noise. This debilitating noise, and stay focused on your why. There’s noise everywhere. You’ve lived here. You know what it’s like in Catalonia. There’s noise here, too. I love the imagery. I hope you write about that. How can we maintain focus to drown out the voices that push us awry from that purpose?
D - I appreciate it and thank you for your time.
If you are a coach, regardless of what sport you coach, the level, your experience, etc, I highly recommend Todd’s book, Clear Coaching: Harness Clarity To Drive Development. It’s the guiding compass every coach needs.
You can follow Todd on Twitter or check out TOVO’s website for everything they have to offer from coaching courses to their train abroad program.
