Becoming a Top Coach: Beyond the Tactics
WANT TO LISTEN TO THIS ARTICLE?
My timeline overflows with tactics: "I love how Inter Milan utilizes their WBs," "Unlocking City: Mauricio Pochettino's Chelsea," "Simone Inzaghi’s Inter Milan: Italy's Best Attack & Defense." But is this coaching?
I admit, tactics entertain. They serve as a puzzle, especially in elite football. Grasping tactics fosters a sense of proximity to players and coaches, like a portal into their world, their minds.
The puzzle-like quality of tactics likely results from how we present them—a bird's eye view. Jamie Hamilton, on a podcast (apologies for not recalling which one), shared this insight, paraphrased as follows:
In football's intellectual age, Viennese coffeehouses hosted football thinkers envisioning hypothetical game situations—a chess game of the mind. This simplification stripped coaching of its humanity; people became two-dimensional X’s and O’s.
Football chess became coaching's starting point. Those who brought the game to life morphed into pawns for outsiders, with their desires, beliefs, and wants yielding to the perfect tactical solution—move them around, and there you have it.
This bird’s eye perspective zoomed out, rendering us oblivious to who these people were. We seemingly simplified coaching successfully—or did we? This only works when players aren't standing right in front of you.
Football Chess: Stripping Away Humanity
Any coach knows that at eye level with players, coaching transcends football chess played in Viennese coffeehouses or on modern-day Twitter. Pushback is sensed when desires are minimized, beliefs belittled, and wants cast aside.
In working with any human being, it becomes evident that every person, regardless of age, possesses a unique perspective shaped by their past experiences. They've lived through unknowns, shaping them in ways both parties are unaware of.
Knowledge of 'football chess' proves inadequate; it's arguably football's easiest aspect. This abundant, objective, and static information hasn't changed since football's inception. Tactics are recycled, repackaged, and repurposed for current needs.
Beneath the murky water surface lies coaching's true nature—people. Entirely subjective, contextual, and ever-changing. There's no manual for working with the person in front of you. It's an exploration with ups and downs, insights and failures, knowns and unknowns.
Coaching's easiest part is 'knowing' what players could potentially understand about the game—like tactics. The hardest part is knowing how to help players truly comprehend and play the game uniquely. Coaching is solving an unsolvable puzzle.
Coaching's Dual Knowledge
In the world of ecological dynamics, you may have encountered the expressions 'knowledge about' and 'knowledge of.' As one coach on Twitter explained, “'knowledge about' soccer is expressed verbally and symbolically—tactics, systems, and principles coaches use to communicate. 'Knowledge of' soccer is how, why, and what athletes use to perceive and move.”
In these terms, 'Knowledge about' coaching football involves knowing the theory about the game—how and why a team might attack, principles of a back line of five, pressing traps and triggers, blindside positioning, 2v1’s, etc.
'Knowledge of' coaching football entails connecting and communicating with people, creating training sessions that recreate experiences for players, understanding how emotions affect player actions, reading the game in action, and behaving toward players' needs.
It's not about how much you know but how well you can communicate it. The catch is that 'communicating it' in football doesn't mean just telling, as the ultimate goal of coaching is not for the player to hear it but to be able to do it—to play 'better' football.
The Value of Experience
Girona’s manager, Michel, explains his development in improving his communication 'about' football to players. He mentions that he always asked the player to 'go forward' when defending, but he says he has learned 'to understand how the player is feeling' in relation to those actions.
This improvement as a coach would only be possible through the direct experience of coaching. Michel knew perfectly well the principles of defending 'going forward' or being aggressive in defensive actions. What he had to understand was how to help players internalize this football interaction.
This emphasis on the value of experiencing to gain insight is especially prevalent in Eastern culture. The 20th-century Japanese philosopher Nishida Kitarō wrote about the experience of gaining insight through what he called 'kenshō, seeing the true nature of things.
"To understand reality, one must grasp it in one’s own hands, or, better, one must be it." He formulated a term to explain this: 'action intuition.' He explains it as the sense that we get to the heart of reality by acting rather than by reflecting. Insight is not merely intellectual but actively experiential.
He continues,
"The most important thing happens not over there but in this present. The important thing is to feel, not conceptualize. Concepts always indicate something over there; it’s very abstract." When thinking about the tactics of football, they are indeed very abstract in the role of a coach and the players.”
It’s very simple. To be a good coach, you have to coach. Statements like, "X manager has to change this tactic or that tactic, why can’t he see that?!" undermine the difficulty of the job. The reality is it’s strikingly more difficult to be on the grass with the players than on your computer with those static images.
Rene Marić's Story: Balancing Theory and Practice
"But David, what about Rene Marić? He started a blog and now he’s a professional coach…" What is often overlooked about stories like Rene’s is the experience gained on the grass alongside the tactical nature of his development.
As Rene said on the Training Ground Guru podcast, "I started coaching half a year before we started Spieverlagerung. This was like going power-law; I was doing things on the pitch and I also did things in a more theoretical, academical way and trying through the years to make that difference smaller and smaller through more understanding."
In fact, when Marić started working for the Red Bull Salzburg academy in 2016, he stopped writing. When asked whether he believes people should produce content for social media or otherwise, Marić responded, "It sounds strange, but I have it [social media] to stay informed. I’m a passive consumer… I prefer being in the meeting room, on the pitch, and the office because I think that’s where the actual work is done and not on social media."
However, that isn’t to say that writing content, like Spieverlagerung, is all bad. In fact, I have benefited from writing myself as well. As Marić points out, by writing out your ideas, you get feedback from others and from yourself because "you realize how stupid you sound."
But here is the key: If you truly want to improve as a coach, write alongside your firsthand coaching experiences, as a form of reflection. As Rene pointed out, it’s like a power-law—a functional relationship between two quantities. You improve your knowledge about the game as you improve your knowledge of the game. Your coaching experiences improve through theoretical explorations.
An OBSESSIVE Approach to coach DEVELOPMENT
Let’s break this down. You want to become a good coach?
Start coaching as much as possible: Find somewhere, even if it’s volunteer, and start gaining insight through experience.
Follow your passion of improvement: Figure out what you believe you need to improve on through the experiences you’re having.
Recently, I had coffee with a coach interested in my reflection process. He asked whether I took a macro view of my coaching to better reflect. My answer was simple: no. I reflect on the part of my coaching that I am most passionate about right now. Let me explain with a metaphor.
When you go to university, most likely you attend a wide array of classes simultaneously. I studied business, so I took classes on marketing, accounting, macro and microeconomics, business law, organizational leadership, etc.
You probably learn a bit in each class, but after finishing, you forget the majority of the content. This happens because you aren't given enough time or the platform to use what you are being taught.
Now, consider a different approach to this business metaphor. My brother works for a company called Corning Glass. Every couple of years, he has the option to take a job in an entirely different sector of the company.
For example, he worked in the accounting department for three years, gaining firsthand experiences. After three years, he moved to production, experiencing an entirely different process. In three years' time, he will have the option to move again.
Which way of learning is more likely to provide true insight in career development?
This is how I approach my development as a coach. I focus on one thing I am extremely passionate about in my coaching and spend all my energy improving that part of my coaching.
At the moment, I am obsessed with my coaching language. I want to understand the words I use, how I use them, when I use them, and the impact of my words. I watch coaches of all levels and cultures, studying their language. I read about language. I write about language.
Most importantly, I put all of it into practice in my coaching. After every training session, I reflect on my language. I go back and watch my training session, devouring my language. I think about what I could have done better, and I am excited to go into the next training session and try again.
This one-track mind toward one aspect of my coaching could go on for months. In the process, I get really good at the thing I am working toward. Like my brother, I spend a lot of time working in one sector to improve. When I feel sufficiently satisfied, I move my obsession to something else.
In the past, I have obsessed over training session design, the study of Positional Play, crafting game plans (tactics for matches), coaching for youth development (brain development), group management, etc. I also have future aspects I want to improve, like managing player workloads.
Coaching Defined: A Framework
So, what is coaching? Let me give you a framework I’ve developed that is helpful for me to understand what coaching actually is.
Coaching is managing a Collective Understanding which guides the Choice of Individual Intention manifesting as an (inter)Action contributing to the Collective.
In three words it’s IMPROVING INDIVIDUALS COLLECTIVELY
This statement suggests that the collective understanding of a group or community plays a significant role in shaping the decisions and actions of individuals within that group. Here's an elaboration on each component of the statement:
Collective Understanding: This refers to the shared knowledge, beliefs, values, and perspectives held by a group of individuals. It represents the common understanding or interpretation of a particular concept, situation, or context developed through communication, shared experiences, and cultural or social influences.
Choice of Individual Intention: Each individual within the collective possesses their own personal intentions, goals, desires, or objectives. These individual intentions arise from unique experiences, values, and personal motivations. When making choices or decisions, individuals consider their own intentions in light of the collective understanding.
Manifesting as an (inter)Action: The choices and intentions of individuals lead to the manifestation of their actions or behaviors. These actions can be individual actions that align with or contribute to the collective understanding, or they can be interactions or collaborations with others within the group. Through their actions, individuals express their intentions and contribute to the collective's shared reality or objectives.
In summary, the statement suggests that the collective understanding of a group influences and guides the choices and intentions of individuals within that group. The individual intentions, in turn, manifest as actions that either align with or contribute to the collective understanding.
This interplay between collective understanding, individual intentions, and actions highlights the dynamic relationship between individuals and the shared reality or objectives of a group or community.
Tactics as a Fraction of Coaching
True coaching is mastering the process described above. Returning to our article's starting point, tactics are one tiny piece of this—a visible manifestation of this process for a particular group of people. It’s then packaged into a ‘tactical concept’ for ease of communication.
By now, I hope I've provided enough evidence to show that coaching surpasses the daily tactics we see. Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp aren't where they are because of what they know about the game. They're there because they create environments where a specific type of football emerges.
The tactics they use represent just the observable surface, like an iceberg. So let me repeat it once again: Football is a Collective Understanding guiding the Choice of Individual Intention manifesting as an (inter)Action contributing to the Collective:
IMPROVING INDIVIDUALS COLLECTIVELY
The best coaches manage this process perfectly.
The Essence of Coaching
The football world is full of coaches with all the football knowledge a coach might need, capable of playing ‘football chess’ against any grandmaster. Football puzzles are child’s play for them. But that’s not a coach; that’s an analyst, at best.
A coach is a leader, someone who harmonizes with the rhythm of a football environment, neither rigidly dictating steps nor hesitating in the face of uncertainty. Much like a river flows effortlessly through the land's contours, a leader navigates the intricate landscapes of human interaction with fluid grace, understanding that true power lies not in resistance but in acceptance.
The true coach is a mirror reflecting the interconnectedness of all those within the group, recognizing that the dance is a collective improvisation, where the player is both the dancer and the dance itself. Rather than imposing agendas, they facilitate, allowing the harmonies to emerge organically.
Their leadership isn't a quest for dominance but an invitation for collaboration—a recognition that each instrument in the orchestra contributes to the game's symphony.
Do you want to be a coach?
