Changing and stress-testing a game model

Prioritise what’s important 

When making significant tactical changes, it is forgivable for wanting to give all your players all the information at once.

 

However, time with your players may be limited – a lot of us may only have one hour a week – and there may only be so much information they can take on board at any one time.

 

If we try to introduce everything at once, we risk diluting the value of our message, as well as overwhelming and confusing our players about what we want to achieve.

 

When considering what you want to coach, consider what the biggest importance is for your team at that moment. 

 

For example, is there value in working on the final third if your players don’t know how to get the ball there?

 

Defining early success

Every coach wants to implement change that has immediate and undeniable success; but success can take time, even for the most elite coach.

 

Our players, understandably, may not have that same patience to wait for success to arrive. 

 

How can you make it clear to your players that they are making progress? Can it be measured? I once joined a club mid-season and was asked to focus on helping the team to improve their build-up play.

 

For players low on confidence, and without a pre-season in which to embed change, we had to create clear measures of what success looked like, so the players wouldn’t assume they had failed and revert to what they knew.

 

This was achieved by plotting where possession was surrendered during games and reviewed both at half-time and after games, to show how adopting the new plan produced success.

 

This allowed the players to visually see the progress that they were making, in a way that was easy and clear for them to understand.

 

Embrace the journey

All of the above may take time to achieve – and success may take even longer than we would like.

 

However, once we have taken the brave step of change, we should make sure that we embrace it.

 

Changing a game model brings the opportunity to learn new ideas, design new practices and identify new solutions to problems.

 

Mistakes are a natural part of the evolutionary process. Even the best coaches make mistakes – but what makes them the best coaches is that they reflect on their mistakes and try to avoid making them a second time.

 

It is unlikely, even with all the planning in the world, that your game model will be perfect – that’s not how soccer, or any sport, works.

 

But, with every challenge, comes the potential to find a solution. 

 

Can you remain flexible with your game model? A culture where it is ok to make mistakes will give you and your players the time in which to work to their fullest potential.