Team intentions
Understanding Team Intentions in Football
What the team is trying to do together, with and without the ball.
Watch on Loom
Coach mentoring · Player analysis · Talks and workshops
Better players come from better conditions. I help coaches and players build them.
Most players can do more than they show on match day. Something gets in the way: a picture they can't read yet, a session that looks nothing like a match, a mistake they can't let go of. I help you find it and clear it.
Twenty minutes by video, free. Find out if it fits. No pitch.
What I believe
Performance =Potential −Interference.
Every player has more in them than shows up on match day. The gap is interference.
- PerformanceWhat shows up when it counts.
- PotentialThe ability a player has built, and the ability still to come.
- InterferenceWhatever gets in the way. It lives in a player's head as often as in their feet.
So I coach both sides of it: perception and decision on the pitch, and self-awareness, confidence and self-control in the moments around them. All a coach can do is create the conditions and environment that let players improve themselves and each other.
Read the transcript
"I did my postgraduate in coaching at the University of Central Lancashire. There was a part in our EQ module, in a book I was reading. I believe it was called Emotional Intelligence Coaching. And there was a nice little equation in it. Performance is equal to your potential minus interferences. And my head just started going: what is interfering with my potential? Because as a coach, your job was to improve football ability, but your ability won't come out unless we have removed as many interferences as possible. It led me to a journey where I was reflecting on my values, and what had interfered with me doing my best. There's probably a lot of coaches out there who are better than me, more tactically adept. But I feel like it accelerated my development as a coach and a person."
I found the equation during my postgraduate study at the University of Central Lancashire, in a book called Emotional Intelligence Coaching.1 It traces back to Timothy Gallwey's The Inner Game.2
My first question was what was interfering with mine. One answer was a red card, earned on a touchline when I lost control of myself. Every session, mentoring call and player analysis I do still starts from the same question: what is in the way?
1 Neale, S., Spencer-Arnell, L. and Wilson, L. (2009). Emotional Intelligence Coaching: Improving Performance for Leaders, Coaches and the Individual. Kogan Page. Publisher. 2 Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis. Random House.
How I work
What players learn to see and do.
Players stop using what you train when the game asks a question they can't read. These six ideas give them the picture first, then the decision, then the touch. Perception and decision come before technique.
CDE
Every action is a decision
Communication, decision and execution, inside every action at once, from Raymond Verheijen's Football Periodisation. A technically perfect pass to the wrong player is poor execution of the decision.
What changesPlayers stop being judged on the touch alone, and start reading the picture before the ball arrives.
The game as the model
The four moments
Attacking organization, attacking transition, defensive organization, defensive transition. Each carries an identity, a mentality and match targets.
What changesPlayers know which moment they are in, and what the team needs from them in it.
Team
Team intentions
Exploit the space behind the last line, in front of it, or through the next line. Visit the widths until we can.
What changesEleven decisions start to point the same way.
Player
Individual intentions
Find the progress option, be the progress option, or improve the conditions for progress. Use the free, be the free, create the free.
What changesOff the ball stops being waiting time. There is always a job.
Support
360 support
Help from every side of the ball: in behind, in front, through, alongside, underneath, opposite half space and width. Look forward, play forward.
What changesPlayers look before they receive, and know where the next pass is going.
Insight
Range and pinning
A starting position and distance that suit the intention, and being free in front of or behind the opponent's last line.
What changesPlayers are in the right place to matter, at the right moment.
Clips
One idea, one minute.
Short cuts from my analysis videos. Real match footage, one idea each, captioned so they work with the sound off.
The football
The game, taught on film.
Team intentions, pinning, decision making, range and 360 support, explained the way my own players and coaches hear them. Press play.
The full libraryIndividual intentions
Individual Intentions and Decision Making
Progress the ball, or become a progress option: two ends of one exchange.
Watch on LoomDecision making
Mastering Decision Making and Range
Decision making and range in football actions.
Watch on Loom360 support
Mastering 360 Degree Support in Football
Look forward, play forward. Use the free, be the free, create the free.
Watch on LoomWhat I work on
The game, the person, and the club around them.
A player develops inside a session, a coach and a club. Each one can clear the way or add interference, so my week goes wherever the interference is.
On the grass
The game as the modelOne way of playing from the youngest team to the oldest, so a player moving up already speaks the language.Session designNew practice every week, built from the club's principles and the players in front of me.Developmental scienceWhat the research on how children think, move and grow supports, and where coaching guesswork begins.The game
Players and coaches
Emotional skills in the weekSelf-control, confidence and resetting after a mistake, planned into sessions like any other skill.Coaching under pressureA coach's state becomes the team's state. I learned that one with a red card.Wellbeing and performanceNeeds, habits and wellbeing treated as part of performance, because players bring all of it onto the pitch.Coach developmentWorkshops that start from a coach's own sessions, then set a standard they can grow into.The person
Staff and tools
Team cultureRoutines that carry a club's values to its newest coach, using Vanessa Urch Druskat's research on teams.Staff structureLearning and development, analysis and technology, and the phase leads, working as one department.Football technologyA coach platform, dashboards, and athlete and analysis tools, brought into the way coaches work.The club
Background
Where the method comes from.
Every idea above has been tested on the grass, with academy and senior players, and with the coaches who teach them.
- LicenceUEFA A Licence
- StudyPostgraduate Diploma, Sports Coaching, University of Central Lancashire
- Coached inNorthern Ireland, Canada, China and the United States, since 2010
- ClubsChicago City SC, Seattle Celtic, London TFC Academy, Burnley FC International, Vancouver Whitecaps FC, Knockbreda FC
- NowDirector of Football, and U18 Girls Academy Head Coach, Chicago City SC
- Co-founderHeadCoach
Free for coaches
The Player in the Game.
We ask six-year-olds to dribble and look up at the same time. How much of the game can they actually take in? And who decided they were a defender?
Seven questions from my coach workshops, each set against what the research says and where it runs out. Written to start an argument in your coaching room, and to settle a few.
- What does the game look like at each age?
- What can a six-year-old actually take in?
- Who am I in this team?
- Lines or labels: back, middle and front line, or "defender" and "attacker"?
- Are development windows doors, or rooms?
- Whose technique is it, the coach's or the player's?
- Does movement come before the game, or inside it?
HeadCoach · Co-founded with a team
Helping players arrive ready to perform.
Some interference sits inside the player: nerves before a big game, a mistake that follows them around, a week that drains them. HeadCoach is a performance and readiness platform for athletes, coaches and clubs, built for the skills that decide how much ability shows when it matters.
Each player starts with a baseline across eight performance skills. On game and training days the app gives them one strategy to use, and short check-ins on mood, energy and readiness show a club how its players are arriving.
It started as the system I used with my own players and became technology in 2020. A team builds it today, and I'm co-founder and President. Live on iOS and Android since February 2024.
ConfidenceFocusResilienceSelf-controlOptimismCompetitive driveTeamworkSelf-awareness
The person
Written for the 82nd minute.
Short pieces on the moments football rarely trains for: the miss, the bad call, the mistake that follows a player around. Each one ends with a question for the training week.
All seven piecesSelf-control
What Argentina's Final Meltdown Reveals About Self-Control
Two bookings, a red card and a brawl. Why self-control gets zero minutes on the training calendar, and what a trained reset looks like.
Read on headcoachapp.comPressure
Messi missed. Again. That's not the story.
Threat or challenge, and the seconds after a mistake. The skill Messi showed between the miss and the final whistle can be trained.
Read on headcoachapp.comCoaching
How Emotional Intelligence Transformed My Coaching
A red card of my own, what I did about it, and what changed when the same situation came round again.
Read on headcoachapp.comWork with me
Start with what is in the way.
Every option starts with a free 20-minute intro call. You tell me what is getting in the way. I tell you whether I can help, and which option fits.
00Free intro callFor anyone deciding whether this fits.Twenty minutes by video. You leave knowing what is in the way and what to do next, whether or not we work together.Free · 20 minutes01Coach mentoringFor coaches whose players don't carry training into games.Bring a session, a clip or a problem. You leave with a reworked plan and one change to make at your next session.From $150 · 1 hour, or $750 for 3 months02Player analysis and coachingFor players who feel stuck, and parents who want a clear picture.Five 1-hour sessions in one week, from the player's own match footage. You leave with a written analysis, a reset routine and a six-week plan.$1,000 · 5 sessions in 1 week03Private analysisFor professional players who want an outside eye, in confidence.Your footage, your decisions and the moments that keep costing you. Shared with no one unless you choose.By enquiry04Talks and workshopsFor coaching staff, club leaders and parent groups.Built from your own coaches' sessions. Every coach in the room leaves with something to try at their next one.By enquiry05Club consultingFor clubs where every coach teaches a different game.The game as the model from the youngest team to the oldest, coach education that starts from your coaches' sessions, and routines that carry your culture.By enquiry
Free intro call
Start with twenty minutes.
Tell me about the player or the coach, and what seems to be in the way. If one of my options fits, I'll say which one. If none does, I'll tell you that too. No pitch, and no obligation.
Book a free intro callUEFA A Licence. Coaching since 2010 in Northern Ireland, Canada, China and the United States.
Or email jonathononeill14@gmail.com