Understanding Team Intentions in Football
What the team is trying to do together, with and without the ball.
Watch on LoomPlayers learn faster when every coach at a club teaches the same game. This is mine: the ideas, the film, and the standard every session is held to.
Perception and decision come before technique. Everything on this page follows from that.
Communication, decision, execution: three components inside every action, all at once. A technically perfect pass to the wrong player is poor execution of the decision. Built on Raymond Verheijen's Football Periodisation.
Attacking organisation, attacking transition, defensive organisation, defensive transition. Each moment carries an identity, such as available and threatening, a mentality, such as forward first, and match targets.
Exploit the space behind the last line. Exploit the space in front of it. Exploit the space through the next line. Visit the widths until we can.
What a player's action is for: finding the progress option, being the progress option, or improving the conditions for progress.
The map from team intentions to individual ones: in behind, in front, through, alongside, underneath, opposite half space, width. Use the free, be the free, create the free.
Range asks whether a player's starting position and distance suit the intention. Pinning is being free in front of or behind the opponent's last line, or creating that space for a teammate.
Short cuts from my analysis videos. Real match footage, one idea each, captioned so they work with the sound off.
The same explanations my players and coaches get. Press play to watch here, or open any session on Loom.
What the team is trying to do together, with and without the ball.
Watch on LoomProgress the ball, or become a progress option: two ends of one exchange.
Watch on LoomDecision making and range in football actions.
Watch on LoomLook forward, play forward. Use the free, be the free, create the free.
Watch on LoomThe four tests every session is measured against. They are also where my coach workshop Four Pillars in Practice begins.
How much of the session the ball is actually in play.
Sessions at the speed and effort of the game.
Practice that resembles the game it is preparing players for.
Every session gives players a real defensive problem to solve.
Bring a session, a clip or a player you are stuck on. In twenty minutes we'll find what is in the way, and whether mentoring or player analysis fits. 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