Method

What players learn to see and do.

Performance is potential minus interference. In a game, a lot of that interference is a picture a player cannot read yet. These are the ideas players learn from me and the standard every session is held to, with the sources behind each one.

Six ideas The session standard The inside half

FIG. 1Team intentions, from the ball's point of view.

The belief

All a coach can do is create the conditions and environment that let players improve themselves and each other.

Everything below is a way of building those conditions.

01 · On the grass

Six ideas, from the picture to the pass.

In the order a player uses them: read the action, know the moment, share the intention, pick your job, find support, and be in range.

01Framework

CDECommunication, decision, execution.

Three components inside every action. Verheijen describes them in sequence; in a game they run so close together that I coach them as one action. A technically perfect pass to the wrong player is poor execution of the decision.¹

Most of an action is invisible from the touchline. What a player saw and chose happens before the touch we judge, so I coach what players see and choose as well as what their feet do.² Perception and decision come before technique, and everything on this page follows from that.³

What changes for a playerThey stop being judged on the touch alone, and start reading the picture before the ball arrives.

02Game model

The four momentsEach moment carries an identity, a mentality and match targets.

Attacking organizationAttacking transitionDefensive organizationDefensive transition

Each moment carries an identity, such as available and threatening, a mentality, such as forward first, and match targets.⁴ One game model runs from the youngest team to the oldest, so a player moving up already speaks the language.

What changes for a playerThey know which moment they are in, and what the team needs from them in it.

03Team

Team intentionsWhat the team is trying to do together, with and without the ball.

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.

When none of the first three is on, the team uses the width until one of them opens.

What changes for a playerEvery action has a shared target, so eleven decisions start to point the same way.

04Player

Individual intentionsWhat a player's action is for.

Finding the progress option.
Being the progress option.
Improving the conditions for progress.

Progress the ball, or become a progress option: two ends of one exchange. A player reads what the space and the opponents offer, and picks the action that serves the team intention.³

Use the free, be the free, create the free.

What changes for a playerOff the ball stops being waiting time. There is always a job: find it, be it, or create it.

05Support

360 supportThe map from team intentions to individual ones.

In behindIn frontThroughAlongsideUnderneathOpposite half spaceWidth

Look forward, play forward. Support comes from every side of the player on the ball, and the player on the ball has to know where it is before it arrives. That is why scanning matters: in the Premier League, players who scanned more before receiving completed more passes, though the effect was small.⁵

FIG. 3360 support around the ball.

What changes for a playerThey look before they receive, and know where the next pass is going.

06Insight

Range and pinningBeing in the right place to matter.

Range asks whether a player's starting position and distance suit the team and individual intention. Too close and the option disappears. Too far and it arrives too late.

Pinning is positional excellence against the opponent's last line: being free in front of it or behind it, or creating that space for a teammate.

Range and pinning are working terms from my own coaching and the clubs I have coached at. They build on the ideas above.

What changes for a playerPosition becomes a decision, made early, instead of a spot on a team sheet.

Sources

1Verheijen, R. Football Periodisation, Part 1. Football Coach Evolution. FCE books
2Verheijen, R. and Marić, R. (2024). Analysing Football: Evaluating (in)visible football actions. Football Coach Evolution. Publisher
3Araújo, D., Davids, K. and Hristovski, R. (2006). The ecological dynamics of decision making in sport. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 7(6), 653-676. doi:10.1016/j.psychsport.2006.07.002
4Tamarit, X. (2015). What is Tactical Periodization? Bennion Kearny. On Vítor Frade's four moments of the game. Publisher
5Jordet, G., Aksum, K. M., Pedersen, D. N., et al. (2020). Scanning, contextual factors, and association with performance in English Premier League footballers. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, 553813. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2020.553813

02 · The session standard

Four tests every session has to pass.

They are also where my coach workshop, Four Pillars in Practice, begins.

In my Four Pillars workshop, coaches guessed how much of their session the ball was in play at anywhere from 58 to 90 per cent. Few had timed it, and the ones who had came in lower. The gap is where coach education starts.

01
Ball rolling time
How much of the session the ball is actually in play.
02
Intensity
Sessions at the speed and effort of the game.¹
03
Looks like football
Practice that resembles the game it is preparing players for.^6,7
04
Defensive problems
Every session gives players a real defensive problem to solve.⁸

Sources

1Verheijen, R. Football Periodisation, Part 1. Football Coach Evolution. FCE books
6Ford, P. R., Yates, I. and Williams, A. M. (2010). An analysis of practice activities and instructional behaviours used by youth soccer coaches during practice. Journal of Sports Sciences, 28(5), 483-495. doi:10.1080/02640410903582750
7Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I. and Araújo, D. (2011). Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 146-155. doi:10.1123/jsep.33.1.146
8Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Newcombe, D. and Roberts, W. (2019). The Constraints-Led Approach: Principles for Sports Coaching and Practice Design. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315102351

03 · The inside half

Some interference sits inside the player.

Some of it is outside a player's control. A lot of it is inside, and that part can be trained like a pass.^9,10

If emotions are built by the brain from the body's state and past experience, the way a player reads a pressure moment can be trained too.¹¹ So confidence, self-control and the reset after a mistake get planned into the week like any other skill.

P=pi

Performance skills

Confidence, focus, resilience, self-control, optimism, competitive drive, teamwork and self-awareness. Each player starts from a baseline, with one strategy to use on game and training days.

Check-ins

Short check-ins on mood, energy and readiness help a player put a name to how they arrive. Naming it is the first step to doing something with it.

Goals

An aim, the actions that serve it, and the emotional skill to manage the journey. Goal setting starts from what the player values, so the work stays theirs.

Habits

Habits that start from identity and are worked back from needs.¹² A habit that serves a real need outlasts a good week.

This is the system that became HeadCoach, a performance and readiness platform built by a team and live on iOS and Android since February 2024.

Sources

9Neale, S., Spencer-Arnell, L. and Wilson, L. (2009). Emotional Intelligence Coaching: Improving Performance for Leaders, Coaches and the Individual. Kogan Page. Publisher
10Gallwey, W. T. (1974). The Inner Game of Tennis. Random House. The source of performance equals potential minus interference.
11Barrett, L. F. (2017). The theory of constructed emotion: an active inference account of interoception and categorization. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 12(1), 1-23. doi:10.1093/scan/nsw154
12Clear, J. (2018). Atomic Habits. Avery.

04 · Coach education

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. It's written to start an argument in your coaching room, and to settle a few.