Eleven Best or Best Eleven?

Each time I assemble a team questions regrading starting assignments and roles arise.  My standard reply is "We have a roster full of starters".   This is a true statement.  I do not keep you on the roster if I do  not believe you can play. As the head coach I will strive to determine the 11 who play best together.  Not necessarily the 11 best individual players.

That said, I do rank the members of the team 1 - 16 for field players and 1-2 for goalkeepers.  Players will move up and down in the individual rankings throughout the season dependent on their performance in training and ultimately their performances playing in matches.  I will strive to start as many of the top 10 ranked field players as possible.  This is where player versatility becomes important.  If starting is the issue, a back up DM might need to be willing to start as a center back, for example.

This ranking of players is for coaching staff use and is never shared with the players individually or collectively. Parents never see it and I will not discuss a players position in the rankings.  It is a subjective ranking with little in the way of empirical data to support it. 

The only statistic I am mindful of is attendance and promptness - a players commitment to the team.

So, why rank the players?

For me it serves as a reminder for use in late in the game situations.  If we are up a goal and need to hold the lead. If we are even or down a goal.   I might refer to the rankings to make sure I have best personnel available in the game. 

The real value I derive from the rankings stems from the associated notes I make about each player.  From the tryout process through the early preseason I will formulate seasonal plans for each player.  These seasonal plans will focus on accentuating strengths and improving weaknesses.  Players will move up (or down) the rankings based largely on how they address weakness in their games.

I will also use the individual seasonal plans collectively to discern a team seasonal plan. When certain themes repeat themselves amongst a number of players, we will add this to the teams seasonal plan as something we want to address.  By the same token, when a strength manifests itself repeatedly in individual seasonal plans, this is an area we will seek to accentuate in our teams system of play.

The preseason rankings are a starting point.  It is the final rankings that I have the most interest in.  Did the player progress?  Sometimes a player may not move up in the ranks but progress will be obvious through the final notes associated with his rankings when compared to those early season notes. 

And, yes, there are rare occasions when a player remains stagnant and drops down the list.  These players rankings and associated notes are of particular interest to me.  Did I fail this player as a coach and if so, why?  Sometimes, a player self-selects.  That is, he is overwhelmed by the talent that surrounds him.  He will realize his passion for the game doesn't measure up to that of his teammates. He will discover that while his teammates have a ball at their foot away from team activities he would rather be playing video games, working or devoting more time to his studies - he has other activities higher on his priority list than soccer is in relation to where soccer falls on his teammates priority lists.

There are times when we as coaches just do not connect with a player though.  It might be personalities. It might be a coach teaches in a manner that does not fit how the player best learns.  It might be any number of reasons.  If we want that player back for another season, we must do all we can to uncover where the disconnect has occurred.  The alternatives are to be up front with the player and suggest he move on to another team or simply cut him from your team.

This brings us back to the tryout process where the final rankings from the previous season can come into play. Tryouts are about forming the best team possible. It might be a prospective new player would rank higher on your individual player rankings than the last returning player on your list. At that point, a change in the teams roster might occur.

A ranking such as we are discussing here should never be the "be all end all" in determining a teams roster, starting positions or any other spot on a team.  We all know at any given moment a player is capable of "getting hot" or "finding a zone" and we would be foolish to grant this more significance than player who performs consistently over a long period of time.

We have also seen the talented player who is a train wreck of a teammate.  While he might rank high in the individual rankings he is not one of the 11 who play best together. 

Team chemistry is so very vital to team success that it simply cannot be overlooked. I have had players who were clearly among the top five players of our individual rankings who we simply could not start or play on the field at "crunch time" because they had no clue how to fit their talents cohesively into the team. Chances are pretty good that would have been one of the points of emphasis in that players seasonal plan.

In the end, I use the player rankings and associated notes as part of my personal self-evaluation.  I identified strengths and weakness in each players game. Did I place the player into a position and situations on the pitch from where he had reasonable expectations for success?  Did I help the player address his weaknesses as I identified them?  From the final rankings and my self-evaluation springs the beginnings of a new season.