What is your vision for the team?

I have a crystal clear HD Technicolor 3D movie with surround sound playing in my head depicting how I want my teams to play.  Often times players, especially players new to our team / system have a black and white static filled vision of how we want to play being received through rabbit ears antenna.  The process of coaching involves upgrading both the individual and collective teams viewing capabilities. I believe this is the accepted concept of how team sports work.

What if these roles are reversed?

There has been and will continue to be much debate about the value of high school soccer compared to club soccer.  For years, I have placed a greater value on high school soccer for the simple reason I had the student / athletes 5-6 days a week for 4 months out of the year.  In club soccer I had the athletes an average of 2-3 times a week for 6 months of the year. High school was the more intensive experience from both a teaching / learning perspective as well as from a playing experience.  Yes, club can afford the player / team more games, especially in the form of tournaments, but the club schedules can also have much less recovery time between matches. Again, especially where tournament play is concerned.

The team we had last spring played U19 and was the culmination of a 5 year building project.  Regular readers of this site will  know I have been torn about how the exceptional success of our club team has had a negative impact on many of our players when they returned to their high school teams.  My frustration stems from the founding principle and mission of our club to prepare area athletes for high school play.  Our team has indeed contributed to returning players with a higher level play to area high school soccer programs, but I never anticipated the problems that would arise because of this.  And ours was not the only club who contributed to what is a growing problem in our area..

"I have to dumb down my play when playing for my high school team"

"I cannot wait until club season" uttered early in the high school season.

"We know the system of play better than our coaches do"

"It's just a constant battle.  The club players are on one page, the coaches another and the rest of the team a complete chapter behind both"

"High school soccer is nowhere near as fun as club soccer is"

The above quotes began arising from our club players as they played for their high school teams. In one case, a captain of an MRL team was relegated to a junior varsity squad because he didn't dumb down his play for high school and therefore didn't fit into the coaches vision.  In other instances, players who played at the highest levels in club were held out of starting lineups or given diminished roles because they were not able or willing to assimilate their play to that of the high school team.

Somewhere in the process our (and other) club team(s) had transitioned to over preparing athletes for high school soccer. This past high school season my son Lance's team really struggled in part because the club athletes knew the system their coach wanted to play far better than the coach himself did.  Truth be told, the athletes had several years of experience in the system while the coach was brand new to the system.  Instead of relying on the players experience, the coach drew his vision from (black and white) books. Meanwhile the club athletes had been playing the system in HD Technicolor with surround sound for years.  The resulting battle of styles reminded me of the old tower antennas we had before the advent of cable or satellite TV -  whomever controlled the antenna controlled what could be watched on every TV in the house. 

The high school season was a complete disaster mainly because a shared vision for how to play was never agreed upon by coach, club players and non-club players.  Instead of high school coaches using their best players to raise the level of play of their teammates, the clubs players would (and did) say they had to "dumb down" their play to the level of non-club players.  This is a most curious thing that saw raw, but physically gifted work horses prized over technically sound players with high soccer IQ's.

I could not help but think of Johan Cruyff;

“All coaches talk too much about running a lot. I say it’s not necessary to run so much. Soccer is a game that’s played with the brain. You need to be in the right place at the right time, not too early, not too late. If it’s only about running, then you create a running game. I don’t think it is a running game. It is a beautiful game. It is about rhythm and dictating the tempo, and so on. Not only about playing forward, but about the journey the ball takes as it is moved toward goal. In order to protect the goal, you should protect the ball. That means you must be comfortable with the ball – first touch, shielding, passing, bending, shooting the ball. Isn't that the key, you don't have to win physical battles if you don't get into them. If the ball's always on the ground who cares if the kid's not good in the air. If you're not creating 50/50 balls you don't need the kids who can win most of them."

Simple words of pure genius.

The coaches on Lance's high school team championed the ability to win 50/50 balls and praised those that did so even as they created more 50/50 balls.  There was little to no consideration given to not creating 50/50 balls in the first place.  I wrote of this strange phenomenon in 50/50 Balls. Why some players are 1st to them and others win them.  A consequence of championing 50/50 balls was turning games into ping pong matches on grass. You needed to have your head on a swivel as the ball was constantly whacked back and forth up and down the field. I am fairly certain this is not the coach's ideal vision for how the game should be played, but it is nonetheless how his team did "play."

Teaching individual players and a collective team your vision for how the game should be played is not for the faint of heart.  Your commitment level to do so must be in the compelled range.  The real difference between the club teams and the high school teams is found in each coach's commitment to sharing and teaching their vision.  It is far easier to ask someone to dumb down their play than it is to teach someone how to elevate their play.  If the coach is not fully committed to teaching, then he will settle for something less than the best his team has to offer.

A big factor in this process is coaches who played in college believing they know more than their current players do.  The two most underachieving teams in our area are coached by former college players.  Why do they underachieve?  In part because the coaches do not listen to their best players.  Whether it is a lack of respect and trust, arrogance on the coach's part or a simple matter of teacher being intimidated by the intelligence and potential of players can be debated. What cannot be debated is the fact this situation should never arise and in fact does not arise in the truly good / great programs.

A head coach's coaching tree is often a good indicator of the confidence level of the head coach himself.  The confident head coach will surround himself with the best and brightest minds he can find knowing full well their time with him will be brief as they will be moving on to their own head coaching gigs.  (Think Ohio State football's Urban Meyer)  But in return, the head coach himself gains a valuable learning experience gleaning concepts and ideas from his assistants.  This type of assistant helps form and fine tune the coach's vision for how he wants his team to play. They help teach the coach's vision to players and bring focus to how the team plays.

Each season's coaching process should begin with one simply question;  What is my vision for how our team should play? The process itself is the work done to make your vision the collective vision of the team.  Input from assistant coaches and players alike is a prerequisite to solidifying the collective vision.  There must be a shared ownership of the vision. Only once a collective vision is determined and agreed upon can progress be made towards bringing that vision to fruition.  A program or team lacking an agreed upon collective vision is destined to underachieve.