What you see is what you get. Maybe you should see something else?

There are numerous sports quotes that urge players (and coaches) to look at things from different perspectives. If all you ever do is all you've ever done, all you'll ever have is what you've always had. This is one example that implores change to be made.  In our camps we seek to retrain the brain, which is another way to say changes must be instituted before progress can be made. Asking players to step outside their established comfort zones is yet another means to motivate them to change.

As coaches we "borrow" from one another all the time.  When one coach is successful his methodology and systems of play will be examined and reversed engineered by his peers. Perhaps the most recognized example today is the spread of zonal defenses. The strictly man-marking system is nearly extinct although I suspect it will rise again like the mythical phoenix in retro-ness some day. A by-product of zonal defense is the incorporation of the outside backs into the attack. These players are filling non-traditional roles. Because of this the players manning these positions have been granted freedom in exploring how to execute their duties and responsibilities. In a sense the outside backs have been allowed to write their own job descriptions.  As a result we are beginning to see creative and innovative play emerge.

I often refer to "our" attacking system that we run from our 1-4-2-3-1 or 1-4-1-4-1 formations. I lay claim to it, but in the last 3-4 years I have seen it emerging independently at various ages and levels of play. It is a natural extension of the zonal defensive systems in prevalent use today. That the Columbus Crew SC are successfully running "our" system in MLS validates what I have been coaching these past several years.

Many of the coaches we conduct camp for want us to demonstrate how we have taught our players to make creative / deceptive runs that stress defenses. They want to know our patterns for making runs and are shocked that I spend less than one training session per season working on specific patterns.

I have written often of how I allow the players to conduct our half time discussions. One of things they cover is what the opposing defense is giving us and more specifically which opposing player(s) is (are) the weak links we can attack. We have learned to also identify how we wish to set up those players to be attacked. How do we move players and the ball to isolate the defender(s) we wish to attack in the match ups we prefer to have?

Patterns in soccer are, in my opinion, symptomatic of the problems that plague American soccer. American sports are largely coach driven sports and patterns in soccer are an extension of this. In short, patterns are restrictive. Patterns take the onus for decision making away from individual players. The coach teaches the pattern and its variations and expects the players to adhere to these. Even the decision of whether to follow the patterns or not is taken away from the players for if they do not, they will find themselves on the bench in favor of someone who will. Any deviation from the scripted established pattern and its variations is blasphemy regardless of if it is successful or not.

So it is when we come to conduct a camp on off-the-ball movement that we need to retrain the soccer brains of the players ... and coach.  A few years ago I had a coach ask me how to get his team away from playing direct soccer.  We watched some game film of his team and one of the first thing we noticed was nearly all off-the-ball movement was towards goal and at the same pace the ball was traveling.  What else could his team do, but play direct? So, if you want your team to have a balanced, dynamic and varied attack the off-the-ball player movement is key. Retraining the brain to allow for multi-decison, multi-tasking play is the solution.  The answer for how to go about doing this?  Well, you'll have to sign up for one of our camps for that!   ;) LOL.