BEHIND THE PLAY #41

I made another goal analysis video. Again, the main thrust of these is to illustrate basic principles of play to help parent coaches see how adding particular elements to their training sessions can both help reduce goals against and provide ideas for setting up how you’d like to attack in games. There will be no talk of gegenpressing, advanced platforms and half-spaces here.

Also today…randomness. A bunch of very short thoughts and facts that I wanted to get out of my head and into this newsletter. None long enough for a normal length piece.

And to round things off, I answer another question that was sent in. If you’ve got a question you’d like me to answer feel free to submit it (anonymously or not) here.

How’d that go in? #2

This week’s goal is a tidy effort from Benfica in their Champions League game last week against Feyernoord. While they lost 3-1 it was still a well-executed goal that had the following elements in the following order.

1. Disciplined defensive shape with five at the back and the outside backs a touch higher than the three central defenders. Always been a pet peeve of mine to see a left back playing deepest when the attack is down their right hand side. It allows central players to gain a step and remain onside with the left back in no position to affect play.

2. Quick, decisive movement from a centreback to step and challenge for the ball. There is no point in stepping if you can’t prevent the player from receiving, turning and doing what they want to do. All you’re doing is creating a hole behind you that they can exploit

3. Smart consolidation of possession by the Benfica midfielders that allowed them to counter quickly.

4. Numbers in attack to provide options and make life miserable for hastily retreating defenders.

Here’s the video:

Random bits that only fit in a manufactured section like this one

I had a meeting with the head of our Provincial governing body last week. I wanted to discuss how discipline is handled in terms of jurisdiction and process. Generally, most complaints are handled at the league level here and they then decide whether to handle it themselves or move it up to the governing body (for the most serious issues) or down to Districts for lesser offences. The most interesting and alarming thing that came out of the conversation shouldn’t have surprised me because I’ve noticed the same at the club level as have others I’ve spoken to. He said that up until 2021 (with 2020 being a bit of a write off due to COVID and the severely limited play) the number of discipline cases they dealt with was steadily in the 50’s. Now it’s in the 200’s.

If you don’t think the anxiety around the pandemic affected people then and continues to now, kids and parents, that to me is a strong indication that it has. I would say at least half of the most serious and time consuming discipline cases that have come my way have been with parent behaviour.

Some day the whole story around Messi not coming to Vancouver for the Caps v Miami game earlier this year is going to come out and a big part of it is both funny and jaw-dropping. It will also vindicate the Whitecaps to a large degree.

Twice a year, as a CSA National Youth Club License holder, we have to complete an Action Plan that charts how we’re progressing through existing and new criteria. There’s about 150 items across six categories. There are two pieces that I think are badly missing. The first is player outcomes. What is your club’s retention rate by age, gender and division? Where do your ‘elite’ level players end up playing after U18? The second relates specifically to that ‘elite’ level, which here is called BCSPL. I have loudly and regularly petitioned our Provincial governing body and the CSA to make it mandatory for a percentage of a club’s players on each of their BCSPL teams to demonstrably have been developed by your own club in the years before they join your BCSPL team. Some clubs are increasingly compensating for an inability to develop enough players for the level by actively recruiting from other clubs. Frankly, I’d be embarrassed to allow our staff to do that. We are happy to evaluate and consider players from other clubs that contact us via our website but otherwise we live and die by what we’re able to develop ourselves in the years before BCSPL.

Canada Soccer’s most important game of the year was played in Frisco, Texas in an almost empty stadium. The men’s team beat Trinidad 2-0 and that qualified them for the Copa America where they went on to come fourth and earn US$3m in prize money; an incredibly needed sum of money for the CSA at the time.

Not winning this game would’ve left the CSA in even more dire financial straits than they were.

Six months ago there were three strong candidates to coach Rise FC in the inaugural season of the NSL. Now none seem to be in the running.

Emma Humphries was the Director of Women’s Football Development for the Vancouver Whitecaps. She parted ways with the Caps last summer. It may or may not have had something to do with not getting the Rise FC job depending on who you talk to.

Jasmine Mander was caught up in the Olympics drone scandal and suspended for a year. Jas has been a rising star in women’s coaching in Canada for several years now having worked with national youth teams and been an assistant coach on the women’s team. She was part of the staff when they won the Olympic gold medal in Tokyo but is now in the midst of a one year suspension due to the drone incident.

Katy Collar took over the L1 team after Humphries departure and led them to considerable success in the CONCACAF W Champions Cup making it to the final group stage before being eliminated. She did a lot with a very young team augmented by a handful of older players parachuted in to provide some experience. I am told she is not in contention for the job.

While the league rules have still to be finalized, clubs have been told to expect that all League 1 teams must have a CSA A License coach next season. The CSA have confirmed that as of 2023 there were only three women in the province who have this designation. There will be eight League 1 women’s teams next season.

It takes a two thirds majority to pass changes to the competitive and commercial policies in place at the English Premier League. Currently, there are ten clubs that have either American ownership through holding companies and/or investment firms, two club with Gulf State government/investment firm owners, one club owned by a Chinese holding company and just West Ham, Spurs, Southampton, Brighton and Brentford with majority UK ownership. Leicester are owned by a Thai family and Notts Forest by a Greek trading company.

Billionaires, hedge funds and Gulf State leaders do not care much for promotion/relegation. They care about safeguarding assets from risk. It is becoming inevitable that the most popular league in the world is going to change irrevocably and we will soon see a cartel league, along the lines of all North American professional sports leagues, that limits competition and entry. When the EPL makes that move, a European Super League will follow quickly and the meritocratic nature of the game will crumble and become just another investment vehicle.

Question Answered: Move to another club for better coaching or not?

Q: What recommendations would you have for a Division 1A U12 (2013) player, who at 10 years old (2014), is playing a year up and playing well, but has concerns that development will stagnate with a coach who will likely advance with the age group to SPL but is not an effective coach. The player plays in his local (closest) club. Does he play it out because so much happens with kids as they develop, or is it better to chase a better coaching/development environment? Is the devil one knows better than an uncertain alternative environment? Does this really affect long term development of the player?

A: I chose this one this week because I got another one that just came in last week that is along these lines. I’ll probably send a reply to that one by email but will answer this one here. First off I’m going to assume that the concern around development stagnating is from the parent and not the ten year old. If it was the latter my answer would be much shorter and definitely more funny.

I tell parents and our staff coaches, regularly, to note (like actually write down) who they think are the three best players on their U10 to U12 teams and then re-visit those answers around U16 to U18. I’ve done it myself. I’d say at least two of the players are not playing at the highest level when they get those older age groups. Whether a coach is ‘effective’ is subjective at best and when it comes to parents assessing their own coach, far more so. Factor in the tension around expensive, intensive programs like BCSPL and it gets even harder to objectively make decisions around coaching efficacy. Not saying you aren’t capable of it but in my experience parents are likely to have either blind spots or some confirmation bias.

That said, even experienced, professional staff coaches don’t get it right all the time and parents are right to remain vigilant and have reasonable expectations. Before my club was allowed to enter teams in BCSPL and I was the TD, I met with local BCSPL clubs’ coaches for their U13 intake teams to share my thoughts on our players. One year, which happened to be the year that I had coached the age group through to U12 so knew the players particularly well, I told the coach who I thought our top three candidates for his team were with one standing head and shoulders above the rest. He took the other two. While shocked, the player I rated most highly and took his spot on the team a division lower. Before the season was over he’d not just been pulled up to the BCSPL team but was invited out to trials with the Provincial team. That’s credit to the player for his determination, the parents for their patience and the coach for being willing to change his mind. He’s now going to be graduating from UBC this year, having been on the varsity team for five years.

Point being, the player stuck at it, definitely benefited from persevering, stayed at the BCSPL’s feeder club a level down and ended up being an exceptional player. Your mileage may vary but if a player is happy where they are, the parents feel the environment is safe and that the club has all the players’ best interests at the core of what they do, I think you err on the side of staying for. a year or two and see how things pan out. Most clubs change BCSPL coaches at regular intervals as a matter of policy. We do it about halfway through their time in BCSPL. We think it’s valuable for players to experience coaches with different approaches and personalities. We also know some are better and prefer either younger or older age groups. So there’s a good chance the coaching will change organically. Plus unless you’re really able to research the coaching options at other clubs it is, as you say, a bit of “chase” to change clubs, especially even before getting to BCSPL.

Ten is still very young. I know several players who were excellent at ten and who never made it to U18 for various reasons. Just keeping them in the game, at any level, is an accomplishment and something they will benefit from both in terms of progress as a player and as a person. It gets said over and over again but of the four pillars (physical, tactical, technical and psychological) the one that seems to be the most important according to studies, is the psychological one. Mental strength and the capacity to overcome challenges, disappointment and even unfairness is what sees more players ascend to the highest levels of play. It’s probably also why successful players do well in academic and professional pursuits. According to the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern, 80% of female C-Suite executives played sports when they were younger and more than half played at the university level. Similarly, six of the 2002 born boys that I coached through to U18 found their way into UBC’s Sauder Business School.