As a further compliment to Gregory's articles, I've reflected about a different (and cheaper) alternative to further coach education than what I had done previously.

These coaching articles written by Gregory have been very useful and interesting.

Credit to 442 management for putting them on the website. =d>

Thanks to General Ashnak, Reedy and Dirk Van Adidas for cutting and pasting them here.

Unfortunately, we have a paucity of South American coaches in this state.

One Brazilian one is making players run all the time without the ball.

The FIFA Technical Reports are a good summmary on the way teams play in World Cups.

http://www.fifa.com/mm/document/afdeveloping/technicaldevp/50/08/57/wc_94_tr_part3_270.pdf

The best references are to talk to South American coaches. They will tell you all about the system. Also consider the text by Santos and Reis.

Can you recommend any references for this system?

It sounds interesting.

The Brazilian Box Midfield concept is a modern playing system that is widespread in South America. This system was used in the 94 World Cup (USA) by Brazil.

The system is highly flexible and uses a reference system of 4 backs, two holding midfielders, two attacking midfielders, and two forwards. Like the 1-4-3-3 system it is not static. The 4 midfielders rarely maintain a box shape in possession. Wide areas are basically freed up for wing backs to play high, and allows penetrating runs by forwards and midfielders. When played as a 1-4-4-2 system there are no designated wingers.

The system can be used with 3, 4, or 5 midfielders. The tactics and concepts of the box midfield are complex and provides an attacking style of play. Much can be learned from this concept of play.

I know the flat, diamond, bowl and 3:1 midfield formations, but what is the box midfield?

There are 1000s of drills (are for putting in walls) that are freely available. They are utterly useless unless there is a philosophy behind it and a plan behind the session (ideas and theories). I use a periodized plan that is implimented based on the problems I find with my players. The plan is set up on spreadsheet and includes training topics, technique focus, team tactics, conditioning focus and psycholgical focus based over 40 weeks. It is very flexible.

The coach also has to impart his information in many ways to get the outcomes that are desired. He/she must also understand and manage their players. The coach must also have great observational skills. This is the art.

The good coaches that I have met (not only football) possess a great talent for doing all these things with their own style. They have practiced for years and it shows.

None of this stuff comes from any FFA course that I attended. They may well teach it now in their A B and C licences.

I needed to gain information to do a better a job at coaching (the coaching courses did not help that much). In the last 3 years I have researched the game, coached at different levels and age groups and even started a club. I got more hands on coaching experience.

The idea is to progress from warm-up to SSGs to functions, to phase and to 11v11. These are more advanced concepts that I have taught myself from a range of resources including observation, logic, experimentation, watching and analysing games in a frame by frame situation, Dutch coaching manuals and ideas from local and overseas coaches (including UEFA).

There is plenty of scope to experiment within the NC.

Some interesting build up to the 7v7 with keepers there, Gregory.

Really like the diagrams.


The 7v7 stuff is so good for precursory shape work culminating in 11v11.

I've learnt a lot of stuff for incremental work in 4v4, 7v7, culminating in 11v11, but from a defensive perspective, not a midfield orientation.

Is that something you learnt in a FFA course?

If you did, which one was it?

"I'm not into motherhood statements."

Geez Chips you're a colossal f*ckwit - did you read ANY of what Gregory wrote above?! Indeed did you read his article at all?

Do Oz football a favour - get out of it and stick to fishing on the Hawkesbury, you sad bitter man.

I'm not into motherhood statements.

Clearly the best approach (whatever your endeavors) is to look reality in the eye and ask the hard questions.

People need to remember, sockah (or any sport) is not an exact science.

Theory is theory is theory.

Agree & thanks for the answer.

To me football is the ultimate multi dimensional invasion sport. It has endless complexity, cultural variation and is played world wide. We are all free to choose what sport we enjoy. I have played and coached all sorts of sports. But I enjoy fooball the most, and watch and learn from other sports as well.

There are other sports (in Australia and overseas) that are administered better than us, have better junior and youth development than us, and have much larger viewing audiences than us. If you take the point of view of looking ahead, gaining an edge, improving what you do then we must look at all sports (including our own), scientific and business practices to make what we do better. Football is often full of cynicism and negativity. This will not serve us well if we hope to develop our sport.

With that in mind, who cares if we learn from the EPL, NBL, AFL, NFL, hockey or rugby league. An example is zonal defending. Was it Basketball or Football that used it first?

The idea is to advance and improve football. We do this by learning and being smarter at what we do!

Having attended the conference you mention, I'd be interested in hearing your opinion on the following.

What do you think of the rather popular but parochial opinion that afl, (and other Australian sports for that matter) being just a National game and a big fish in a little pond, so to speak, is just played by meat headed athletes in a game that doesn't require the technical ability, understanding and lateral intelligence necessary in football, so, there's nothing we can learn from them or other traditional Australian sports and it would be below us to do so?

Fascinating to hear about the AFL coaches conference from a football coach's perspective.

Interesting comments.

In February of this year I decided to attended the AFL Coaches Conference at Etihad Stadium in Melbourne to get an insight into why and how the AFL seems to be so successful and professional.

The way the conference was organised was first class. Almost 600 coaches attended. We attended group discussions, elective speakers, and were bused from the stadium to a famous ground in North Melbourne to watch a live training session with elite players.

I was astounded to see how advanced they are in their organizational skills, professionalism, future ideas and player development. They have their problems but they all appear to look ahead to improve the sport. They learn from other codes to improve tactics, conditioning, management, psychology. The junior and youth development systems are well run and funded as a basis for the sport.

Football is my game but "Success leaves clues"!

Free up and redirect money back to grassroots coaching.

There's approx 4 mil pa being pissed down the drain by FFA under the guise of player dev.

Too many blow-in no mark OS hacks pushing questionable theory that suits their retirement plans.

The 1-4-3-3 system is only part of NC. How we teach our players technique, tactics, and insight is another part. When we teach them is another part.Game sense training is far removed from creating robots. In fact it is the opposite. Player centred learning is a way of speeding up development and creativity.

To teach young players to play football effectively, the 1-4-3 Dutch system was chosen by the FFA as a learning system. In South America it was the Box Midfield 1-4-4-2 system. Think of it like this. You must learn the basics of mathematics before doing calculus.Learn how to play 1-4-3-3 in stages before varing formation and adding more complex tactics. This blog gives examples of training sessions for the various age groups and how the NC is implimented.

A formation is only a static description or reference point. In the real world (dynamic) it looks very different at phases of the game. eg Attack 1-2-4-4, Defence 1-4-5-1. Tactics makes the formation come alive. There are many ways to play the formation. Please see my earlier blogs.

The NC is a structured way of improving our playing standards in Australia and developing our players.Is the only way? No. Is it the best way? Time will tell. Can we improve on what we currently doing? Absolutely! How can we improve football in Australia? Work together!!!!!

Many agree with you, B Joseph.

Do you want to cut and paste this comment in the thread listed below about Arosina's (and many others) Dutch scepticism?

I'll answer it in detail over time.


http://au.fourfourtwo.com/forums/default.aspx?g=posts&t=66026

Decentric, not sure if you remember the Socceroos under Verbeek, or if you have the AIS play recently under Versleijen, but 2 holding midfielders passing the ball sideways and backwards is not good football.

Gregory's article demonstrates the paradigm shift in methodologies from the new FFA NC and the old ad hoc curricula used in national coaching courses.

I'm sure Gregory can expand on his, but the NC is not designed to develop robots. There is a massive concern that Australia needs to develop more and better wingers and particularly creative attacking midfielders. Baan and Berger have often elucidated this point.

4-3-3 has massive variations on a theme. Look at the KNVB thread in Performance, which essentially explains a lot of common ground with the new FFA NC. Then compare it with what has existed in Australia before.

This is exactly what's wrong with Australian football.

It is not learnt from a book by robots.

It's funny how everyone is supposed to play 4-3-3, yet encouraged to have flexibility in formation! Contradictory, or what?

Why are we so naive that we have to be told how to play? Different players and squads have different strengths. If it suits to play 3 at the back one week, but 5 next week - so what?

If you want to coach the natural telent and flaitr out of a player, then carry on like this...

Yes back on the air.

And yes, technique is still very important. I have just completed an 8 week early preseason with an U19 team in readiness for the preseason in January. The technical faults at these older ages are quite large. ie passing, recieiving and movement. So the majority of time was spent on basic tactical concepts and technique. The changes were quite dramatic. So as coaches we have to be flexible and solve problems as we see them before we can move on.

At the end of each session we played variations of 3-2-3 vs 3-2-3 to get the basic concepts of the 4-3-3 system across along with re-enforcement of technique.

Training Content and Objectives

According to the NC (TIC) the emphasis now is on insight (I). Players are now encouraged to make correct decisions based on a set of circumstances during play. Coaches must help players make better decisions as situations arise. Game based and related match based exercises are extremely powerful tools for these outcomes.

Technique (T) is still practiced and communication (C) is encouraged. Players must learn how to be team players and develop an understanding of the tasks of the team. Players should learn the tasks of each line of the team and the tasks of each member of the team.



The KNVB give more weighting to Technique as still being paramount at this stage of development.

Technique carries more weight with the KNVB than the FFA National Curriculum. It is a subtle difference, but technique always assumes top weighting, whether equal to the others or not in TIC at the early teenage levels.

Thanks for posting the article Reedy.:)


Has/can anyone inform/ed Gregory Parker that it has been posted here?

After a few comments he usually posts some interesting insights.

I am studying teaching at uni, and a lot of what you are saying in the "coaching behaviours" section is exactly how we are being taught to teach, and metalearning is a very important skill for teenagers not only at school but presumably on a football pitch as well.


What do you think about the FourFourTwo blog Straight out the manual...?
Brisbane Roar are textbook champions of the FFA's national curriculum

Have your say.