+1 have issue with senior players that coach juniors. Seem to forget they are coaching u12 and not u21.

Arrigo Sacchi Pressing

Football Academies – Are They Doing Enough?
Posted on June 27, 2013
Academies in England have produced some great talent over the years. Players of international calibre, often valued at tens of millions of pounds, have emerged from some of the country’s most high-profile footballing institutions. While glittering careers in the Premier League and beyond await the cream of the home-grown crop, there are many others that fall by the wayside, which academies need to do something about.

The PFA have calculated that, of the sixteen-year-olds lucky enough to achieve academy scholarships, only around 40% will be offered a contract two years later. Even more worryingly, they estimate that, by the age of twenty-one, just 20% of these former scholars will be playing at a professional level, and this is a result of a number of factors.

Some stop because they fall out of love with the game. Dr Andrew Hill has conducted considerable research into burnout in youth footballers, arguing that many become disillusioned with the game due to the high levels of pressure and subsequently lose interest. Others are quite simply not good enough; with the huge amounts of money going into the top academies, clubs only accept the absolute elite.

More are plagued by injury. Sean Highdale, a recent high-profile case, played for Liverpool U18s and England U16s but had his career curtailed by a car crash in 2008, which emphasises the need for alternative options. Other injuries come as a direct result of competing at such a high level, which Dr Neeru Jayanthi explores in his study of overuse injuries in young athletes. His recommendations include not specialising in a sport until late adolescence, which clearly academies disregard.

All of this raises the question, what are academies doing for the youngsters that don’t make the grade? Because, let’s be honest, that constitutes the vast majority of them.

Some academies offer educational programs alongside their footballing tuition but this often seems like an afterthought. Institutions that encourage children and teenagers to pursue football at all costs by demanding such perfectionism must take more responsibility. They need to provide a better all-round service for their scholars that gives them an adequate education for if and when their playing careers come to an abrupt end.

As well as offering an appropriate balance between football and GCSEs/A-levels that should be a prerequisite, academies could also do more to promote alternative career paths within football. Endorsing courses in sports science, physiotherapy and sports psychology could really help the more academically-minded scholars to pursue university qualifications in an area that interests them.

The Football Association is keen to bring through more home-grown managerial talent, so academies should also be urging more of their prospects to undertake coaching courses. José Mourinho and André Villas-Boas have had magnificent success in recent years without any professional playing experience and it would be highly beneficial to the national game if we could produce their British equivalents.

Another option for those who don’t quite make the cut might be refereeing. Sam Allardyce said in a recent interview that authorities should introduce referee academies for rejected players between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two in an effort to bring more people with first-hand experience into officiating. Referees are often criticised for a lack of appreciation of what it’s like to actually play the game, so introducing former academy footballers who’ve been playing regularly since they were children would definitely help with this.

All of these are fantastic options but it’s ultimately up to academies to make sure that their scholars are aware of them. And this doesn’t mean handing out a few flyers about sports science degrees or coaching courses every now and again; academy prospects need to be educated in detail about the alternatives available to them. Considering many youth players spend their entire childhood obsessing about playing football as a career, academies have a responsibility to curb this enthusiasm and inform their scholars that playing football is not their only opportunity in life.

Guest post written by Dan Yeo.

http://www.leeds.ac.uk/news/article/3364/young_footballers_show_signs_of_burnout

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/04/130419132508.htm

[youtube]eMuIbZGIfNY[/youtube]

[youtube]x4k6QAvyLSM[/youtube]

http://www.martinezdavid.es/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/Tactical-Periodization-SoccerJournal_MayJune-28-341.pdf

TacTical PeriodizaTion: MoUrinho’s BesT-kePT secreT?

http://matanuskasoccer.countmein.com/FileServer/Organization/Media/522280cd-c2da-413e-bc83-605c97aca300/e57a08f7-9449-4345-81c2-f90f83115aec/KNVB%20Conditioning.pdf

Royal Netherlands Football Association. KNVB Academy. "Conditioning aspects in developing a style of play". Peter van Dort.

http://thecoachingfamily.files.wordpress.com/2012/07/the-coaching-family-defending-ebook.pdf

DEFENDING
50+ Practices shared by The Coaching Family

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01927/art18-1_1927022a.pdf

Villa Boas scouting report.

http://www.slideshare.net/antoniocabreracortes7/90-sesionesdeentrenamientodepepguardiolaytitovilanova-f32

90 Training Sessions of Barcelona B (Pep Guardiola and Tito Vilanova) [Spanish]

http://www.slideshare.net/valeriyfomenkov/coaching-exercises-josemourinho

39 Training Exercises José Mourinho used at Chelsea F.C

http://www.playgreatsoccer.com/ebooks/ANewEra.pdf

A there is a lot of good stuff here, Arthur.

Just thought Id add Arthur, enjoy all the stuff you post, keep it coming mate.

Also the site is down at the moment but Leopold Method.com has a good analysis of the Melbourne Liverpool game and how Ange is coaching his team to find space in between the lines of the opposition.


Edited by tjwhalan: 12/8/2013 09:15:35 AM

This is the basic version of the 6th post down from the top of the page on page 2 of the Elite Practice thread I started. If you have a look at the Elite Practices thread, a Matildas coach has fine tuned it.

I highly recommend it as a Warm Up or Technical Stage ( stage 1) of a training session. It is easier to follow it from the aforementioned video that Arthur posted.

For some reason I'm having trouble cutting and pasting tonight.

good commentary on english football
http://whitehouseaddress.blogspot.co.uk/

and the book
The Way Forward: Solutions to England's Football Failings

Some good stuff in here, thanks

"Patrick Vieira and Sol Campbell look to Welsh course for coaching tips" Stuart James The Guardian

After welcoming everyone to Newport on a warm Sunday morning, Osian Roberts, the Football Association of Wales technical director and national team coach, invites the 24 candidates on the Uefa A licence course to update each other with what has happened since they last met up, eight weeks ago. The hot seat is at the front of the lecture room at Dragon Park, the national football development centre in south Wales, and each person speaks for up to two minutes.

Sol Campbell says how it has been difficult to coach at Arsenal over the summer because of various pre-season tours; Gary Lloyd explains that the trials and tribulations at Llanelli mean he has been putting on training sessions with only half a dozen players; Michael Flynn reveals how he has driven his Newport County manager around the bend by offering tactical tips from the substitutes' bench; while Patrick Vieira talks about getting to grips with managing Manchester City's under-21 squad during a break in Croatia.

The stories and anecdotes paint a picture of a remarkably diverse group in which a World Cup winner, former England international and current Premier League player discuss tactics and training methods alongside the Port Talbot Town manager, a player-coach at Aberystwyth and a striker for The New Saints.

This is the first time that the candidates have got together since they enrolled in June and there will be another four meetings in Newport over the next 10 months as they work towards gaining Uefa's advanced coaching award – the second-highest qualification after the pro licence – through the course put on by Roberts and the rest of his team at the Welsh Football Trust.

Earlier this week the Guardian was given access all areas at Dragon Park across two fascinating days. Uefa have mandatory criteria for what needs to be taught across a minimum amount of time on the A licence but the flexibility outside of that framework has encouraged Roberts to broaden the issues that they cover, increase the number of hours and make huge changes to the way the course is delivered.

In the past, candidates would attend for nine intensive days at the start and the end of the year with no contact in between and be assessed while coaching either their colleagues on the course or children brought in from outside. Under the new system, they report every couple of months to give them a chance to digest the information, complete theoretical and practical tasks during every eight-week block and are assigned a mentor who observes them coaching at their own clubs.

"It's harder for us now because it's more of a drain on resources but I thought it was the right thing to do in terms of the learning environment for the candidates," Roberts says. "It was simulation before, and when they got all the information, by the time they got around to doing the work, they'd probably forgotten a lot of it. We thought it's got to be better than that, it needs to be reality-based learning where they do it with their own players."

The Welsh course costs £3,700 and Roberts had so much interest this year that he held interviews to decide who would be selected. The majority of the candidates are Welsh, or coaches working in Wales, with the ultimate aim being to improve the standard of football in the country, but a handful of places are made available to others who can "enrich the course with their contribution". It says much for the reputation of the course in Newport that, as well as Vieira and Campbell, there is a Dutchman who is working for Porto and a Portuguese coach from Benfica.

One of the key attractions is that Roberts and his deputy, Carl Darlington, are not in the business of cloning coaches. "That is what I like, because there are 24 people in the room and we may have 24 different visions," Vieira says. "There is not only one way to coach. They teach you to be a coach with your personality and who you are and they try to give you tools for you to put your philosophy on the table."

Playing philosophy is top of the agenda on day one. Steve Cooper, who worked alongside a couple of former Barcelona staff in the academy manager role he held at Liverpool until the summer, is among the guest speakers and delivers an impressive presentation on the importance of coaches believing in their tactics and being able to produce training sessions to support the way that they want to play.

Cooper looks at the 4-3-3 formation in detail and talks about building, creating and finishing the attack in that system by constructing lopsided diamonds all over the pitch and establishing "movement patterns" that can be worked on time and again on the training ground.

If that sounds complicated, the simplicity behind the tactics comes through in the afternoon when Cooper puts on a practical session to underpin the tactical theory. He starts with four players, who are passing and moving in a small diamond no more than 10 yards apart, later introduces two defenders to oppose them and eventually progresses to a larger area and increases the numbers to make it more realistic.

For Garry Monk, who has long thought about going into coaching after playing, it was like being on the training ground at Swansea. "It's funny, because when Coops was doing that, I was thinking I'm lucky because I've done so much of that at Swansea," Monk says. "That was what Roberto [Martínez] implemented. We'd do drills similar to that. It would be repetition but it wasn't boring. You realised what it was for and that it was important. If you are trying to get your philosophy across, it's a very good way to implement it, in terms of the patterns of play."

After a short break, Darlington takes over from Cooper and, using the same 4-3-3 formation as a starting point, runs through a "function" – a training exercise that zooms in on an area of the pitch.

Darlington wants to create midfield overloads in the centre of the field with a view to ultimately getting one of his three forwards beyond the two centre-backs. The candidates take part and in Vieira and Dan Connor – a former France international and an erstwhile Hereford goalkeeper – the attacking players have come up against an unlikely but streetwise midfield pair. Vieira and Connor sit deep, making it hard for the attacking team to get in behind them to penetrate.

"Patrick and Dan weren't shifting much but that's fine because that's going to happen in a game," Darlington says afterwards. "We have to try and create a different opportunity, and the opportunity I wanted was when the ball comes into the deep-lying midfielder, the first central midfield player comes deep. Hopefully that now drags Patrick or Dan out with him, and I now want the wide forward to come inside and be the second player in that pocket of space that opens up."

Back inside, Roberts asks the candidates for the "take-home messages" from Cooper's presentation and training session. Once the flip chart is full of observations, Roberts makes the point that nearly all the suggestions put forward – the importance of structure, training methodology, detail – can be applied to any formation, not just 4-3-3. While the work in the lecture room is important, Roberts "firmly believes that coach-educators need to be practitioners, out there working with players and teams, otherwise there's that danger that you become very theoretical".

Roberts works with elite players in his role as Chris Coleman's coach for the national team and he also takes charge of the Wales Under-16 side. Just as importantly, though, he has the experience of managing a team in the Welsh Premier League, where you work with part-time footballers twice a week.

"I used to film all my training sessions in the Welsh Prem, and the injured players would do the hand-notation analysis. I'd come in at half-time and ask how many crosses we got in from an area and they'd give me the answer.

"I'd take my laptop in before the game and show the striker his movement last week. So no one can turn around and say: 'You can't do that in the Welsh Prem.' You do the best you can in that scenario."

Early in the evening the candidates move on to a hotel in Cardiff where Kevin Russell, Peterborough United's assistant manager, gives a presentation on the role of a No2. There is plenty of interaction from the candidates, in particular from Vieira, who has tasted success at the highest level as a player but seems genuinely interested to find out how the assistant manager of a League One club would, for example, deal with a player who is lazy in training but performs on a Saturday.

"I'm really open and I want to learn and this is the best place for me to do it," Vieira says. "I've experience on the field that will help me to deal with certain situations but I don't have any experience on the bench – how to set up a training session, how to deal with the players, and this is why I'm doing the course. I chose a place where I feel comfortable to learn, where there is no egos and where they treat everyone the same."

Back at Dragon Park the following morning, Roberts starts by talking about "zone 14", an area just in front of the opposition's penalty area where, according to researchers at Liverpool's John Moores University, the majority of assists come from. In an era of false 9s, No10s and wingers that cut inside rather than get to the byline, there is no shortage of footage available to support the theory.

Roberts divides the candidates into five groups and gives them a tactical challenge on the back of what they have just seen and heard. Campbell's group, for example, are told that their team is playing 4-1-2-3 against 4-2-3-1 and that they must focus on the midfield three exploiting zone 14. They have an hour to come up with different options as well as a way to train players to execute their tactics.

Campbell played 73 times for England and has a wealth of playing experience to draw upon but the work in the lecture room presents new challenges. "On the field is where I'm king, where I see things and I'm natural at the things I want to do," he says. "I understand the psyche of it – you want to be able to see pictures in training, so that you can give those pictures to someone who can't see it. The other side I've got to get used to because I've spent most of my life on the grass – that's been my classroom. I'll be good at the other side but I've got to embrace it more."

After a short break, Darren Ferguson, the Peterborough manager, who is revalidating his pro licence, takes part in a 45-minute question-and-answer session, during which he gives the candidates invaluable advice across a wide range of issues, including the importance of interviewing the interviewer when going for a job and why it always pays to be honest with players, even if they do not want to hear what you have got to say.

"That real-life insight is really important," Roberts says.

The afternoon finishes with each group presenting their solutions to the zone 14 task that they were given. They use a tactics board and break down what they expect from each player as if they were addressing their squad in a team meeting before a match.

"The days of saying: 'Win your individual battles and you'll be all right' are gone, because you don't play one v one any more," Roberts says.

"At the same time, we don't complicate it here. You need to know all this information but how you portray it and communicate it to your players is key. It's the simplicity that is genius."

http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/aug/23/patrick-vieira-sol-campbell-welsh-course-coaching

http://www.tsn.ca/blogs/jason_de_vos/?id=425722

Disney Researchers use automated analysis to find weakness in soccer coaching strategy

posted by news on august 13, 2013 - 7:00pm

http://www.sciencecodex.com/disney_researchers_use_automated_analysis_to_find_weakness_in_soccer_coaching_strategy-117530


Investigators at Disney Research, Pittsburgh, are applying artificial intelligence to the analysis of professional soccer and, in one application of the automated technique, have discovered a strategic error often made by coaches of visiting teams.

The common wisdom that teams should "win at home and draw away" has encouraged coaches to play less aggressively when their teams are on the road, said Patrick Lucey, a Disney researcher who specializes in automatically measuring human behavior. Yet the computer analysis suggests that it is this defensive-oriented strategy, and not officiating, that reduces the likelihood of road wins.

The researchers from Disney Research were assisted by Dean Oliver, Director of production analytics at ESPN. The team presented its findings at the Conference on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (KDD 2013) in Chicago.

Though soccer was the focus of this study, the researchers say their techniques are applicable to other team sports that feature continuous play, including basketball, hockey and American football.

An analysis of all 380 games from a 20-team professional soccer league's 2010-2011 season found that performance measures such as shooting and passing percentage were similar for home and visiting teams.

"My intern, Joe Roth, first noticed this while digging into the passing patterns of different teams. He found that they had approximately the same passing and shooting percentages at home and away. But where they had possession was very different," Lucey said.

At home, the team had the ball in its opponents' defensive third more often – and thus had more shots on goal – than when on the road and played a more defensive, counterattacking style. It was a pattern the researchers discovered held true for nearly every team.

"Visiting coaches are setting their teams up for failure from the get go," Lucey said of the common strategy. "They're not opening themselves up for randomness. The fault doesn't lie with bad calls from the referees."

Though human experts may have a feel for the game that no computer could match, Lucey said computers also have advantages over humans. "An expert might have a gut feeling," he said, "but an expert wouldn't be able to remember all details of all 380 games."

Professional sports teams today increasingly use quantitative methods to analyze performance. Some sports, notably baseball, lend themselves to such analysis because games are naturally divided into plays and sets. Soccer, on the other hand, is continuous and low-scoring, which makes analysis difficult, even though data is plentiful.

Rather than track player positions, for which data is scarce, the Disney researchers used ball action data – time-coded information about everything that is happening to the ball. This information is typically used for online visualizations of matches and is manually compiled by Opta, a commercial sports data supplier.

For the 2010-2011 season, that amounted to 760,000 ball action notations. The Disney software uses this data to infer the position and possession of the ball for every second of 380 games. It then divides the field into different areas and then counts how many times the ball was in each area over a specified time.

This yields "entropy maps," which model the uncertainty of a team's behavior in different areas of the field. Teams with high entropy spread the ball around and are harder to predict; low entropy teams have players who tend to stay within certain areas of the field.

By combining these entropy maps with commonly used match statistics such as passes, shots on goal and fouls, the automated analysis can distinguish between teams with high accuracy, the researchers have found.

The analysis of road team strategy is just one application of this automated technique, Lucey said. It could become a tool for coaches to track their team's progress or to provide insights for developing game plans, as well as an aid to television commentators.

Source: Disney Research

Marcelo Bielsa’s tactical influence on Mauricio Pochettino | Tactics
August 25 2013

http://www.eplindex.com/37849/marcelo-bielsas-tactical-influence-mauricio-pochettino-tactics.html

The list of former pupils who attended the school of Marcelo “El Loco” Bielsa appears to be doing quite well these days: Barcelona’s Gerardo Martino and Southampton’s Mauricio Pochettino are both amongst that long-list.
So when Mauricio Pochettino was appointed Southampton manager last season, there were high hopes and he quickly won fans over with a high pressing game and an emphasis on fluid movement – two of the attributes that make up the Marcelo Bielsa approach; Pochettino’s philosophy is certainly one that satisfies the ‘taste’ of those football fans than look for football to be played in this way and for most fans, Pochettino comes from the same vineyard as Bielsa.
In the words of architect Frank Lloyd Wright, “taste is a matter of ignorance. If you know what you are tasting, you don’t have to taste”. This article is to question whether Mauricio Pochettino really does look to emulate El Loco’s tactical methods or whether we have all become ignorant because we think we know that Pochettino is directly inspired by Bielsa – as we tick off the high pressing and fluid movement boxes from the checklist – blinded to the remainder of the checklist due to our ignorance.
It’s unlikely that the Southampton manager will ask teenage boys to climb trees near the opposition’s training ground and spy on the upcoming opponents (reminder: “El Loco” isn’t a nickname to take lightly) but, by comparing how the two set up with their positional systems and look to build up out from the back, we can draw a more meaningful comparison.
Bielsa’s preferred approach is one that looks to overload the defensive third with his ‘spare-man philosophy’ when in possession and in the final third Bielsa is known to employ an un enganche y tres punta (one playmaker and three forwards) system. The former Chile and Athletic Bilbao tactician also looked to cut the time taken in transition (the time in between the two formations – (1) defensive and (2) attacking), an idea that Pep Guardiola took from Bielsa (who Guardiola called “the best manager in the world” – 2012) and implemented at Barcelona.

“As you will be aware, during a game, FC Barcelona tend to excel when in ‘transition’. However, La Masia coach Sergi Domenech informed me that FC Barcelona try to avoid playing in transition. FC Barcelona see transition as time lost. FC Barcelona are either attacking or defending and are not in transition.”
Gareth Richards, youth team football manager – reference 1

Therefore by analysing Bielsa’s two positional systems and comparing the outcomes to Southampton’s approach vs. Sunderland from this weekend, we can begin to understand how his high pressing methods are applied, how he treats particular areas of the field and just how Bielsa cuts the transitional times down to the minimum. The following images are the author’s own analysis from two different games: Malaga vs. Athletic Bilbao (September 2011) and an international fixture with Chile in 2010 – both are examples where Bielsa employed near identical positional systems. While Bielsa also employed a formation with four defenders (leaving two at the back as the team pushes forward), Bielsa’s principles are better portrayed by explaining his 3-3-1-3 formation
BIELSA IN-POSSESSION FORM: 3-6-1 (central overloads and attacking 1 vs. 1’s) vs. 4-4-2 formation. This formation was also used as the high-pressing positional systems when immediately out of possession (the defensive transition).


DEFENSIVE TRANSITION THE HIGH PRESSING GAME
Three pressing players with an attacking midfielder. This means that the wide midfielder should look to cover in central midfield until the number ten can fall back into the defensive block from the attacking form. Bielsa is a big believer in winning the ball high up the field and therefore will press aggressively for the majority of the opponent’s possession in their own half, before falling back – it is therefore important that the pressing trio and their immediate support/cover are proactively positioned before they even lose the ball
Pressing triggers apply when the ball enters the middle third. In the opponents first third, the triggers are instead a matter of being well positioned – if the players are there, then pressing to win the ball is applied. In the central third pressing may be used as a way of delaying the opponents, as Bielsa’s team fall back into the defensive block
High tempo patterned movement is the cornerstone to Bielsa’s high pressing approach – high levels of football fitness are imperative
5-3-2 (imbalanced for delays) vs. 4-4-2 formation. Note the number of vertical passing options for when the ball is won (the attacking transition) – achieves options on both wings and offers two angles on the half way line at a minimum.


ATTACKING TRANSITION: THE FAST TRANSITIONS AND SUPPORT
The central forward and attacking winger are key players in the fast transition moments. These players should be immediately supported by the midfield’s movements, and only if these components are in play should the fast vertical transitional passes be played long and flat to feet.
The central forward and attacking winger should look to work with the pattern of fast five to eight yard sprints, away from their defenders, and work in pairs so that their movement is complimentary
Should the attacking winger or attacker be one of the two players involved in winning the ball back when in a defensive block, the immediate option has to be to find a way of playing out of trouble and looking to build and probe through the central overloads
The vertical balls thereafter may be to either winger or any advanced player who has found space and has immediate support – where a short passing and possession mentality will be kept.
The whole pitch is to be used while in possession.
Possession formation: Muniain falls back into the midfield central trio in defence, before joining in as a late arriving player in the attacking areas – finding himself space centrally. The flanking attackers would also be expected to take part in the deep defensive block – but in the high block, the same pressing principles apply as in Chile 2010.

Bielsa’s approach really does come down to the details in his approach and his obsessive approach to details overarch every aspect of his philosophy – he even explains every aspect of play to his players as they have to sit through hours of analysis and try to grasp each detail Bielsa throws at them.

There are 36 different forms of communicating through a pass.
Marcelo Bielsa

At first he seems tough and he may even annoy you with his persistence and don’t-take-no-for-an-answer resilience, but in the end he is a genius.
Former Athletic Bilbao Striker, Fernando Llorente

POCHETTINO SOUTHAMPTON FC
POCHETTINO IN-POSSESSION FORM vs. Sunderland (24th August 2013): 2-4-1-3 vs. 4-4-1-1 formation. This formation was also used as the high-pressing positional systems when immediately out of possession (the defensive transition).





DEFENSIVE TRANSITION:THE HIGH PRESSING GAME
=>High pressure while still in the attacking form.
=>The front four players are expected to immediately press upon losing the ball. Nearest man presses, next two support the pressing player, while team mates further back look to cover.
=>Full-backs are the first to drop back and pressure is a mixture between pressure to delay and pressure to win the ball.


Rodriguez/Osvaldo were often the last to drop back into the defensive block. Enabling Southampton to play on the counter attack should the ball be won (when Rodriguez/Osvaldo hadn’t yet dropped back).
It wasn’t often that Southampton had to fall back into their defensive shape given their high percentage of possession.

CONCLUSION
The attacking changes in the second half brought Pochettino’s Bielsa-like methods to life through positional play and the fluidity of the attack. Like Bielsa, Pochettino employed three principles: always have at least one man spare when building up from the back, play many vertical balls, rather than just side-to-side possession when building up from the back or through the middle and an identical shape (to Bielsa’s preferred formation) in the final third, comprising of an attacking midfielder and three players ahead of him (un enganche y tres punta).
Southampton’s 67% possession is by no means a product of having better players alone, the positional systems that both Bielsa and Pochettino employ allow for overloads in advanced areas – resulting in the opposition playing a deeper defensive block. While the four moments discussed in this article are intriguing, it was the fifth moment of the game (set pieces) that produced both the goals in the match.
Like Bielsa, Pochettino isn’t afraid to set his team up for the crossing game because he knows he can get players in the box through his positional system. Against Sunderland, Southampton made 27 crosses and had a high 37% cross completion rate for the high number of crosses (a 25% cross completion rate is generally considered to be good – Ward-Prowse put in 7 accurate crosses from 14 attempts, mostly in the first-half). Southampton also played 56 accurate long passes (from the 77 attempted) in the game which showed that Pochettino’s approach to vertical passes is different from other possession-based teams in the league; Arsenal, for example, only made 37 accurate long passes (from 54 attempts) against Fulham on the same day of Premier League action – in fact, no other team in these first two weeks of the Premier League has played more long balls than Southampton against Sunderland, apart from, Southampton themselves, against West Brom in their opening fixture; in that game, they attempted 83 long passes. These aren’t long balls pumped up field, they’re Bielsa inspired vertical passes, or “fast transitional passes” which statistically have been recognised as long passes.
Mauricio Pochettino has certainly been inspired by the genius of Bielsa and the half time changes show that like Bielsa, Southampton’s manager isn’t afraid to experiment and try new things. The total fluid positional inter-exchanges between the front four is certainly unique to the Premier League at the moment and I can’t remember the last time I had so much trouble trying to figure out who was playing where in the final third! Lambert dropped deep, picked up the ball out wide on both flanks and played as a central figurehead in the front four – as did all four other players.
There is no doubt about it, Mauricio Pochettino has been influenced by all aspects of Marcelo Bielsa’s philosophy of play – far beyond just the pressing approach. We may never see Marcelo Bielsa in the Premier League, so it’s about time we all started to enjoy the closest thing we will get to him: Mauricio Pochettino.
Gareth Richards’ quote from a personal interview for my upcoming book. Richards is a former Chester Football Club Development Manager who was invited to spend some time to study Barcelona’s La Masia as well as spending some time at Atletico Madrid, Real Madrid and Espanyol.
0 COMMENTS »

I found this great article about Belgium's recent success, interesting they put in place a system where the clubs look to play 4-3-3 at youth level and of course training there coaches to a higher level, in terms of youth development which focuses on development not results.

A good learning lesson for us given what Belgium had to go through in the earlier stages. Its also interesting Scotland are trying to implement a similar system as well, unlike England's ridiculous and over ambitious plan for winning the WC in 2022.




Edited by Barca4life: 6/9/2013 11:08:57 PM

And the doubter is Mark McGhee, thats why they will never get it. The assistant coach of the national team doesnt get it.

PS. excerpt from FFA. "The Coaching Process," C Licence course material.



Edited by tjwhalan: 10/9/2013 02:23:04 PM