Stop Giving Bad Coaching Instructions! How to Develop Decision-Making in Young Players

The Decision-Making Mechanism

We have always been trying to help coaches better understand what information in match scenarios is truly useful for children.

For example, in a 3v3 training match, if the session's purpose is to guide children to identify and find space on the pitch, we would typically ask the coach: what kind of on-pitch information should children be actively looking for? When opponents or teammates make movements, how should children interpret those actions?

For coaches, a critical challenge lies in how to design training sessions that simultaneously create an environment where learning motivation continuously emerges.

This might sound a bit convoluted, so think of it this way: most youth coaches constantly emphasize children's understanding of the game, yet the majority of our current training sessions completely lack the cultivation of this skill (pseudo-teaching).

Pseudo-teaching Coaches worldwide have experienced or are experiencing this misconception, confusing the difference between children's "performance" and "learning." Most coaches have an ingrained belief that children's football training must have a very high success rate, and that any mistake is bad and wrong. To achieve this, many training sessions are designed with the premise of ensuring high success rates. When children achieve high success rates in training, whether passing or shooting, we misinterpret this success as the child "having learned something" and subconsciously assume they will naturally transfer what they've learned to match-related scenarios. This subconscious conceptual transfer is like believing that dribbling around cones trains the skill of beating a defender. No, what the child learns is only how to dribble around cones, not how to beat a defender.

Children's personal experience and understanding of the game often come directly from a training environment better suited for their learning, an environment or scenario filled with many critical "match-related" information variables.

When coaches begin to learn how to design such training environments, they shift from a singular "spoon-fed instruction" approach to a more guided teaching method.

But developing this training design skill is not simple at all. It's completely different from statically placing a few cones and having children practice according to a drill card. To design an effective learning environment, a coach must at minimum:

1. Have sufficient understanding of football as a sport;
2. Have awareness of how children learn and grow;
3. Hand decision-making power back to the children when designing training (for example, traditional passing drills where A passes to B and B passes to C involve absolutely no decision-making);
4. Understand that learning and growth is not a straight, linear process.

The greatest challenge for coaches is designing a learning environment that helps children improve technically while developing their game intelligence. Many coaches, whether veteran traditionalists or today's young coaches, hesitate between "improving individual technique" and "developing game intelligence," unsure which matters more.

Session Design Philosophy

No training can bypass the influence of the environment. The environment is the prerequisite for learners to truly acquire knowledge and abilities. When teaching children to play football, sessions should contain key information points, and these information points need to combine with "football actions" (such as passing, shooting, dribbling, etc.).

This information triggers children to generate "football actions." The information within the training environment represents various possibilities for triggering "football actions." For children to truly begin understanding football, they must first be able to understand and process the information in the training environment.

Every "Football Action" Involves a Decision

We previously mentioned the importance of being "match-related." While every player's technique is highly individualized, just as there's a difference between general fitness and "football fitness," "football actions" vary enormously.

For example, when an attacking player is pressed by two defenders, what choices does the attacker have?

1. They can try to dribble through the gap between the two defenders;
2. They can pass to a teammate making a run on the wing or up front;

Taking these two choices as an example, when the attacker needs to make a decision at that moment, they need to quickly process the information appearing on the pitch and execute their decision through a "football action."

In other words, which decision the attacker makes depends entirely on their subconscious processing of the dynamic information variables on the pitch, choosing the option they believe has the highest chance of success based on their own abilities.

1. A player with explosive speed will tend to try dribbling through the defenders, because they believe they have the ability to do so, or because they've done it many times before;
2. A player without a speed advantage, knowing they lack the ability to tear through the defensive line with pace, will tend to combine with teammates.

You can see how players' understanding of themselves and the game influences the "football actions" they subsequently take. Once children begin to understand this decision-making mechanism, they can change their habitual decision-making patterns, and the resulting "football actions", based on this dynamic information.

Here's an example: when a fast player deliberately slows down, Cruyff did this regularly, the defenders also start to slow down, and then Cruyff would suddenly accelerate and leave them behind.

Similar creativity, deception, and the uncertainty created by misdirection are decision-making mechanisms commonly used by football stars.

Ultimately, each player's own decision-making mechanism is their playing style, ball mastery, and game intelligence.

Building the Decision-Making Mechanism

So what should we actually pay attention to?

Every training session should contain more choices and possibilities for "football actions." Every scenario should place children within dynamic variables, leaving on-field decision-making to the children.

Coaches' direct instructions should focus more on establishing rules rather than dominating the teaching method. "Spoon-fed" teaching is the most harmful approach, think back to the linear algebra you learned in university. How much do you actually remember?

We prefer a guided teaching approach, which we call "The Art of Questioning."

Only questions can motivate children to actively think about the cause and effect behind every action. Guided questioning in a good learning environment strengthens children's impressions of each match scenario and reinforces their subconscious tendencies toward certain choices.

A stronger tendency means the child is better at it.

Football, based on dynamic information on the pitch and communication within the team, is a sport that requires making many rapid decisions. Once coaches design training environments that are highly conducive to learning, this learning becomes mutually reinforcing for children. In other words, once you change your teaching method, all of your students will benefit.