How you decide positions is determined by how you see players【Youth Soccer】Three perspectives

Hello, I'm Kazu, the instructor.

In youth soccer coaching, how you decide positions is very important, I think. However, before deciding positions, I think there aren't many opportunities to dig deeper and think about "how you see the players."

For example, some of you may feel as follows.

• You decide positions starting with the skilled kids, and end up putting the leftover kids in the back
• While adjusting to the team's play model, it feels like the players' strengths are disappearing
• You write player evaluations, but they don't connect to positions or practice

I myself often talk about this on the field, but I hadn't been able to put it into words well on the blog. In this article, I will explain the "3 viewpoints for seeing players" that are the premise for deciding positions, and how positions and formations are decided from there. It should become easier to see what to develop in each individual player, and I think you will have fewer times when you are unsure about how to decide positions, so please watch until the end.

1. Are you not lining them up in order of skill?

From a parent's perspective, I think you may be curious about "is there a way to decide positions based on skilled kids and unskilled kids?" Coaches may also have ideas like "I want to put a skilled player here" or "this spot can be someone who isn't very skilled."

However, as a coach, you want to dig a little deeper and think at one level higher: how to grasp the players' characteristics. This is because how you decide positions is basically determined by "how you see the players."

2. Bring out their strengths, hide their weaknesses

About 15 years ago, when Spanish-style soccer, especially talk of Barca's soccer and La Masia, came into Japan, what was often said was the idea of "bring out the player's strengths and hide the player's weak points." I think it is still said now.

If anything, in the case of Japanese coaching, I sometimes feel there is a strong awareness of properly correcting players' points for improvement. This is just my own speculation. Instead of that, hide the weak points as a team. Enable them to fully express their good points, and cover each other's weak points with teammates. There are expressions like that.

3. A team is like an orchestra

One of the expressions that left an impression on me when I admired Spanish soccer was "a team is like an orchestra, and how do you play harmony?"

It doesn't work if everyone is a piano; there are various instruments. Within that, while drawing out each other's characteristics, the whole plays harmony. Since then, rather than practicing players' weak points, I have come to focus on how to draw out their strengths.

What often happens, I think, is the case where you try to fit them into the team's play model, the players' strengths disappear, and everyone becomes a similar player.

2. 3 viewpoints for seeing players

From here, though this is still an area I am in the process of putting into words myself, I will share the 3 viewpoints I use when seeing players.

1. Add options to what they can already do

The first is what that player "can already do."

I want you to imagine around 4th, 5th, and 6th graders, but I think each player has plays they can do without being taught. Plays they can do even though the coach hasn't taught them, plays that player likes. That becomes one of that player's first important characteristics, one of their strengths. Once that strength is found, think about what to do to make it even better.

For example, suppose there is a kid who is good at dribbling past opponents. To make that dribbling even better, should they learn feints? Or, by adding a combination in the final third, does the dribbling stand out even more? What kind of options do you add to what they can already do? Through that, the image is that the player's strengths grow even more.

2. What could they do to "look incredibly good"?

The second is something I have rarely heard said this way, so it may be my own unique way of seeing things. It is "what could that player become able to do that would make them look incredibly good?" I often look at this side.

For example, suppose there is a defensive midfielder type of player who is physically slim but has the strength of being able to neatly distribute the ball in midfield. They move around little by little, shifting their positioning, and make good playmaking from a low center of gravity.

For such a player to look like "this player is amazing," think about what they could do that would be interesting. While playmaking, if they could fire a powerful shot from mid-range, would they look good? Or, if their anticipation is very good and they could win almost every ball in midfield, would they look good?

Watching that player, I probe: "If it's this kid, maybe he can do this kind of thing." I call this a "leverage point." It's the leverage of the principle of the lever. Apply leverage to improving that player's play, and if you work on that spot, that player looks considerably better. It's an approach of searching for that kind of point.

③ How can he stop "looking inferior"?

The third one is similar to the second, but it's a view from a slightly more negative side. I search for how a player who doesn't look very good right now can stop looking inferior within the team.

Here's an example that actually happened in the past. There was a player who wasn't good with the ball at his feet, and the team was playing positional-style soccer. That kid would try to pass, but since he didn't have much technique, it looked like he was "escaping by passing." If he made a control mistake, he'd lose the ball. He inevitably looked inferior.

What I did at that time was to have him keep the ball. "Even if you don't have technique on the ball, hold the ball without being scared. After you escape the press, play the pass. It's fine if you fail." Once he became able to do that, he stopped looking inferior at all. It felt like, "He's doing it totally normally."

Where is the leverage point that makes him become completely capable as a member of the team? That's the perspective of searching for it. In my case, I basically apply one of these three to each player.

① It's not about developing technique

I call this kind of approach "focusing on the individual."

Focusing on the individual is not a matter of developing technique or skills on the ball. It's deciding "where this individual should be developed" when you focus on that individual. Is it coaching, is it good anticipation, is it good positioning? If you look closely at each individual player, their individuality is completely different.

② Write not facts but "focus"

From there, in my case, I evaluate the players. One of the three perspectives from earlier basically applies. I write that for each individual player.

What's important here is that writing facts is meaningless. Writing "this player is like this" isn't very meaningful. I write, "Because this player is like this, we'll develop this area," "Because this player is like this, we'll focus here."

③ Review in 3 months

If you write down "we'll approach this area for 3 months," it becomes easier to see what happened after 3 months. There are times when after doing it for 3 months you think it was a little different, and there are times when you continue it. When you do this method, especially when you're doing something like an ecological approach, it really happens that a player suddenly gets better one day.

① Match the play model to the players

I think it's only after all of the above that positions get decided. In the period when you've just started a team, I think it's fine to just place players for the time being. But basically, the players' characteristics decide the positions, and the formation is decided by those players' characteristics.

It's not that the formation the coach wants to use comes first, and you fit the players into it. The same goes for the play model: rather than fitting the players to the team's play model, when you look at the players you have, you adjust the play model.

That's why my formation basically changes every year. It's almost never the same formation for two years in a row. Because the players change.

② Deliberately have them play a position they can't play

Another way of deciding positions is "deliberately having them play that position."

In my past experience, there was a player who was solidly built and strong at cutting out passes, but had no speed and a narrow play area. For defending in a relatively fixed position like center back, he was strong. I intentionally had that kind of player play side back. This was to make him acquire the vertical dynamism of running long distances and going all the way to crosses.

Conversely, if a player is slender and good at fine play with the ball at his feet but light in duels, have him play center back. The play demanded by a position is decided to a certain extent. Deliberately fit them into a place where they can't do that. There's also that kind of method.

③ Moving positions creates self-organization and emergence

Finally, in the development years, I think it's very important to gradually move positions. It's both to broaden their range of play and to discover players' new possibilities.

I also often have a kid who has gotten good at side back play center back, and if he gets good there, try having him play defensive midfield. It's not about which is better, but I often have them do different things.

When you try to develop a team, you tend to think of fixing positions and repeating the same play with the same members to raise precision. From the perspective of complex systems, systems thinking, and the ecological approach, this is probably a mistake.

Changing positions and changing members creates a moderate amount of noise that is not the usual state. Just like the thinking behind training, in order to cancel out that noise, the players self-organize, whether individually, as a group, or as a team. This is precisely the proof that the players and the team are growing.

If you have them play positions they do not usually play, things do not go well as a team. How to do well in a situation where that noise is occurring is exactly what self-organization is. Beyond that, things that were not taught are acquired. That is emergence.

Summary

• How positions are decided depends on how you view the players
• Bring out their strengths, and hide their weaknesses as a team
• Three perspectives for viewing players = 1. Add options to the plays they can do 2. What they need to be able to do to look good 3. How to make them not look inferior
• Focusing on the individual means deciding "what to develop" and reviewing it in three months
• The players' characteristics determine positions and formations
• The noise created by moving positions gives rise to self-organization and emergence

In this article, I explained how to view players, which is the premise for deciding positions. The idea of exploring leverage points is something I was able to understand through systems thinking and complexity. Please try it at your own coaching sites too!