5 top-tips: designing effective individual player challenges
Player | Challenges| 9.12.2022
Coaches should ensure player challenges remain realistic by incentivising instead of dictating Image: Getty Images /Getty Images Sport
Learning:
- Ensure player challenges remain realistic by incentivising instead of dictating
- Use social and psychological language as ‘keys to unlock’ technical and tactical learning
- Effectively position players within a practice to help them achieve their challenge
1. Design different challenges, constraints and conditions to meet the needs of individual players
Young players may need similar, but different, constraints, challenges or conditions within the same practice in order to meet the session objective, says former Tottenham Hotspur assistant head of coaching and player development, John Allpress.
“'Look for opportunities to play forward as quickly as you can' is different from saying, 'you can't pass backwards’. So, in the same practice, you might have different challenges for different players because that's what they need,” explains Allpress.
“The overall objective of the session might be playing forward into the front players as quickly as you can. But all the kids are different. For one kid, you could say, 'Right, for the next ten minutes I want you to work out how you can play forward quickly' - because that individual can work it out. Whereas another individual might need to be told ‘you're on this or that condition'. That's why knowing the players and knowing what they need is so important.”
2. Use social and psychological language as ‘keys to unlock’ technical and tactical learning
Social and psychological skills can be used as ‘keys’ to unlock technical and tactical learning with individual players, says Aston Villa Head of Coach Development, Ryan Maye.“I think one of the lessons that I've learnt around planning is the importance of the psychological and social language used in a session,” explains Maye, who joined Aston Villa from West Brom in 2019.
“The more I look into it and the more I learn about it, i’m certain that the integration of 'power words' and using psych/social strategies can really help to unlock technical and tactical outcomes, even physical outcomes, with individual players.
“And I think once you utilise that approach and understand 'power' words and language, I think you build rapport better and it helps build understanding. That connection is what helps you land the technical tactical content a bit better and helps the players understand why it's important.”
“I think where you position these players on the pitch and the tasks you set them becomes very important.”
3. Ensure player challenges remain realistic by incentivising instead of dictating
Incentivising, rather than dictating, is the most effective way to ensure player challenges remain realistic to the game, says Professor Keith Davids, expert in skill acquisition at Sheffield Hallam university.
“A simple task constraint would be: if somebody scores a first-time finish from a cross – it could be a header, a volley, half-volley or another way - that counts as three goals. That's all you need to say.
“So you incentivise a certain behaviour that doesn't rule out other behaviours. In the same practice you would still get incentives for scoring a long shot, for example.”
4. Effectively position players within a practice to help them achieve their challenge
Clever positioning of players on the pitch is another method that can enable multiple players to achieve an individual challenge within a group activity, explains former Arsenal U18 lead coach, Dan Micciche.
“If we’re doing a 4v4+ 3 practice and a player needs to work on switches of play, then they might be one of the players on the outside of the practice.
“We might encourage them to go over the block to the players on the diagonal to them, as opposed to playing through midfield or being one of the middle players.
“I think where you position these players on the pitch and the tasks you set them becomes very important.”
5. Design effective game-like practice to achieve multiple individual objectives in one session
Clever use of start positions, challenges, targets and player instructions can allow multiple individual objectives to be met in one session, says Matt Crocker, former FA Head of Development Team Coaching and now Director of Football Operations at Southampton Football club.
“If I was a centre back and needed to work on heading and the full-back was working on distribution of a cross-field ball, the practice design would allow both of these things to happen.
“For example, the full-back would start with that cross-field ball into the centre back who would come in and head it. Then that might begin a phase of play where a midfield player would be looking to pick the ball up and be working on switching the play.
“We had coaches at England who were brilliant at designing practises that were really game specific rather than what can be sometimes seen as isolated practices and closed skills.”
Summary
- Design different challenges, constraints and conditions to meet the needs of individual players
- Build rapport and connection in order to transfer technical and tactical content
- Consider where you position players in a practice and the tasks you set them