One of the finest football books of recent years is Simon Hughes’ Secret Diary of a Liverpool Scout. It tells the story of Geoff Twentyman who was Liverpool’s Chief Scout between 1967 and 1985, an era that was marked by the club’s unprecedented success built largely on an exceptional ability to identify talent. What marks this book out is how it was written. Rather than being based on the recollections of Twentyman himself (sadly, he passed away way before work on this book had started) it uses the meticulous notes that he used to take during every one of his scouting trips. This was an extension of the practise within Liverpool’s fabled boot room of noting down different aspects of their work from training, recovery and tactical approaches in varying situations. These dossiers eventually became the reference point whenever the club was faced with similar situations allowing them the luxury to judge whether to take a similar approach or not. Bill Shankly took over at Liverpool in 1959 and the boot room was established shortly afterwards. It is testament of how visionary that group of people was that the practices that they adopted are still as effective today as they were more than fifty years back. Essentially: every coach should be journaling regularly, documenting decisions taken and the reasoning behind them. Never Trust Your Memory To appreciate why that is there is the need to move away from sport and into the realm of psychology. People act in the manner that they do because over the years their behaviour has been shaped by their own experiences. The problem, though, is that those experiences and memories might not include all the details; they might be inherently biased. There will be occasions when a positive result influences one’s recall of a choice or vice-versa. Imagine if someone were to ask you to think back to a time when you missed the train and describe your experience. The odds are that you will recall a negative experience. This will also contaminate any future thoughts that you have and, if that same person were to ask you to imagine how you would feel the next time you missed the train then the likelihood is that you would predict a bad reaction.
All this is not conjecture but precisely what Dr Carey Morewedge and his colleagues from Harvard University found in 2005. During their study they asked a set of people to recall the last experience of missing the train, another to recall their worst experience and another to think back three past experience. Their findings showed that those who had been given free reign to think of one experience made the most negative prediction. Further studies strengthened this theory that people tend to make overly positive or negative predictions if they were to rely exclusively on their memory: they fall prey to their memory bias. This, clearly, has a number of implications in a football environment. Let’s say that your team was thinking of bringing over a new player who has a particular character trait that might cause issues in the harmony of your squad. If you’ve just come from a good season then you might be swayed into thinking that this too will work out well and that you’ll manage to integrate that player. That might well turn out to be the case but, regardless, that decision was not made on the right basis. Awareness is key to overcome any bias. In such a circumstance, if a manager has records of previous transfers and thoughts before they were completed then he might notice instances that might be similar to his current situation. Reading them and thinking of how they turned out would probably allow them to make a better informed decision. It makes it harder to justify a certain decision when you have a divergent piece of evidence in front of you. Accurate And Honest Feedback Michael J. Mauboussin is an unikely source to find inspiration for football coaches. He has no history with the game (as far as is public knowledge at least); he is instead the managing director and head of Global Financial Strategies at Credit Suisse and an adjunct professor of finance at the Columbia Business School.
He has, however, also authored a number of books that look into decision making. And it is the research that he has put into the latter that is influential In an interview with The Motley Fool, he said, “when you’ve got a decision-making journal, it gives you accurate and honest feedback of what you were thinking at that time. And so there can be situations, by the way, you buy a stock and it goes up, but it goes up for reasons very different than what you thought was going to happen. And having that feedback in a way to almost check yourself periodically is extremely valuable. So that’s, I think, a very inexpensive; it’s actually not super time consuming, but a very, very valuable way of giving yourself essential feedback because our minds won’t do it normally.” There might not be many parallels between those investing in stock markets and people who work in football but both have one feature in common: there are strong emotions in play which might lead one to make terrible moves unless they are fully conscious and aware of what they’re doing. That is why Mauboussin argues over the importance of noting decisions. It is a philosophy based on a discussion with Daniel Kahneman, one of the most brilliant men of our lifetime and who gave birth to the new science of behavioural economics. In particular, Kahneman’s work helped to bring to light a number of biases that influence people’s actions.
“Many years ago when I first met Danny Kahneman…when I pose him the question, what is a single thing an investor can do to improve his or her performance, he said almost without hesitation, go down to a local drugstore and buy a very cheap notebook and start keeping track of your decisions.” Mauboussin said in that same interview. “And the specific idea is whenever you’re making a consequential decision, something going in or out of the portfolio, just take a moment to think, write down what you expect to happen, why you expect it to happen and then actually, and this is optional, but probably a great idea, is write down how you feel about the situation, both physically and even emotionally. Just, how do you feel? I feel tired. I feel good, or this stock is really draining me. Whatever you think.” “The key to doing this is that it prevents something called hindsight bias, which is no matter what happens in the world. We tend to look back on our decision-making process, and we tilt it in a way that looks more favourable to us, right? So we have a bias to explain what has happened.” Do It Yourself While football is a simple game, the decisions made by those who coach or run a club are often extremely complex. Often managers’ reactions during games are quasi-instinctive and heavily influenced not by rational thought but by past actions. Unraveling why a decision was taken can be just as complex.
Writing is a way of facilitating that process. The simple act of forcing yourself to put thoughts into words actually helps in giving them clarity and shape. The journal that a coach maintains does not have to be a work of art. To all extent and purposes it can be illegible to anyone but the person who wrote it. There is no need for any jargon or deep, insightful thoughts. Don’t feel under pressure to write something that is great, just write you’re your thoughts. What there should be a modicum of organisation (so that when you want to look back to a particular decision you can find it with ease) along with clear, direct writing that avoids any vague thoughts. Initially it might feel like an unnatural act, it can feel like pretentious rubbish. Push past that resistance and eventually, after a few weeks you will come to appreciate just how important a tool this can be for a coach. After all, if it was good enough for the likes of Bill Shankly and Bob Paisley, it should be good enough for the rest of us. Enjoyed this? Want more? Sign up to Blueprint for Football Extra and as a free bonus you'll get a copy of our exclusive e-book Blueprint According To...Volume 3 that features interviews with six football coaches on how they go about their building their knowledge.
Each year, clubs at the highest levels of the game spend millions on their academy or youth system. Each year, promising players train in these academies. And, each year, they fail to get an opportunity to show what they are capable of. It is an anomalous and fairly ridiculous situation that in many respects could only happen in football. No other business would invest that much money and then fail to use what came through. At least no business acting rationally would act that way. The thing is that football clubs (as does any normal business, for the matter) act irrationally. There is rarely any grand strategy in place and this is evidenced by how quickly confidence in a manager can deteriorate after a run of bad results, regardless of what that manager had achieved in the past. For the past forty years, economists have been looking at ways to explain such irrationality. The foundation of behavioural economics, this new branch in the science, was laid by two Israeli professors - Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman – who set economics down the path of looking at what influences people’s behaviour to determine how they act and why they do so in such a manner (for more information on these two and their work, read Michael Lewis’ fantastic book The Undoing Project). In doing so they looked at a number of psychological factors that influence people’s decision and prevent them from acting in a rational or consistent manner.
It is such factors that have to be looked at in order to understand what stops clubs from trying to maximise the investment that they make in academies. And there’s plenty worth looking into. One in particular stands out. Any project like a football academy has to be based on a long term vision. That much is obvious. Yet it contrasts with most managers’ focus on the present. It is a vicious circle that clubs effectively bring on themselves by failing to stick to long term projects. It is a behaviour that behavioural economists will be familiar with, having observed and documented it in what has become known as the present bias. This is the tendency to over-value immediate rewards at the expense of long-term ambitions, regardless of the impact that it might have later on in life. A classic example of this is when a person fails to save up any money, opting instead to spend it in order to fully live ‘the moment’. Eventually a time will come when it is too late to start saving up and that individual has nothing on which to turn. That is what clubs are doing with their academies. The absence of a long term project forces everyone on the playing side to focus on the immediate outcome. Managers, knowing that their job could be at risk with a series of bad results, will opt for his more experienced players on whom he can rely more heavily. Young players are more likely to make mistakes. Regardless of their talent they may not by physically ready or might be too slow to react; making critical mistakes in the process. Those are the mistakes that in truth they need to make in order to develop and learn yet managers rarely have the luxury of allowing them that room to grow. Managers need players who can deliver immediate results. They are biased in favour of those players who can help them in the present. This is costing clubs heavily. It is a short term view for a number of reasons starting from the obvious that the performances of older players tend to decrease rapidly once they hit a particular age. The outcome here is that the club would then have to look for another player to replace him, thus spending more money to do so. What’s worse is that such spend is the equivalent of throwing money away. For while that older player might ensure immediate reliability, the value of such experienced players rarely appreciates. Within a couple of years that player will have to be moved on and often only a fraction – if any – of the initial outlay is recovered.
This contrasts with the value of a young player that tends to appreciate notably as they gain experience, confidence and start to express their ability on a more consistent basis. Financially, the development of a young player is easily more beneficial than going for established ones. Still clubs opt not to do so. Again this is hardly surprising for behavioural economists who have an explanation as to why this happens: they are falling prey to hyperbolic discounting. Without going into the technicalities of what this term means, essentially it refers to the decision making process whereby the farther away a potential return is, the more it is discounted and less it is valued. It is only when clubs get to a situation where they have nothing to lose by trying something different that they really start to shed such bias. A typical case was that of Borussia Dortmund who, after going to the edge of bankruptcy in their bid to regain their status in German football, opted to put their faith in young players (and a young coach). Their rewards were immediate and significant: two league titles and a Champions League final. Judging by the players that they have bought over recent months, Borussia Dortmund have made sure not to fall in their old routine – or fall back on their bias – by signing promising young players. It is a brave move but, if the rules of behavioural economics are anything to go by, it could also be the right one. Sign up to Blueprint for Football Extra and receive a weekly round-up of great football coaching articles.
Having delivered tiki-taka and a generation of players that dominated world football for almost a decade through a system based almost exclusively on ability, Spain is rightly seen as the home of technical football. Out of this success a culture has developed that is appreciative of the aesthetic and confident that the best results can be achieved through the domination of possession. Fueling this culture are coaches who bring the ideology to life. Ismael Díaz Galán is typical of this class. His experiences might have been limited largely outside the Primera Liga but he is a deep thinker about the game and a keen educator who is eager to share the vision that lights up Spanish football. Blueprint for Football: What made you want to be a football coach? Ismael Díaz Galán: I did not choose football, it chose me! After trying to seduce me from the pitch I decided it was time to try from outside and for the past thirty years I have been trying not to disappoint. BfF: Do you have a philosophy of football? What is it? IDG: We all have it, even those who say that they don’t. It is what guides us in life, it is the theory of what we believe to be true and therefore also in football. Those who know me know that my way of understanding the game is just as much about how I understand life. As such I do not hope for a win, I aggressively try to make it happen by keeping hold of the ball more than not; creating a collective intelligence that makes us stronger as a group without diminishing individual creativity. BfF: How did you develop it? IDG: Living. Feeling. All this by watching, reading, talking, looking at what others are doing and what they are doing to my team. Adapting to different ideas given the reality that I was working in.
BfF: What do you do to keep learning? IDG: Keep my eyes open and, even more so, my mind. The human brain is like a parachute, it only works if it is open. BfF: You coached Luis Enrique when he was a child: was his talent always obvious? IDG: So, I met "Lucho" when he was playing the youth team with which I was a co-ordinator. His talent was obvious but he always was a very strong competitor. He also had great tenacity and determination. He came over the rejection for being too small and not physically strong. He was let go and did so well in his new club that the side that had let him go was forced to take him back. BfF: Have you followed your career? Do you get some satisfaction knowing that you have helped? IDG: Yes of course, as all players who I had the satisfaction of working with. We help them all; there are none who are considered more important than others. BfF: How much you learn during coaching courses and really learn how to train the players? IDG: During coaching courses you get the tools to make your way but you have to decide which is the method that is most suitable for you to be consistent with your way of thinking and feeling. Starting from the coaching course is when the real learning begins. BfF: You've worked in several clubs: what are the first things you do when you take a job? IDG: Soak in your new reality: your environment, its structure, facilities, staff and, especially, the players. I like to know as much as possible about each one. In order to get them to perform to their full potential I have to know as well and as precisely as possible about each one.
BfF: How important is winning the confidence of the players in your capacity? How do you do it? IDG: It is the most important thing. The coach works for them and not the other way round. This does not mean that you have to treat them as figurines (i.e. you are afraid to do anything to them) but knowing that to achieve your objective it is fundamental that you get the most out of everyone. That is the first thing and for that you have to know them well. The second is that you treat them honestly and fairly. BfF: What is more important: the tactical system you want to play or change the system to suit the players you have? IDG: Many have ideas of how to play. They copy the wrong things by watching people and their winning tactical manoeuvres without understanding what lies behind them. Systems are created through the inter-relationships between the different parts of the team. As players are human beings the best system is that which is flexible to adapt to any situation and rigid enough so that everyone moves in unison. BfF: What does a coach today to succeed? IDG: First of all know what success means for them. We are not all the same. It is easier to know your way if you know where you have to go and what you want to achieve. After that you have to be honest with the game, consistent with your ideas and how you feel. Finally, do not betray players in the desire to be better.
BfF: Knowing that your job is at risk if you do not get the expected results, how hard is like a coach to give opportunities to young players? IDG: One of the great truths of being a coach is the risk. If you do not assume this then you’re lost. To move forward you have to risk. You have no guarantee of the outcome of a decision before you take it. It is the same with young players. The big advantage with them is that they are an investment in the future. That said, you should never use them simply to win points with those surrounding the club. They never disappoint me. In all my teams I’ve played young players and they’ve always repaid the confidence shown in them. BfF: How important is a coach to the success of a team? IDG: The game of football is based on players. The role of the coach is to create a team that plays well together. BfF: You’ve worked outside of Spain: what did you do to adapt to a new country? IDG: Learn as much as possible as soon as possible. The customs, the language, how players think and their technical ability. On top of that develop as much as possible my ability to communicate in order to make myself understood. This not only has to do with the language but in the manner that work has to be carried out in order to develop. BfF: What has been the greatest satisfaction you've had in your career? IDG: Making players happy with my work. In that manner we all lived through Malaga’s promotion, a title with Sporting Gijon’s B team, remaining in the Portuguese top flight with Farense, in the Kazak top division with Kairat and in the Spanish Segunda Liga with Palencia…. Those are the big achievements that make you feel good about your profession and help you in the difficult moments.
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BfF: And the biggest lesson? IDG: Humility. The coach is the most disposable element in a football team. We have to learn this and try not to put too much importance to ourselves. BfF: What has been the biggest disappointment? IDG: I cannot point to one particular instance. I suppose that they are all related to people in whom I had confidence and trust and how betrayed me. BfF: What goals do you have in your career? IDG: Keep growing in everything that I without losing myself. For more information about Ismael Díaz Galán follow him on Twitter or else check out his website.
“I like to dream,” a veteran football administrator told me in one of the first interviews that I did. “But I know that if I stretch too much I will hurt myself.” Reverential as I was to wisdom built on years of working in the game, this seemed to me like quite a sensible stance. Only years later, when I had supplemented it with some experience of my own, did I come to see that the sensible option might also be the one that leads to lethargy and insignificance. The human brain is built to identify patterns and react to them accordingly. That is how it was at the beginning of humanity. Eat a particular fruit and you will survive; ignore the rustling of leaves in the forest and a deadly animal will jump on you. Those who were better skilled at identifying and following those patterns survived. They passed their genes on to their children until humanity as a whole was wired to follow those patterns. Our brain is still essentially the same. That is why most of us value the familiar and dislike change. We look for patterns and, when we don’t find them, our brains start to panic because they cannot predict what the outcome will be. It is why we feel discomfort when we’re faced with change. The thing is that our brains were shaped in extreme times where not being cautious could result in death (and a painful one). It still reacts to what isn’t familiar in the same manner. And whilst, sometimes, the sensible option is the best one there are also circumstances where change is beneficial. Football provides plenty of examples of this. When Liverpool opted to replace Graeme Souness in the early nineties they decided to pick Roy Evans in his place. Evans was an excellent coach who tried to innovate in his own right – he opted for a formation with three at the back to capitalise on his team’s attacking talent – but his main qualification for getting the job was his history at the club and as a member of the fabled boot room. If promoting from within had worked in the past why shouldn’t it now? Yet the face of English football was changing. Arsene Wenger was bringing with him dietary regimes that were unheard of at other clubs whilst Chelsea were investing their new-found wealth in foreign players. Liverpool needed to be brave and embrace the change but instead went all conservative. There are many factors that contributed to the club’s decline and it would be grossly unfair (not to mention hugely incorrect) to pin it all on the appointment of Roy Evans. But the appointment was emblematic of a mindset that wasn’t ready to deal with change. This in itself was hardly surprising. For the previous two decades, Liverpool had been the dominant force of English football so they had more to lose than most. It is fairly easy to be brave and experiment when there is little at stake but that is often not the case with the successful. Even if there is an element within those organisations that fully believes in looking at different ideas, it is extremely hard to convince others to get on board. Liverpool had, essentially, forgotten the lessons from their own history because their longevity was fuelled by change and their ability to pull it off at the right moment. Big players left and were replaced by others who didn’t have the same characteristics but, in their own way, shaped the team so that it continued to be successful. Crucially, Liverpool’s managers were always willing to push along this change. They didn’t get sentimental with players: when they felt that someone was getting to a stage where he wasn’t good enough, they were quite ruthless in selling them. However, they always had a plan in place so that when that player left they already had a replacement who pretty much knew what he had to do even if it meant tweaking other areas. And so change came about without impacting the team. It was the same with another of English football’s most successful managers. Sir Alex Ferguson kept on winning partly because he had the vision to foresee changes in the game and prepare for them. It wasn’t simply tactical brilliance that shaped his success but rather his ability to see the bigger picture, identify what was going to be a problem and then prepare so that his side effectively improved. Even Barcelona’s modern success is founded on change: when Pep Guardiola took over he faced down the huge risk of moving on some players who had been huge for the club – the likes of Ronaldinho and Deco – because that is how his side could really develop. What does this all mean for coaches who aren’t at a big Premier League club and are doing this purely for their love of the game? Essentially that change should be embraced. Change can be uncomfortable but if you try to put it off then what you’re doing is undermining your capacity for success. Look out for what might be changing, prepare for it to make the transition as easy as possible and then carry it out. Some words of caution though: change for change’s sake can be just as bad (to continue on the Liverpool case study: Graeme Souness tried to change too much, too soon) so always be aware of why you’re doing all this. And be ready to fail. Not everything will work out smoothly. But it will be the instances where they do that will define you.
By Nicholas Baldacchino I have followed the English football team since I was a young boy. I fell in love with the Italia 90 team and was ecstatic during the wonderful performances of Euro 96 on home soil; I also endured Euro 92 and missing out on the World Cup in the USA. These tournaments were, in my opinion, the major high points and upsets for this great nation during the past 35 years. All the other major tournaments were all a reflection of a very hectic campaign which always saw the England team players very tired and showing no true cohesion and fight within them; not to say that the team was based around 2 or 3 star players and the other components were under par. Euro 2016, for different reasons, has left me very perplexed at how a manager with so much experience in professional football and who has also managed in continental Europe did so poorly with a talented team which most certainly should have done much more. It is not nice to criticise a fellow coach and I do not want to do this as it is surely a very difficult task managing any team and football is a simple game but very complex as everyone sees things differently and has different opinions on every aspect of the beautiful game. What I shall do is ask a number of questions and give my view on how things seem to run in the best way and maybe I can get some answers from someone. First of all, when you take a job there must be a cohesive and comprehensive plan which is both short-term and also long term. Each and every coach is identified through his style and how he is able to convey his style through his team of players which he assembles in order to engineer his game plan. This is not such a straight forward task with a national team as the man in charge has an identified group of players which he needs to mould into a winning team, at club level the manager can identify particular players which may fit into his style to work with. Everyone talks about different systems of play; 4-4-2, 3-4-3, 4-2-3-1, etc.... but the system is only a tool which is used to express your style of play and should facilitate your team depending on the type of players you have. In this respect, which style of play did Mr Hodgson intend to stamp on the English National team? As I take it, during the 3 major tournaments England played in with Hodgson at the helm I saw a very compact and defensive team during Euro 2012 which tried to counter, during the World Cup in Brazil a very offensive team which tried to keep the ball as much as possible and during Euro 2016..... it is still a mystery till this day. Let us take Antonio Conte’s Italy team as an example; Mr. Conte was appointed National team coach by the Italian Football Federation due to his style of play and his tactical prowess. The Federation had a clear picture of the material available and appointed Antonio as he had shown that he could mould a winning group with these players. He focused on a very solid style of play which has at its centre compactness and organisation and mixed it with the inventiveness and the strength and speed in his forward line. Did Mr. Conte do anything different throughout his tenure? No, he set up his team worked hard through qualifying and did not change for anyone or anything even when his team seemed to be under par. Did he change the players he worked with and believed in throughout the qualifiers? Neither because he had a plan and he stuck to it leading to a clear success despite the elimination at the hand of Germany. This is the same for the German National team and their great manager Mr. Joachim Lowe. Although some of his stalwarts have grown older and are not on the same level of many younger players who are establishing themselves in the Bundesliga, he has decided to keep faith with them and his style of play. The likes of Bastian Schweinsteiger and Lukas Podolski still are an integral part to his team even though they have had abject and injury prone seasons lately and this shows that planning on the long run and believing in your players can reap benefits. With this in mind I go to the next question to Mr. Hodgson: why did you decide to make such radical changes to the Squad you took to the Euros as you were able to qualify through the group stages with a defined nucleus of players? Players like Dier, Alli, Vardy and Kane all had a great season and should have been in the England Squad but not at the expense of not playing in the same balanced way the team was set up through qualifiers. England qualified with ten wins out of ten with 31 goals in favour and 3 against which is a pretty good result. The set up of the team was formed through a strong back line which included Clyne at right back, a good number of different left backs and Cahill together with either Jagielka or Smalling at Centre back, three in midfield with Henderson at the heart of midfield and the likes of Wilshere, Milner and Delph creating the much needed cover and balance, the captain Rooney up front and a number of quick and talented forwards working around him; Sterling, Oxlade Chamberlain, Sturridge, Walcott and Andros Townsend, to name a few. With a style which was a possession game attacking through the flanks and with combinations through the middle England looked the real deal through qualifying and had a very good balance in the middle of the park allowing the team to defend well and concede only 3 goals in 10 matches. What happened during Euro 2016 is bewildering and I would truly like someone to give me a reasonable explanation to the changes made before such an important tournament. Why was the midfield and defence torn apart to make way to players who had limited involvement previously? Was this pressure from the media? How can one expect a midfield with Dier taking the role of the additional defender he truly is and players like Alli and Rooney being the two midfield maestros. Rooney as a midfielder getting the ball from the defenders? Oh my! Who decided that? What style was the team based on and what were the movements the players had practiced and worked on? Could anyone identify any coaching in the team? And most important of all what was the game plan and did the England team have a plan B? All I noticed was that when England were either loosing or couldn’t break down the opposition substitutions took place to put more strikers on and pray that something just happened! Is it just me who could see these things or am I still to learn some special traits in the simple game of football which I need to discover through magical sources? Another thing which is bewildering and elusive to me and many other is the work done on set pieces. I cannot understand how one of the most dangerous players in and around the box was given the responsibility to take free kicks and corners. How does this even make sense? And to top it up how does a manager which should be the leader and a person of strong character and one who should be able to take prompt and effective decisions not be able to take crucial decisions like leaving players who have not performed out of the team. With all due respect, playing Kane and Sterling and not omitting Hart shows a lack of true leadership and decision making which is the main aspect of football today on and off the pitch. I augur that the FA does not make a shambles of the upcoming managerial appointment as the present and future bauds well as the talent necessary to perform is in place. The next England Manager needs to be a strong character that has a strategy and is able to lead a group of players who he believes in and who believe in him. No more excuses just smarter decisions. Hope Mr. Hodgson has the time to give us some type of explanation on his decisions prior to and throughout the tournament. He was bright enough to prepare his resignation letter prior to the Iceland match and surely did the same by preparing an explanation to all these questions that I have raised! Nicholas Baldacchino is a UEFA A Coach and Director of Youth Coaching qualification, currently Head of Coaching and Development at Valletta FC's Youth Development Sector.
Jed Davies is one of those special coaches who never stays still. His curiosity fuels a desire to look closely to why certain ideas and coaches work better than others. His first book on Tiki-Taka delved deeper into the system than anything else that was written on it, dealing not only on the coaching of the system but also its evolution and the philosophy behind it. Now he has turned his attention to Marcelo Bielsa. One of the most influential coaches of the modern game, Bielsa is widely respected as a visionary and a coach whose ideas have a wide reaching impact. Davies will analyse these ideas in an upcoming book (The Philosophy of Football: In The Shadow of Marcelo Bielsa) and spoke to Blueprint for Football over why he felt that the Argentine manager deserved so much attention. Blueprint for Football: What brought about the idea of this book? Jed Davies: As with my previous book ‘Coaching the Tiki-Taka Style of Play’, the idea to write a book is the idea to commit yourself to learning. Everything else is secondary. I was left dissatisfied after my previous book with the idea that I had leaned towards a style of play that is often misinterpreted and associated with maintaining possession over the duration of a game. That bothered me and I found my questions I was asking mentors, colleagues and friends were often around the misguided perception that possession ‘for possession’s sake’ and how that was to assert your dominance over a game through ownership of the ball – not always true to the idea of having ownership over the game.
I owe my research’s intentions and messages to many who were generous with their curiosity. Guys like James Nash in Milton Keynes who would ask ‘what is the value of a pass?’, a question I attempted to answer knowing I’d never fully satisfy James’ curiosity. Other questions such as ‘what is the purpose for this rotation or that rotation?’ and ‘how can you evaluate team communication and decision making?’ led me down a very philosophical route in trying to theorise the game. This very same process is one Marcelo Bielsa has spent years making conclusions on and inspiring others to do the same: Mauricio Pochettino, Pep Guardiola and many others have travelled the same paths, paths often laid out before them by one man: Marcelo Bielsa. BfF: How long have you been working on it? And what was the process like? JD: I’ve been working on this book since 2013 and I’m still finding hundreds of new angles to look at the same idea today, but the time is now right to place a freeze-frame around the current document and have it published. I’ve always promoted the thought that the book is a snapshot of a certain time frame rather than the definitive answers to football. The processes of learning involved in this book have been significant opportunities to reshape how I see the game and think about theorising in general. I’ve taken flights around the world to Argentina and other countries to meet coaches or players who have worked either directly with or played under Marcelo Bielsa, and then stepped one further away and applied the same research methods to those who have played under or worked with those who represent the ‘school of Bielsa’ such as Pochettino, Dario Franco, Gerardo Martino and many others. The objective was to zoom all the way out and look at football from a philosophical standpoint and then zoom in on Bielsa and each of the common ideas that have become synonymous with Marcelo Bielsa: verticality, structures, rotation, movement and so on.
While Bielsa is one of the toughest men in world football to get into contact with for an interview (trust me I’ve tried!), he has such a diverse group of followers who have been influenced by Bielsa that the task to research the ideas of Bielsa was accessible, at least in Marcelo Bielsa’s shadows anyway. Hence the title of the book ‘The Philosophy of Football: In Shadows of Marcelo Bielsa’. BfF: Why is Bielsa so special? After all, he isn't won a lot of trophies? JD: Mauricio Pochettino, Gerardo Martino, Dario Franco, Diego Simeone, Jorge Sampaoli, Pep Guardiola - all have taken direct inspiration from Marcelo Bielsa’s way of thinking either in strategy or methodology. Indirectly hundreds and hundreds more unknowingly employ principles that were ignited by Marcelo Bielsa. At Athletic Bilbao, Newell’s Old Boys and Chile in particular, legacies were left behind him. Newell’s Old Boys even named their stadium after him ‘Estadio Marcelo Bielsa’ and have since hired from a managerial pool of those that represent the same school of thought as Marcelo Bielsa. To paint Bielsa’s portrait with numbers and lists of achievements would be wrong for this doesn’t consider the knock-on effects in football and it wouldn’t give power to ideas that can transform how an individual can think about the game. Those who have worked with or closely to Marcelo Bielsa are unified in their opinion – Bielsa has a way of convincing others that there is a right and wrong in football, at least in the processes of bringing to life an idea. “Watching Bielsa's games is like listening to Beethoven’s 9th symphony So perfect & harmonious that it becomes genius” - Jan Van Winckel (Coach under Marcelo Bielsa at Marseille 2014-15) BfF: What is his philosophy? JD: The first angle to attack this type of question is to ask ‘what is THE philosophy?’, People use ‘philosophy’ to refer to their own individual subjective preferences over how the game should be played, educated and thought of. Rarely do people try to address the objective philosophy of the game. So if we look through the objective lens and make an attempt to theorise football on the pitch, we come to a set of broad undeniable and factual conclusions. The highest order of objectives when in possession is to score a goal, the ‘next best’ action is to assist goals. After these two objectives, we are looking at ‘assisting’ the assist. That is to say, we can use examples of playing players through into areas we can make assists from (wide areas within the box among others) or set the ball back to someone who can put someone through to score.
After those three more obvious objectives, I find that many football coaches slip in and out of grey areas and start to fill in the order of objectives from a subjective angle. I would propose after a deep study into Marcelo Bielsa’s thinking that we’re looking at the topic of ‘breaking lines’ – which in literal terms is to get into the following spaces with the ball: 1. Behind the opposition central defenders 2. Behind the opposition full backs 3. In front of the opposition central defenders 4. In front of the opposition full backs 5. Behind the opposition central midfielders 6. Behind the opposition wide midfielders Each of these spaces provokes a different response from each opponent. This alone is an under-analysed area in football analysis. Should we not be able to (a) score, (b) assist, (c) assist the assist and (d) get into the key spaces, we are now looking at creating the conditions to achieve the objectives listed above. Simply put, we would find it difficult to achieve the objective listed in objective (d) for one or more of three reasons: the opposition are compact horizontally, the opposition are compact vertically and the opposition are layered in between their midfield and defence (or beyond). The three processes listed (to spread the opposition out vertically, to spread the opposition out horizontally and to remove the layers of the opposition) should make up the vast majority of your philosophical content. These three processes can be achieved through different levels of communication. Communication refers to the verbal and non-verbal interactions between two or more players on the football field (team level, unit level and group level). An example of group level communication might be to have your central defender drive out with the ball to attract one of the opposition midfielders, this moment then communicates to your team mate(s) where space may or may not have opened up now the opposition central midfielder is pulled out of his position (therefore removing compaction or layers). In this moment, we can think about communication in its simple form as a two against one (your central defender and a player behind the opposition midfield line against the opposition midfielder who has been pulled towards the ball and out of position). Of course this can grow and become more complex as other players can be involved in this moment. Your striker may want to run behind the nearest central defender, to prevent the central defender stepping forward to defend behind the central midfielder pulled out of position for example. Should none of the previous options be available to the player on the ball (objective A-E), then switching out of the area to another area is often considered as a way of finding new angles into the opposition block AND to move the opposition from one area to another. The final objective in possession is to retain possession and know that each new pass in the sequence returns to the highest orders of the objectives. Where Marcelo Bielsa thrives most, is in implementing the pictures and patterns for players that fit within this framework of objectives. In Bielsa’s own words, verticality, movement, rotation, concentration and improvisation (breaking the order of objectives) make up Bielsa’s implementation of the philosophy of the game. Bielsa is simply the mediator between THE PHILOSOPHY of the game and the players – different to other managers who start with ‘preferences’ as their starting point. Of course Bielsa has his own set of preferences for how he implements the philosophy – but this is on the level of application of THE philosophy, not the other way around. BfF: Bielsa’s concepts need players who can think about the game. First off, do you agree with that statement and secondly, how do you foster that? JD: Bielsa is famous for saying “if football were played by robots, I’d win everything” and has a clear methodology which involves building around key languages of the game. On the other hand, Bielsa also once said: “Totally mechanised teams are useless, because they get lost when they lose their script. But I also don’t like ones that only rely on the inspiration of their soloists, because when God doesn’t turn them on, they are left totally at the mercy of their opponents” It’s clear that this is an area of great interest for the Argentine and an area he has explored well.
Taking the first quotation into consideration (re: robots), Bielsa is referring to the human elements that bring about errors on a football field, or as Dr Raoul Oudejans would say (an associate professor at the Faculty of Human Movement Sciences at the VU University Amsterdam) “changes in attention which lead to a performance decrement”. Changes in attention can often be as a result of increased anxiety (which in turn comes about from responses to different levels of pressure). Marcelo Bielsa is someone that others would consider a ‘master in human motivation’ and guys like Sampaoli have even admitted to going jogging while listening to recordings of Bielsa’s interviews and team talks. One method to reduce the impact of ‘changes in attention’ can be to channel these moments towards detail. That is to say, we can create a series of checkpoints to focus on during any high pressure activity. Let’s take a penalty shot for the simplest example, we can take the whole activity as a process and just be part of that process and allow for us to ‘just be there’ and experience the moment as it is as we run up to take the penalty. Alternatively, using a method that many use for different actions across many disciplines, we can break the action into a series of mini-checkpoints: put the ball down, take exactly seven steps back and stand in line with an imaginary marker two yards past the far post and then as striking the ball with the instep to shoot across goal we should feel the sensation of the knee coming up to the balancing arm as our body remains compact during the strike of the ball.
The checkpoint process allows for our attention to be placed into areas where our technique is important in this particular example, leaving no room for anxiety to creep in. In a similar way of thinking, it is possible to use the ‘languages of the game’ (or specific patterns) to bring together a collective set of minds during a more structured part of the game that might otherwise rely on the individual’s level of attention and decision making. So from this particular viewpoint, we can say that Bielsa would prefer players to play ‘without thought’, automatically. Bielsa also uses tools such as clear ‘roles and tasks’ for individuals on a football field, areas to place your focus. Then we move onto Bielsa’s second quote where he clearly expresses his dislike for totally mechanised teams that follow a script. So there is a balance here, between Bielsa and the players. A player who goes against the script or a player that improvises is a clear component that Bielsa not only encourages but plans for from a higher level of planning. The idea is to create clearly unique player identities within a team and in doing so, creating a better platform for communication (verbal/non-verbal agreements) to succeed in a game of football. Players are not equal, not in personality, not in technical expressions, not in game understanding and so on. Some coaches exist on either end of this scale, some are strict in their scripts and models of the game (Louis Van Gaal) while others allow for player ownership over their game and ideas, but within an agreed style of play (Arsene Wenger). Bielsa is constantly sliding up and down this scale, somewhere between the two, somewhere in the grey area of Bielsa’s scripts and the resistance of player improvisation. To foster such an environment, the players must know the script before then can move away from it with freedom, players must know their own player identity and how that fits within the bigger picture – players must understand the game. Not all players will understand the game on the same level of understanding, that is to be accepted and some players need more to be moulded around them and their intuitive preferences. It’s a question of human management.
Luckily for Bielsa the game isn’t played by robots, because it’s part of the game that Bielsa clearly finds fascinating and challenging. Through our struggles we learn most. BfF: What is the biggest lesson that coaches can take from him? In particular coaches at either youth level or who coach for the fun of it? JD: The biggest lesson I have taken is the ability to theorise the game from an objective level and work my way backwards from there – knowing that the philosophy and application of the philosophy are two entirely separate things. From an implementation standpoint, I think we can all learn how to better mediate between the philosophy and your players more. You, as the coach, can zoom out and step out of the situation in your coaching. Bielsa’s training methodology is both very simple and often directly relates to the philosophy of the game – creating automatisation (action without though: automatically) in areas but then allowing for individual improvisation to break these rules within the game. Better than that, demanding that of your players. I think if coaches thought about the game as their starting point along with creating better player identities we’d be far more successful in what we do. Too many have other objectives held on a higher level than those two components. BfF: How will the book be structured? Will it be simply coaching sessions or will there be more to it? JD: The book is heavily theoretical but then followed up with over 50 related training sessions that absolutely will not work without the coach’s prior understanding of the objective of each session and how it fits in with the bigger picture. I would say to anyone looking to just find training sessions to implement – turn away now and do not buy my book. It’s designed to provoke thought from the reader and hopefully create a reaction of acceptance or rejection. I would be disappointed if anyone read the book and agreed with absolutely everything I’ve written – especially as large parts of it discuss football philosophy within the context of application. The book demands some work from the reader in certain areas as I have left some theoretical solutions in their ‘application form’ from case studies. Bielsa employs principles that are not exclusive to him alone, they are part of football and examples of his philosophy exist within so many teams. This is especially true since Bielsa’s starting point of study was ‘football’. So for this reason I’ve looked at how other teams employ the same principles, form example how Wales under Gary Speed used their full backs to get their best players on the ball in the best spaces to showcase their individual player identity (receiving the ball with the defender in front to run at). The last thing I wanted was for coaches to read a book that both theorises the philosophy Bielsa follows and then copy his application of the philosophy. The idea is to promote thinking about the game like Bielsa and then look at your own opportunities and barriers of implementation within your own level of application. Therefore, creating something meaningful.
I want coaches to be better theorisers and to form their own approach within their own skillset as a coach – all within the objective framework of the game that Bielsa has spent a lifetime theorising. BfF: Have other coaches helped in the writing of this book? JD: To write a book like this in isolation is impossible. I have reached out to many and sat them down to discuss football on a philosophical level to try and theorise each individual and tie them to the structure of thinking I’ve outlined previously. I received so much information of how to better create conditions to then penetrate between lines for example – these same coaches may not be aware of their bigger picture but they certainly have many great ideas and examples of application. Unfortunately, the few most influential people I spoke with were not able to put their name to their words, however, they were very open with helping me tie together my thinking. We have to respect those who are in this position and yet they still choose to educate others and better than that, explore with you their thinking as they haven’t yet made sense of it all yet. I’ve always believed that we should learn from the best teachers we have around us. That is to say if we have an expert on ‘creating teams’ within our reachability we should learn from that individual, if we have an expert on ‘food’ then we should look to learn from them and take away what we can for our own field. Not enough people do this. I’d implore you today to think about any world leading expert in any field you have around you – someone that eats, sleeps and breathes their expertise and oozes with passion – ask to meet them and get a window into their way of thinking about achieving excellence in their profession. If you can’t take something away from that person, then you’ve failed. My book has been influenced and had the help of more than just football coaches. But everything has been put back under the reference of ‘football philosophy’ and within Bielsa’s way of thinking. BfF: Finally, you're going through Kickstarter to crowd fund the printing costs for the book: why is that? JD: Going through Kickstarter hasn’t really been done as far as I know for this type of book, which is insane given the social media explosion of coaches and analysts over the years. I believe that by opening this door for crowd funding books, we’ll hopefully see others follow and write the books that we all want. Many of the most popular coaching books to date follow the same guidelines – this is a real opportunity to do something different. I’m now able to format the book and showcase information in the way I see best to achieve the book’s objectives. Going under any publisher means making sacrifice and making more of a consideration towards maximising profits or fitting within their current ‘this is how it is done’ way of thinking. This isn’t to have a dig at any of the publishers out there but it is a way of finding freedom as an author to keep the message pure – to commit myself as the author to learning and keeping everything else secondary. I’ll be backing projects on Kickstarter I see in the future that I think have made a real commitment to learning on a higher level. No questions asked. Within the first week we’ve reached nearly 90% of the overall funding needed to print the number of books we wanted to. This has been pleasing and shows it can be done! I’m sure it won’t always work out and I fully expect a future project of mine to fail done this way, but that’s ok – since the purpose of writing the book in the first place wasn’t to profit from it anyway! I’ve been thinking a lot on the subject of implementing ideas and the process of coaching lately – how we can install change, how we should manage change, how to plant seeds in the minds of players so they grow into firm beliefs and so on. This is without a doubt my next area of obsession, whether that materialises into a book that succeeds or not we’ll have to see but I’ve already made my commitment to learning on this and starting meeting coaches who are world leaders in this field. With Kickstarter we have a future platform for the idea to grow – for anyone who loves ‘ideas’, Kickstarter is a wonderful resource. Further information on 'The Philosophy of Football: In the Shadow of Marcelo Bielsa' can be found here. We need your help to keep Blueprint for Football running and ask those who can afford it, and who feel that the material we have produced and continue to produce is worth something to you in return, to pledge $2 per month (or more if you wish). Check us out on Patreon.
