#1 - Coaching Philosophies... Illustrating My Purpose

Hello there! I hope you are doing well...

Before we begin, this is not going to be a coaching philosophy document that details what blade of grass I would like my full back to step on when my centre back receives the ball... this is more of a journey towards the values and beliefs that I hold dearest and live by on the coaching field. I would like to think the players I work with feel the same way, but you never quite know what 8 year olds are thinking (of you or in general) at any given moment...

Philosophy. A word found scribbled and circled in nearly every coaching pack on any coaching course or webinar you will ever visit. Makes even the most basic of beliefs and actions sound really intelligent and interesting. "A theory or attitude that acts as a guiding principle for behaviour" is how it is defined in the dictionary, although I feel it is a word that has become more a "buzzword" as opposed to a "key word" in recent years.

Every man and his dog has a philosophy they stand by... I understand the importance of having a set of values and morals that you live by, a few key phrases that resonate with you in times of hardship, I completely get it. The key factor is that it is something that comes from YOU. Not solely because it sounded cool on a podcast, but because it connected with an element of your soul and put words to that indescribable feeling you get when somebody does that thing you don't agree with. These are guiding principles, not trends or fads, and should be treated as such. A handful of principles that align how you feel about the world and how you believe you should operate in all walks of life. Home, relationships, when you're getting tailgated on the way home from work by another bloody Nissan Patrol, these principles should be taken seriously if you set yourself the time to create them. Especially when it comes to the world of coaching, which I will be focussing this blog on.

I believe understanding self is a never ending task, a task that I feel is important to delve into if you are to find the underpinning values that you would like to pass onto those who turn up to see you at 5:00pm on a Tuesday evening. Being self aware is one thing... I recognise how I speak to people and ensure I do so in a respectful and courteous way for example, but it is what is under the hood, why do I get that itching feeling in my bones when I feel like I am going to be late? Why do I rehearse what I am going to say in my head a hundred times and play out the unrealistic worst case scenario before I have a conversation? How come I am searching for appreciation but then not showing appreciation for the appreciation I receive? These are some of my actual thoughts, and goes to prove the point of understanding self being a work in progress. Delving into these thoughts allows you to sieve through what is important to you and what washes out. Anyway... my personal therapy is for another time, back to the coaching.

This is a story in how I stumbled into the values and principles that underpin my coaching planning, delivery, reflections and persona. I won't bamboozle you with jargon, I just hope that this is somewhat relatable and provides food for thought surrounding the topic of creating or adapting a coaching philosophy. 

I have looked at how values can drive the technical/tactical elements of my beliefs within coaching, this is because I believe that, in my role within the youth game, I am developing young people to thrive in the future, and the footballer second. I understand that players will arrive at my practices with the aim to become better footballers, or to enjoy the game, but I feel the weight of the unwritten pressures that coaches face to be positive role models and to engage the young people in our care to facilitate the intrinsic qualities that sport promotes. Developing young people with a holistic lens will ultimately support the technical side of the game that coaching philosophies typically focus on. In order to bring the values to life, I will provide examples to support each pillar. 

1. Empower.

I aim to empower all individuals within my care to feel they are in charge of their learning journey. This goes against the traditional "coach says, player does" model that most of us grew up with, Empowerment is not about putting on a 5v5 small sided game and letting the players crack on without any guidance ("let the game be the teacher" and the coach lights a cigar on the side line), it is more centred on allowing the players to collaborate on, analyse and evaluate their performances as they play, facing problems and searching for possible solutions together. Football is one of the most simple games to set up and play, yet can become one of the most complex games when it comes to the connections, choices, and consequences of actions (example of the number of connections between players below). 

Arsenal use a term that is one of their pillars within their academy labelled "lifelong learners", which is where the player empowerment will hopefully lead to. I realise I am in a position where some of the players I come into contact with are at a stage where they are almost "learning to learn", so this pillar of my philosophy often takes longer to implement. Here are some examples of methods I use to support the implementation of this pillar in my philosophy.

Player Led Success Criteria

I have my current Technical Director to thank for this tool. But I will warn you, this takes time to implement at the beginning, however, the results and engagement you will see as a result will far outweigh the time spent setting up. 

Both within training and match days, we set the learning outcomes in line with our syllabus, but we then get the players to collaborate to set our success criteria in small groups before getting together to decide on the following:

    - Set one thing that we all commit to showing in line with our LO/ match focus.

    - How will we measure the success of this commitment? 

We will ask the players to get together and create the UAE's for the commitment. UAE's are made up of an "Unacceptable", which is something that is not expected of the players every single time. "Acceptable", which is our baseline commitment that we look for every single time. "Exceptional", which the players will look to achieve some of the time.

Here is an example of a whiteboard that the players in a U9 group set before a match day to bring this idea to life more. As you can also see, this can be a very powerful tool to use to allow the players to detail how the coach can best support them through practices and through matches.

Answering a "big question" throughout the session

Sometimes within practices it is important to allow flexibility and creativity, and I think planning around a "big question" allows for this whilst staying inside a tighter framework.

Planning around a big question essentially means posing a problem to the team, and allowing the players to work together to find solutions to the problem. The practices and game constraints you use will promote the desired outcomes, but it is more about the players recognising these outcomes and showing the intent to apply them, 

An example of this was a question I used this past week. We used the whiteboard to allow (U9) players to write key words that may support them in "answering" the question through the session.

2. Encourage

This is the player's game. I recognise that I will only play a 1% role in the child's development, but I want to make sure that I give them the most memorable 1% I possibly can. It isn't all sunshine and rainbows though, as we have those days where it feels like all the elements are against us. I find it is essential, for me, to make sure that I do the best I can in the moment to provide an enjoyable learning experience for my players. This, in turn, should inspire the players to be the best versions of themselves in every moment. Whether their best for the day is 10%, 60%, or so on, players are encouraged that they are allowed to feel certain emotions that might hamper their overall satisfaction of their day, but within that, aim to make the most of their time on the pitch. You never know what the next person is going through, as excellently illustrated by Norwich City FC's recent Mental Health Day video (https://x.com/norwichcityfc/status/1711630140227064183?s=46&t=ZGAwQ2KfHAU4-H7C8yN2TA), children aren't exempt from these feelings. They could be in the middle of seeing their parents divorce, moving schools, or much worse. 

Here is a story of what I experienced. I was delivering a pretty "normal" session on a pretty "normal" day, and I ask the pretty "normal" question to the group: 

"So... how was everybody's past week? Anything exciting happen?".

One of the children puts his hand up:

"I've had a pretty bad week."

"Oh! I'm sure it wasn't that bad... what happened?"

"Yeah... my sister died on Monday."

Oh. A moment that put everything into perspective. Credit to the child, after such indescribable events, he still wanted to play football. That is why I value encouragement and positivity.

Within encouragement, it is important to reiterate the importance of setting boundaries. We can enjoy ourselves and have a jolly old time if we are showing respect to those around us, trying our best, and making our practices a safe space. I find I am very lenient as a person, I give players a lot of rope, and focus on building rapport before putting the brakes on if players go too far. Sometimes it bites me and makes my life difficult, but I want to show trust and openness early with a new group, and I feel that in those moments where I have to show my dissatisfaction, they are valued a little more than if I was dishing out bollockings left, right and centre.

3. Explore

As a coach, I have been very fortunate to have been allowed and encouraged to experiment with ideas during my sessions over the years. I love taking different approaches to the pitch and seeing the chaos that ensues. I was doing this blindly for a while, before I found the research of "differential learning", and seeing Thomas Tuchel bring the research to life through various clips across the clubs he's worked with. Using different constraints within practices, as well as different equipment, is both hugely beneficial to aide the player's development by challenging the concepts they are learning through a different, higher challenging scenario, and it can be massively enjoyable for the players to experience a completely new challenge. Throwing a tennis ball into a small sided game after focusing on protecting the ball can encourage more body combat situations, using a sponge ball after speaking about making blocks and interceptions, or using a size 1 football after speaking about the execution of the decision of whether to dribble or pass, the possibilities are endless.

If I am wanting to do this as a coach, the players need to be given the platform to explore different challenges, and use their creative thinking and application skills to discover possible solutions. Within my practices there are lots of occasions where players are given "trial periods" or "free play" to use learnings from training in game contexts. Even using street games like "Wembley/World Cup" to see what the players use from training, without any coach input and in an organic setting that doesn't jump out to players that they're being coached. An element of unorganised play is something I look to implement on occasion to put players in situations where they are unrestricted and are free to experiment with and without the ball. This is to make up for the time (or lack thereof) that players spend outside of organised play. We as coaches and football organisations need to become more conscious of the amount of organised play that players are getting. Sure, we want to develop excellent technical and tactically sound players for future World Cup games, but the element of enjoyment and freedom that football provided us as children isn't being experienced by a lot of these players anymore, for various reasons. I'm not recommending throwing out the syllabus or tearing down academies, I find that I try to incorporate moments where the coach isn't the primary motivator, in an effort to make the players, over time, less dependent on the barking's of coaches and parents. The Coach is still in control of the environment, but the player is given the freedom to explore and express themselves, to fall in love with the nuances of the game, to try that overhead kick, to beat 4 players and nutmeg the goalkeeper. That's what football is all about at this age.

This area links closely to encourage and empower, think of the three as a cyclical philosophy. All have a place within each other and all function in unison to support each other and all those who experience them.

I hope that you can picture where my brain storms have taken us this far. I won't take up much more of your time.

If you have any questions, feedback or thoughts regarding what you have read, please feel free to get in touch with me through the following channels:

Twitter (X): @ReadyBilly

LinkedIn: Billy Ready.

Thank you for reading my ramblings, look out for more of these in the future!

- Billy.