Rich

Here are the 8 rules I follow when designing my training: 1⃣ The Game is the best teacher. a) The Game gives immediate Feedback. The Game doesn’t lie. It tells you right away if something isn't working. b) People are a reflection of their environment. The same is true in Football. Players are a reflection of the games they repeatedly play. If the environment is right, everything else falls into place. c) You can teach everything through the game. The game contains everything. If the game doesn't teach it, you don't need it. You just need to know how to provoke different aspects of the game. 2⃣ High Intensity. Only train 100% intensity. Then recover. Then repeat. Players play as they train. If they only know 100%, they can only play 100%. Note: The term ‘Intensity’ is used very often in Football. I used it to describe the level of focus and effort of the players. 3⃣ The Game Model is the starting point. Design each exercise to operationalize your principles. “Training is worth it only when it lets you make your ideas and principles operational. Thus, the coach has to find exercises to guide his team to do what it is intended to do in the game.” - Mourinho. First, you need a clear idea of how you want to play: "What is the job of a football head coach or manager? To have a clear idea of how my team should play. […] But what they [Pep Guardiola, Diego Simeone, Hansi Flick, Julian Nagelsmann, Jürgen Klopp] all have in common is that they exactly know how this kind of football they want to play looks like. They have in their brains the video of the perfect game. They have it in their minds. And the job of the football manager is to transform this Idea of football into the heads, hearts, brains, and veins of your players." - Ralf Rangnick. Clarity is the key to implementing your philosophy quickly: "In my experience, it is possible to teach a completely new style of play to a team within a very short period and make your ‘signature’ recognizable. Provided that the coach knows exactly where he wants to take the team.” - Roger Schmidt (’Roger Schmidt: Das Buch eines Trainers’; Schmidt/Wolf; 2020) With each exercise, you learn more about your Game Model. It is a reinforcing cycle. When you teach something, you learn more about it. The more you learn, the faster you can teach it. The faster you can teach it, the more new things you can learn. With every exercise you get feedback on whether your ideas work - not just at the weekend. You can test more and learn faster. 4⃣ Small groups for more repetitions. Boil down your team principles to individual principles. Then you can develop your team while focusing on player development. Most of the training is played in small (1v1-4v4) and medium games (5v5-7v7). This allows you to quickly develop a recognizable style. “We often train in small groups. The aim is nevertheless to train the tactical behavior in a position-specific manner and to consolidate and automate it through high numbers of repetitions in the shortest and most complex situations.” - Roger Schmidt (’Fußball durch Fußball’, Maric/Henseling, 2015) 5⃣Train harder than the game. Learning is the adaptation to challenges. Overload the skills of the players. They adapt to it. Not too much overload to avoid injuries. Increase the challenge step-by-step. "You sometimes have to struggle through a training exercise. A learning effect occurs when something doesn't work right from the start. The training should be so complex and demanding that the competitive game feels almost easy for the players at the end. This gives you more room for creativity and game intelligence. That's why training games can often be exaggerated to test the limits. Especially if you want to play a very intense game.” - Roger Schmidt (’Roger Schmidt: Das Buch eines Trainers’; Schmidt/Wolf; 2020) Use constraints that exaggerate your idea of the game. Sarri, for example, limits the number of touches. He forces his players to think his way of playing: "During the week, we always play with just two touches of the ball in training. So we aim to move the ball quickly. But when our strikers get possession of the ball, they are allowed to dribble." - Marek Hamsik. Johan Cruyff trained in small spaces. He forced his players to think faster: "We play on a short field with a lot of people. So the pace of the ball must be very high, nearly one touch, two touch mostly. And that's why we always try to create a small piece of field where the ball can go at a high pace. So people think 100%" The use of numerical overload situations is very common in football. However, it's often the case that there is either no numerical overload or only a very small one: “In the game, you have fast actions, and sometimes one player overloads, sometimes none, we don't see situations of four or five player overloads. In conditioning or confidence building, a large overload may be useful, but in training for the game, a minimal overload is better” Roberto De Zerbi 6⃣ Continuous Games > Start-Stop Games. Continuous: Play for a certain time without stopping. Multiple actions. (1v1 for 30 seconds). Start-Stop: One action, then rest. (One time 1v1 → stop.) I prefer continuous games. They are closer to the real game. 7⃣ Train everything in one session. Each variation of the game focuses on specific aspects of the game. At the same time, other aspects occur less frequently. For example, a Rondo overloads passing actions, but underloads 1v1 actions. Balance Rondos with 1v1/2v2 games that emphasize dribbling. Design the session to cover all aspects. 8⃣ Variations > New Exercise Rather than using several different exercises, I prefer to introduce new variations around ONE exercise. Advantages: a) Less time wasted: It is quicker to introduce a variation than to explain a new exercise. b) Become an expert at this game by thinking very deeply about it. The better I understand a game, the better I can coach it. c) Increase the challenge step by step. Adapt it to the players’ skills. With a new exercise, you can only guess the optimal difficulty level.