Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Refereeing, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: analysing, coaching a losing team, losing, match day, team preparation, winning
Winning is always important but not always an accurate measurement of how well a team played. It is better to ask key questions about your team:
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Did they create chances?
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Did they have a good shape defensively and cover the dangerous spaces?
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Did the players make good decisions when in possession?
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Did they play a mixed passing game?
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Did they control the tempo of the game?
Jot down your thoughts straight after the game. Then write down what happened in the game an hour after your team has played and re-read what happened. Look for the positives to talk to your players about and then go to work on the negatives.
My team played a game recently where they started off easily
the best team. We totally outpassed the opposition and created twice as many chances as they did. We lost the game 3-2.
So I wrote down my answers to the questions…
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Yes, we did create chances – praise the team.
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No, we often left dangerous spaces when we didn’t get back quickly enough when attacks broke down – work on defensive positions and recovery movement.
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Mixed, but on the whole we made good decisions.
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Yes, passing was good, long and short – praise the team.
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No, they allowed the opposition back in to the game when they had it won – work on closing the game out.
You can then see what to talk about, what to praise and what to work on at your next coaching session.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Refereeing, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: 1v1, attacking, defending, Germany, Liverpool, spain, Torres
At the weekend Liverpool played away at Everton, hoping to change their recent poor run.
Key this has been the form of their striker Fernando Torres. His loss of form has been one of the reasons the team has struggled. The Liverpool manager Roy Hodgson decided Torres should go up against Everton’s Sylvain Distin at centre-back rather than attack Phil Jagielka.
This was a key battle in the game – if Torres won most of these he was likely to score or create lots of chances.
However Torres won just four of the 14 head to heads he had in front of goal mostly with Distin. Distin won 10 of the 14. Torres and indeed Liverpool didn’t score or create many chances.
One of the key reasons that he didn’t win many of them was the poor service into him, balls in the air rather than into his feet or body. It is much easier for a big centre back to win crosses into Torres than trying to stop him with the ball at his feet.
But the other key reason is that when commentators say he is out of form what they actually me is he is no longer winning the 1v1 situations he is famous for.
Watch the two video clips below. In the first he scores in the final of Uefa Euro 2008 to beat Germany 1-0. The second is a compilation – watch the number of times Torres is 1v1 and the number of times he scores after beating a defender 1v1.
