The construction or build up of a common or collective "Thinking" in a Football/ Soccer team.

 Author: Oscar Mendez

I remember a long time ago, when in an interview I had the fortune of listening to Julio Velasco (famous Argentinian Volleyball coach), explaining the difference between "playing ball" and "playing football or soccer".

He talked about how some things look rather simple, at first sight this would be similar or the same, but as he explained how parents thought they understood the second one (playing football) because some of them played the first one (played ball), they were unable to see and understand  the complexity of the game of football.

Football seems very simple and easy, uncomplicated, but as new technology and tools arise to analyze it, we  begin to observe its complexity and older cliches that were used before, now  we learn that have no real practical utilization.

Examples:

Ball Posession football does not give you any advantages.

This originally is logical and to a certain point real. Possession of the ball in a single game and without strategical objectives does not give you or your team an advantage.

Now, when we begin to see and analyze many matches , of teams who play "long possession football and  positional attacking football", thanks to Big Data analysis over thousands of matches, we begin to see that these teams win more often that teams that give the initiative to the opponent.

The reason is really rather simple. 

Since they have longer possession of the ball, they create and shoot more often than teams who don' t.

This team lost because the players were tired or ran less.

The majority of teams who end up running more than the opponents, usually tie or lose.

This is not intentional, but rather it responds to "systemic" factors of the game, given that the ones that prevail have a higher organizational level and the teams that "run more" usually are more disorganized. They normally run after the ball.

There are some exceptions but this can be seen in the majority of the cases.

  

Teams here can not play posession based football because they are not good technically.

Possession and the build up of a team, do not depend exclusively on technical (individual) skills but rather it is a TACTICAL aspect.

Unlike many wrongly suggest and repeat.

It is impossible for a footballer alone, if he doesn't have support from his / her teammates that offer him/her passing lanes and mobility, to be able to pass or penetrate an opposing defense successfully or that his/her team does not lose the ball and progress through the pitch successfully.

THIS IS NOT A TECHNICAL PROBLEM BUT RATHER A TACTICAL ONE.

Any  amateur footballer can run with the ball on his/her feet without losing control of it, and even the best defenders of the world in teams where they don't offer him/her any support, passing lanes or create space,  will lose possession of the ball.

This is learned, it is taught, and is learned to be taught.

It is done collectively, football/soccer is a collective sport, it is not an individual sport.

Obviously it is not a physical problem either.

I mention this because I am tired of hearing these things on the media, and repeated by journalists over and over, without understanding what it is about.

It is not hereditary, nor genetic, you are not born with this skill. 

You learn it, develop it and perfection it.

If teens in their clubs live worried with losing or winning a match and only are taught irresponsibly to "kick long balls" through their whole development phase , it is obvious that they will never learn to build up the game from the back, not only the defenders but also the rest of the team.

"Not all opinions are respectable, what is respectable is the right to give your opinion, because I personally,  about the growing process of  butterflies in Cameroon, I can say that it is rather slow....My right to give an opinion is an unalienable right, we had to fight to have it, but someone could  point out, is really my  opinion about the butterflies in Cameroon valuable? ".

Juanma Lillo.

 THE CONSTRUCTION OF A "COMMON THINKING".

When we play any collective sport, and we interact with one or more teammates, traditionally it was thought or believed that talent and individual technique of that footballer was the only factor or the most important one, without taking into consideration the collective, the team, tactics.

A football team is a system, it is a net of microsystems that are constantly adapting and in constant dynamic , adaptability and interaction in a certain space and time.

For a team to create/ generate a scoring chance for example, the majority of the team, or all of the players, must be thinking the same thing in that exact time and space, because if one of them is not, all of this idea/intention will crumble to the ground, and later the execution will be another aspect , because it will be in real "game like" context situation and will also depend on other additional factors like the opponent, fortune and other additional factors.

Before all of this of course, there will be a strategy, either on a macro level or that specific situation.

 

This is the reason why real game like situations are trained, situations that that look to be generated and that other teams could create and we have to avoid.

If we train in out of context situations, or doing things that our footballers do not create or build this "common thought", it will be very difficult for the players and team to do it in real situations like the matches repeatedly.

Collective sports, seem rather simple, easy to understand analyze and predict but they are not.

Nowadays, thanks to many technological tools , we are beginning to notice the complexity of the sport and confirm what Professor Vitor Frade was able to see several decades ago.

These things, seen through the eyes of a linear vision, simplistic, reductionist, will be seen in a very simple fashion. Always depending on one or two factors.

Either because he/she does not have the necessary tools to understand it or because of economical reasons (of time), comfort or others.

"The others are players that later train or coach, and he is, rather a coach who before decided to play".

Juanma Lillo talking about Pep Guardiola.