5 tips for a player-led environment

A player-led environment is one in which players take control of the direction of culture, sessions and, in some cases, matchdays.

It can create leaders, help players learn, support life beyond football, develop coach-athlete relationships and even improve the reflective practices of the coach.

But how can you go about developing a player-led environment? Here are five tips...

01 INCORPORATE INDIVIDUAL DEVELOPMENT PLANS

Give players a template, or work with them to create one, that allows them to identify strengths, weaknesses and areas in which they want to develop.

This gives the players ownership over their own journeys and helps them buy into the process of improving.

Encourage your players to make the points in these plans as specific as possible. Rather than a strength being ‘movement’, it could be ’movement to find space in between the lines to receive the ball’.

If possible, make sure these individual development plans aren’t just focused on the technical aspects of the game. The tactical, physical, psychological and social aspects are just as crucial.

Think about how you and your players might design your individual development plans to incorporate all of these elements.

02 ENCOURAGE REFLECTION ON THEIR PERFORMANCES

Use approaches like ’two stars, one wish’, which asks players to reflect on their performances and identify two things they think they did well and one thing they think they could improve on. Again, the more specific the better.

Players can share these reflections with their team-mates, allowing them to develop their social skills and practice being honest and vulnerable, building psychological resilience.

03 GAMIFY THINGS

Depending on the age of your players, they will have different interests and hobbies. Can you bring some of these into your coaching environment?

If your players are really into a certain video game, maybe they can identify some things from it that you can use in training. Perhaps different scenarios could be brought into games, or different character traits used as challenges for players.

Another idea is to use things like football cards. Can your players come up with various profiles of different players, considering aspects like their position and their super strengths? These can then be used as challenges or things to aspire to.

04 TAKE THEIR INPUT ON TRAINING AND MATCHDAYS

What do your players think went well last game? What do they think needs working on? The answers to these questions can help shape what future sessions might look like.

Maybe they can get involved in delivering some of these sessions – delivering warmups, setting up areas or providing feedback to their team-mates.

On matchdays, ask them how they think the game is going. Do they think we need to make changes? Can they suggest and manage substitutions?

05 CONSIDER YOUR CONTEXT

The above are just some ideas to get you thinking about how you can make your environment more player-led.

The most important thing, though, is that whatever you do, it fits your context. Consider the age of your players and what’s appropriate – that’s not just biological age but coaching age and maturation age.

Think about how much support they need, how much scaffolding and leadership is needed from you; and, crucially, what it is they will get out of what they are doing, both from a football perspective and a human
one.