Absorb the useful, dismiss the useless

Sport and soccer have been guilty of mirroring this. Terms like ’skill acquisition’ have been commonplace - but in soccer, and other complex sporting endeavours, it is difficult to acquire and possess anything.

We, the people playing and coaching soccer, are continually and consistently in tension with the game and the other humans playing it.

Seductive, snappy soundbites such as ‘the only thing that changes is the size of the shirt’ - which reflect the normative nature of development environments - are seductive but often twee, and take little account of the turbulent, non-linear learning that is player and coach development.

The moment we believe we have solved the situation, acquired the answer or defeated an adversary is the moment we are weakest. 

Development isn’t a destination; mastery not a waypoint - rather just a continued commitment to contending with context.

Our player development craft is centred on understanding and, perhaps, accepting this. The way our team plays will need to shift as it meets varying challenges - and not be littered with limited global solutions.

As our opposition attempts to unsettle us and sustain control of the game, we must counter that with some form of evolution of our own.

This flexibility ferments itself when we focus further and deeper into how we factor this into our thinking and practice.

If flexibility is an aspiration, and a central tenet in developing or sustaining an advantage over better resourced peers, then embodying it within every session we coach, each game we analyse and the individual interactions we engage in is the edge. Continually evolving and developing that edge sustains our advantage.

"The moment we believe we’ve solved the situation is when we are weakest..."

We have captured how we might compose or consider committing to this concept and, consequently, how we might connect it to our coaching.

The unique nature of your nation, critical characters in the history of your club and the industries that initiated the area you inhabit - plus the volume of the voice your players have in shaping the team they are a fundamental part of - are all key social and cultural constraints that continue to contribute to our coaching.

The map doesn’t show those elements. Top-down governance finds it difficult to comprehend these characteristics, which is why the detail in the craft of the way players develop in your context shouldn’t be co-ordinated centrally; it should always be localised.

Ubiquitous methodologies, central competency frameworks, pervasive patterns of play and sweeping syllabuses that satisfy the sanctimony of the sovereign perpetuate the notion that we are all waiting to be told or to have our hand held. That we are lacking in the wherewithal to co-ordinate our own community.

Respectfully rebuff this and explore the territory in ways that connect to your context. 

Experience soccer with excitement, expressionism and an enduring enthusiasm; keep this and only this on repeat. Everything else evolves.

Of course, embrace, engage with and explore support from a range of different perspectives, including those that can seem incongruous or incompatible. 

Absorb what is useful. Disregard what isn’t. At times, we may not know the difference. That is where our growth and development exists, in learning to understand the difference and connecting with it.