The Anti Game Model Manifesto
A call for change and intentional football player development.
Index:
Introduction
Part 1: Youth Football
Chapter 1 - Footballer freedom comes from instruction
Chapter 2 - Tactical training is technical training
Chapter 3 - Coaches must take accountability
Part 2: Senior Football
Chapter 4 - Recruitment through ideology
Chapter 5 - Adaptability is a must
Chapter 6 - Football is objective based
Conclusion
Afterword
Introduction
The Anti Game Model Manifesto is a call to action for all footballers, coaches, recruitment staff, technical staff, board members, owners and fans to challenge what they know about structured learning environments and their institutions or their own belief systems.
Football coaching involves teaching footballers how to solve problems found in the match.
The objective of a game model should be to outline what coherent ideas a coach or institution may choose to use for the footballers they work with.
Today, the objective of a game model serves little more than to keep bad coaches in jobs, bad recruiters in jobs, and bad footballers in jobs.
The modern football coach and institution insists upon imposing a certain ideology and belief system onto the football footballers with the belief of their approach being the best.
The belief that “one way” is best suggests that football is solved. This approach to teaching and problem solving is shallow and damaging to the footballer.
The opposite is also damaging: too much freedom with no structure will also damage the footballer. The footballer needs solutions and an environment to train them, with conditions and methods that allow for perfection.
No coach is privileged enough to only coach what they are comfortable coaching. The coach must challenge themselves like they challenge the footballer. This involves offering many solutions, not ones limited by belief systems and game models.
The football coach and institution is responsible for the stagnation of football development due to the football footballer having limited solutions to the problems football provides.
The football coach and institution are responsible for providing the footballer with multiple ways of solving problems, catered to the skill set of the footballer. This is done over time in a patient and challenging environment for the footballer.
Footballers are the solution to problems found in football, not the coach or institution.
If a footballer is not given multiple solutions to football problems, then the footballer will not be prepared for when the idea they’ve been taught their whole career no longer works.
True freedom comes from providing the footballer with many solutions and allowing them to choose. A team grows stronger when its individuals make decisions that have been rehearsed, trained and perfected together. A team grows smarter when individuals take control of their own decision making and choose ideas based on the opponent and the team's capabilities.
Footballers must be given choices at grassroots ages. Too often are children undermined and not challenged to solve football problems and are instead relegated to exercises that do not show ideas on how to win the football match.
Football is a game to be won. Training for anything else is not as good as training for solutions to win. A grassroots footballer can be taught how to not concede and how to score. These ideas teach the footballer how to win while also working on basic actions such as passing, receiving, and shooting.
Game models allow for the coach to have a framework of what to teach, but seldom does the coach go deeper than what the game model suggests, due to their own shortcomings as a coach.
The coach must take responsibility for their own learning as their learning is the footballers' learning.
The game model suggests what to coach and who to recruit, creating a smaller pool of potential solutions and footballers to use, stagnating the development of the footballer.
PART 1: Youth Football
Chapter 1: footballer freedom comes from instruction
When a coach says “let them play” or “let them solve the problem themselves” without giving the footballers solutions in previous engagements, they create an illusion of collaboration and cooperative behavior.
In reality, they achieve nothing and look like they are “modern” teachers. This appearance is enough to stroke the ego and keep the coach employed longer because no decision makers who choose if they coach stays or goes can understand what is happening.
Footballers need a variety of choices before they are asked to choose what they believe to be best for the problem at hand.
Footballers will not express themselves if they don’t know how
Coaches have ruined the identity of the footballer in order to serve their own gain or agenda. From grassroots to first team football, a footballer is told what is best by a coach with an opinion.
A footballer being told too few, similar solutions for their entire development process will lead to a footballer who only knows how to solve certain problems.
Therefore, the footballer has fewer avenues of expression and they now fear retribution from the coach or institution if they choose something different.
If the base understanding of the game from the footballer is low, then any new solution will show improvement, therefore creating short term success and footballer/institution buy-in of the coach.
The objective of the coach is to improve the footballer by offering different solutions that the game proposes. If the coach is limited in their solutions, the footballer is stripped of expression.
If the coach can provide more solutions for the footballer, the footballer can learn the differences between them and apply them appropriately.
If the footballer is not able to understand the differences between the solutions, it becomes the responsibility of the coach to explain them to the footballer in a way that welcomes learning and keeps interest.
If a footballer is made to feel inadequate because of their lesser game understanding, the footballer will struggle to accept new solutions and apply them in games.
The more the learning of a footballer is halted or disrupted, the slower their development is.
Coaches interfere with the learning of a footballer by performing these small inadequacies frequently.
Prepare the footballers
If the coach does not prepare the footballers with realistic and detailed solutions for the upcoming match or season, they are doing a disservice to the footballer.
Footballers need to be taught:
How to win the football match
How to stop the other team from winning the football match
The moment the coach deviates from these ideas, they are deviating from winning a football match.
A game model may give an idea of how to coach a footballer, but the game model does not prepare the footballer for the match.
A game model will never determine the ability or potential of a footballer, it is barely the training wheels for the worst performing coach in the institution to keep up with the coaches offering real solutions to footballers in the institution.
If the game model is a tool for footballer development, why are first team, high-performance environments doing any match preparation at all?
The use of match preparation is for the coach to apply specific ideas against specific problems learned in preparation.
Therefore, any solution used after reviewing match preparation that is from the game model is merely coincidence and not objective.
Moreso in youth football, the match is a test for the footballer to show they can apply what has been taught. But if no solutions are taught, the footballer is doomed to fail.
Clear and concise direction is needed. A youth footballer and senior footballer both want to win. The youth footballer is afforded a safer environment to practice new ideas in before the reality of senior football meets them.
Giving a youth footballer new solutions to problems allows them to think for themselves and refine their growing skill set.
Should the coach say things to the footballers like “keep the ball” or “don’t lose it” or “get tight”, they open the door to misunderstanding and murky learning habits. These are not clear and concise solutions for the footballer.
Without a clear direction of HOW to “keep the ball” or HOW to “not lose it” or HOW tight you need to be to “get tight”, the footballer isn’t given a clear idea of how to succeed in achieving what the coach wants.
The youth footballer could also be told WHY these solutions are good. As the footballer gets older they should start to develop their own curiosity and ask their own “why” questions. This is the foundation of a creative footballer - someone who approaches football problems differently.
Without specificity, a footballer feels inadequate because they won’t please their coach who is speaking vaguely. The footballer doesn’t understand how to please the coach and the coach doesn’t understand how the footballer will achieve success because it hasn’t been outlined clearly enough.
If your game model is to “play short and quick possession football” but the opponent presses high up the pitch, the fastest solution is to use the space in behind the high press, not to “play through the press”.
The objective of football is to score one more goal than the opponent. The objective is not to play how the coach wants to play because the footballers are the solution to every football problem, not the coach and their desires.
When the coach or institution wants to solve football problems in a “specific way” they ruin the development of the footballer by trying to solve a problem that cannot be solved with the tools the coach or institution has.
The footballer is the solution, therefore the coach and institution must use them appropriately to solve the football problems, not how the coach or institution chooses to.
Chapter 2: Tactical training is technical training
To suggest that an action performed in isolation is best practice for result in the full 11v11 football match is to suggest buffoonery.
A footballer is constantly making a decision around the information provided to them, and that includes how they hit the ball.
Removing a goalkeeper or defender, substituting for cones or other stationary objects not found in a football match, will lead to the footballer making a decision with deviation from the full match.
Isolated training is an excellent addition to the athletes training regime, but it should seldom be used in a team training environment.
A decision in a match involves all aspects of the match
Opposition will always suggest how the attacking footballer does something. Therefore, to improve the technique of a footballer we must approach it from the perspective of improving the decision.
“Based on the objective analysis of the game, it shows that football technique is the execution of a decision that can only be trained in football situations in which footballers have to make a decision. In an isolated training situation without opponents a footballer does not have to make a decision. In that case, the footballer is not practicing the execution of a decision but just the execution of a technique. In other words, he is not developing football technique. Despite the above philosophical analysis of the game, all around the world there are football coaches who stick to isolated technique training based on their subjective opinion. They believe that children have to start with isolated technique training before they can do more complex football training.”
Raymond Verheijen
Source: Isolated Technique Training Slows Down Football Development
Will the footballer adjust their position based on where the defender is? Will the footballer execute their action sooner or later? Will the footballer take a softer or heavier touch? How fast does the footballer want to move?
These are all questions we ask footballers to answer in an instant, yet we train in environments where these questions cannot be asked.
If we say a footballer isn’t clinical enough, or use other buzzwords to describe their poor performances, we don’t address the problem, only the symptom.
The symptom of poor coaching, or unclear coaching, is footballers making split second reactionary decisions because the choices given to them in the preparation for the match were not clear or good enough.
The choices, or lack thereof, must be trained in an environment as close to the match as possible so that the split second decisions we criticize footballers for are prepared and familiar.
“Robot footballers” are a product of poor grassroots coaching
We blame the homogenization of football on overly demanding “styles of play” and Pep Guardiola. However, it is that footballers do not have enough solutions to use in games to choose from.
The reality for the majority of grassroots coaches is that their approach is doing what they feel is best for the group. This means that they perhaps follow a club curriculum or game model, without considering that it is the insight you give a footballer that makes them better, not the exercise, game model or “belief”.
Footballers need to be given many different solutions to problems that the opponent gives us. Without many solutions, footballers will do what they have been told is best, or “Plan A” regardless of success, because of the idea that even though there is no objective success (like winning, scoring, not losing, etc.) they believe in the long term strategy of improvement.
When a footballer is given many solutions to choose from, solutions that the group and team are aware of, then the footballer assumes more responsibility and confidence. A footballer choosing a different way of executing something, or “HOW” to do something, comes from having trained different solutions and ideas to footballing problems.
Grassroots footballers are not given this. They are told how to hit the ball in unopposed environments, to “keep the ball” and “work harder”.
Grassroots footballers will benefit from isolated training when they view the football as a toy and the team as an environment to train how they apply their use of the toy.
If you want footballers to play with freedom, give grassroots footballers solutions to football problems. Afterwards, give the footballers freedom to choose HOW they solve the problem through themselves, through structured training and with help from a coach’s instruction.
Part of the coaching process is coming back to the “HOW” they chose and evaluating if it was the best “HOW” for the moment through video, training, reenactment, or conversation.
With a game model or “philosophy”, you risk losing the personality that makes a footballer who they are. If you lose the personality of a young person, their freedom dies soon after as their freedom is directly tied to their identity.
We must train to solve problems
Times are changing such that we see less sessions or training blocks on improving a specific action such as passing, but not changing enough to see a clear vision and goal set by the coach or institution on a specific idea and way of solving a football problem.
Grassroots footballers don’t need to be told how to break down a “low block”, but they need to be shown actual problems from a football match and how to solve them.
These problems could be:
1. Play out from the back vs 1231/1321/1222 press
2. Pressing central/wide
3. How to take advantage of the 2v1 in certain parts of the pitch
4. How to attack space in behind
To suggest that young people are not good enough or smart enough to handle this kind of information is an insult to young people and the ability of a coach to convey this information.
Young people love to learn and have fun. It is the responsibility of the coach to make the environment fun and competitive so that the young people want to keep improving and learning.
Elite footballers need detail and need to be tested. Especially at elite levels where their career and livelihood is at risk.
“Just let them play” is a poor suggestion when the young people in question have little to no solutions to choose from. If the playing group has experience playing the game and applying new solutions to football problems, letting them play makes a lot more sense. We want young people to be taking control of their own decision making, however if they haven’t been given choices to choose from this is useless.
“Just let them play” becomes less valuable when you consider what the average person does when left to their own devices and little to no guidance. They become enthralled in meaningless content consumption or repetitive behaviors because they don’t know of different alternatives.
The youth footballer must play outside of the training environment.
The training environment is where the footballer comes to refine and train new ideas safely and in a welcoming space.
Unstructured and unregulated play is essential for fostering the love of the game. It should not be used as a method of refinement as the two methods, play and training, have different strengths and weaknesses.
Chapter 3: Coaches must take accountability
Coaches should not be involved in footballer recruitment because of their bias to footballers who fit the “style of play” they know how to coach.
If a coach cannot coach 1352 or 1433 because they only have experience coaching 1343 or 1442 then they are not adequate enough coaches. No coach is privileged enough to only coach what they are comfortable coaching because they serve footballers, not themselves.
Once coaches abandon this secular way of thinking and behaving they can begin improving their knowledge base and how they help footballers.
Our job is to improve footballers
Coaches often forget that their job is to make footballers better. That is the foundation of the role from grassroots to professional football. This improvement comes from giving the footballer more solutions to football problems they are facing.
If the best solution is something the coach is not able to train, then they are not fit to train the footballer.
The widely believed opinion that footballers are more boring or less intuitive than in previous generations is a direct correlation to the poor coaching and rise of believing certain solutions are better than others.
The reality is that footballers are a product of the coaching, and few coaches are able to assume responsibility. A game model will raise the floor of the coach. The quality of the worst coach is infinitely better than it was 20 or 30 years ago. The floor of coaching has improved significantly from previous generations but the ceiling of coaches needs questioning. Coaching and teaching must be clear and intentional.
Footballer improvement is tied to results. If you win, you’re doing well and if you lose you’re doing poorly. There is some nuance of course, a U9 team made of players born in January will likely dominate a team of U9 players born in December of that same year due to sheer physicality, for example.
Other examples may include poor officiating or acts of God, but the reality is there are objective ways to determine if there is improvement.
If a team goes from losing every game in one season, but winning one game and losing the rest in the following season - that is success and the footballers have improved.
Improving the footballer is the only priority of the coach. This improvement will be seen in results over time.
Objectivity in football is seldom used because subjectivity and opinions keep people in jobs longer than they deserve to be.
You will win more games over a long period of time if you improve the footballers ability to solve problems
Footballers want different ways to solve problems. They don’t want to “keep the ball” for the sake of keeping the ball, they want to score goals, stop the other team from scoring goals, and win the game.
The coach or institution sees success when a footballer is comfortable sharing their solution to a problem found in the game because the footballer is now approaching the game from an angle of trial and error, and not fear of loss.
The point of any game is to win. You win the game by scoring one more goal against the other team. Part of winning is providing solutions to the footballers. However, youth football should allow the footballer some freedom to develop their problem solving abilities.
Inevitably, assuming that the footballers have had adequate youth coaching, you will get footballers who provide their own solutions to problems the opponent is providing.
When footballers feel comfortable sharing an idea, it is because they do not fear failure and instead embrace it as part of the process.
Coaches do not assume this same level of bravery and therefore only coach what they are comfortable coaching.
Unfortunately, coaches have hid behind their ignorance and it has created footballers who panic at the realization that their game model is failing.
Coaches say the right things to the wrong people
Coaches and institutions can establish longevity by specializing in a certain way of playing. This abandons the idea of footballer improvement and adopts a method of ultra specific recruitment.
A coach or institution, even in youth football, may propose to reference a game model for recruitment before considering how they use the pool of footballers at hand.
Coaches stay in jobs by saying the right things to the wrong people. There is very little accountability in football, such that many behaviors go unchecked.
A coach may look and sound like a coach to the people responsible for decisions, but ultimately their ability is tested by the footballer.
All fans of football dream of working in football as it seems a brighter alternative to their current employment.
Many coaches begin their journey by working with youth footballers.
What those who want to work in football don’t realize is that football coaching is about improving the footballer, not playing a certain way.
A philosophy, idea, plan, is irrelevant if it doesn’t suit the footballer pool you are working with. In the event you get a group of footballers who have the ability higher than that you’ve played or coached at, how do you improve them?
You do not need to be an exceptional footballer to be an exceptional coach, but you need to be able to improve the footballers you are working with. That is the foundation of the job and is a priority. If your footballers are so good that you can’t improve them, you are inadequate.
A coach can mitigate this by only recruiting what you are comfortable coaching, thus alienating and removing high potential footballers who the coach does not know how to improve.
This approach is taken by Directors of Football, Heads of Recruitment, Head Coaches, and scouts among other roles in football.
The future best football teams will have footballers who understand their role and the solution they can provide.
Part 2: Senior Football
Senior football is plagued by the idea that after a certain age, a footballer will not improve. There is truth in the idea that a footballer has a limited ceiling, however the ceiling should be challenged differently.
A senior footballer can learn a new solution. The footballer needs to be interested in learning and the coach needs to be able to teach.
Additionally, the football institution could benefit from having multiple different profiles across a squad, rather than replacements or backups. This allows for the coach to use the footballer appropriate for the problem, rather than relying on their ability to coach the footballer.
Chapter 4: Recruitment through ideology
If we recruit for a certain way we can only play/attack a certain way
The obsession with playing a certain way is detrimental to footballer development as it forces footballers to adapt to a solution that is beyond their skillset, ultimately crushing the confidence of the footballer.
Coaches are focused on the short term. They need quick fixes because they need three points. The financial backlash of the transfers or recruiting won’t cause the coach any harm, only the club.
Coaches should be given footballers by peers or industry experts and work with them to the best of their ability.
If the football coach/institution only recruits for a certain “style” then they are not preparing for the inevitable problem when their “style” is no longer effective.
A philosophy or style will become ineffective as the opponent or coaching circles become more prepared and educated. This cycle of opponents adapting is inevitable. The football coach and institution are responsible for preparing the footballer for when the opponent becomes more prepared and educated.
Footballers must realize that they are the solution, NOT the coach. Once footballers realize that it is them who apply what has been taught, the football match becomes less about what one coach/coaching team wants and more about what the group needs.
If footballers understand that their skillset offers a different solution to a different problem then coaches have environments that are more cohesive. The future best football teams will have footballers who understand their role and the solution they can provide.
Specialization works until it becomes obsolete. Obsoletion is inevitable.
Recruiting for a specific game model or ideology suggests that the game model or ideology is enough to produce long term success for the coach or institution.
Community, “potential” , recruitment and how that affect football
Seldom do we consider that the football footballer is a person and not someone to be bought and sold on the marketplace like a television or carton of milk.
Holding footballers as assets and not people has contributed to the downfall of the community football feeling, as the turnover of footballers has never been higher. When the sense of community is gone, the fear of failure is higher due to the lack of a support structure.
If we get footballers who fear failure due to a poor support structure, they default to doing what has been told to them by the “philosophy” or “game model”, thus leading to what seems like the automation of decisions.
If the institution bases their purchases on the prospect of resale value, then the institution is merely hiding behind the idea of a game model to pursue their own agenda.
If a footballer is purchased to be resold, then the footballer must play in a way that shows the value the footballer provides, otherwise value is not shown clearly enough and will alter the potential of a resale.
If a footballer is purchased to be resold, or worse, is shopped around by the agent to achieve more transfer fees, the footballer begins to serve in the best interest of themself and not the team or community.
When the team or community begins to fracture, they run the risk of defaulting to the game model or a set of beliefs, which may not lead to success. In fact, it may feed into this downward spiral the footballer has begun to go down because they were recruited as a metric chosen from a game model and not a footballer who can improve or be useful another way.
Can we recruit to solve many problems?
Recruitment based on a game model can limit a club's access to a wider range of talented footballers who may not perfectly fit the desired “style.”
A football coach or institution should approach recruitment from the perspective that footballers are the solution to football problems. When this is done, a coach is now tasked with creating an environment where the footballer is aware of their utility and is able to do it when asked.
A team that specializes in one way of playing will be left behind by the coaching teams and football institutions that blend ideas together to find the best solution to the football problem.
With little accountability, institutions don’t need to recruit better, they can just change the “game model” or refer to it when making decisions, regardless of success rate.
Chapter 5: Adaptability is a MUST
Teach tactical solutions for intuitive decisions
A footballer with more potential solutions to potential football problems could be more successful than the footballer who has specialized.
A tactical solution could sound daunting, but a footballer will benefit more from instruction than lack of. Once a footballer has collected many solutions they will be more comfortable choosing how they do something in a game.
Coaches or institutions must prepare for the realization that their belief or idea is not groundbreaking, but merely one possible suggestion to the footballers.
There is no one best solution or philosophy, there are only problems the opponent gives the footballer and coach, and how we choose to solve them.
Only relying on one solution is heavily reliant on:
1. The subjective opinion of the person suggesting it
2. The ability to coach the solution
3. The ability of the footballer to execute the solution
4. The opponent not reacting to the proposed one solution
If a footballer sees a solution in a game that may go against their game model, they will be less inclined to choose that solution in fear of retribution.
The reality is that the footballer knows the problem in its most pure and honest form. The coach, analyst, board of directors, etc, all see the problem differently than the footballer.
Therefore, why ignore the solution the footballer can provide?
Is the game model better than the suggestion the footballer may offer?
The footballer should feel confident enough to suggest their solution, if they have one to offer, because they see the problem better than anyone else.
If the solution offered by the footballer is not good enough, coaches should be confident and gentle enough to express WHY so that the footballer is comfortable returning in the future with another potential solution.
Intelligent footballers come from learning different solutions
A solution offered to a coach by a footballer is indicative of an environment where anyone is comfortable sharing and learning, in pursuit of the shared goal.
If a footballer only ever sees one solution then they will be surprised when asked to do a different solution. The more surprise and shock a footballer is asked to see, the more reactionary they become.
This surprise and shock come from poor planning.
Intuition is a reaction. If a footballer only ever has one intuition and the intuition is not successful, then their approach to football becomes negative and the footballer feels inadequate.
When footballers feel inadequate they risk becoming even less likely to listen to new ideas and approaches, again forcing them to do what is natural and most comfortable.
Growth will not come from comfort. Growth comes from challenge and application. Defaulting to a previously held idea when uncomfortable, rather than trying something new, will not help footballers.
Adapt or die
If the football coach will not adapt, then they will be left behind. Football footballers are constantly told to improve, do more, learn more, be better, etc, by coaches.
Few people hold this standard to the coaches. Therefore, coaches develop footballers without challenging themselves.
Few coaches hold themselves to the standard they hold their footballers to.
A coach may start their career at a higher level than their skill as a coach allows them, only to be later found in lower leagues or levels because they’ve failed to adapt. A coach must learn new solutions so that they can teach new solutions.
Many coaches prefer to be comfortable instead of pursuing a role that may challenge them more because failure is going back to normal life.
The fear that coaches have is one shared by footballers, yet the coaches will not accept the challenge they impose on the footballers they assume control over.
Coaches, like footballers, must adapt or die. The world will pass them by and they will fade into irrelevance.
Game models exist and help the coach who cannot coach outside of their comfort zone. They serve the coach who the institution knows is inadequate but will not remove. Game models serve the coach and institution better than the footballer they serve.
Chapter 6: Football is objective based
Training a footballer to do anything other than win a football match is not development. The footballer needs to know the solution to the problem they will see in the next match.
Can we score and can we stop them from scoring?
These are the only questions a coach should be asking their footballers ahead of a match or in preseason. The football coach and institution may have preferred ideas of answering these questions, but are these preferences relevant to the group of footballers?
The coach and footballer always need to apply new ideas to different problems because not all football problems are created equally. When a belief that one idea is better than another becomes mainstream, the coach and footballer are shown less solutions and often defer to doing their “Plan A”, philosophy or game model better.
Football is not about recruiting footballers to fit a game model.
Football is not about playing a certain way or using a certain solution because of the beliefs of the coach or institution.
Football is about scoring one more goal than the opponent. HOW this is achieved is dependent on the problem the opponent gives the coach and footballers.
A game model may provide certain principles or ideas, but that should be as far as they go. Success is winning or improving to win.
“It’s not the coach who carries the burden, it’s the players. The coach can try to set the mood, talk through the game, encourage and explain, but in the end it’s the players who have to solve the real problems on the pitch.”
Ferenc Puskas
Source: The Captain Class by Sam Walker
HOW: Decided by footballers, not coaches
A coach may give the footballers different solutions, but the coach cannot be the solution. A footballer therefore must be trusted and respected to choose the correct decision of HOW to do something.
This HOW could be in reference to passing, shooting, receiving, tackling, running, jumping, etc.
When a footballer is told what to do and when because the coach or institution says it is the best one, the footballer is undermined and disrespected.
Footballers are not given the platform to share their own ideas because the footballer does not want to sit on the bench or be yelled at in training.
A coach and footballer must have a clear purpose of what the team is trying to achieve. This understanding leads to a footballer who is receptive to the new ideas of the coach or institution, and a coach who can trust the footballer with the best view of the game.
A footballer will have limitations and shortcomings just like how they will have strengths. Therefore, the coach and institution must respect this and offer solutions to the footballer that are relevant.
If the coach demands unrealistic solutions from a footballer the footballer feels inadequate and will not want to learn or grow.
If a coach challenges a footballer with new ideas and solutions, the footballer feels welcomed and will try them.
Simply removing the footballers who do not stay in line with the game model provided by the coach or institution is not a good enough solution. This is a difficult task and is a risk itself, as there is no guarantee that the new player will be better. The main job of the coach is to improve the footballer, not remove them so that they can play their fantasy. Footballers are people, not cogs in a machine.
Conclusion
The present state of football, from grassroots to professional levels, places undue emphasis on the agendas of coaches and institutions at the expense of nurturing and empowering the player.
Players have too often been constrained by rigid tactics, stifling their ability to think for themselves and express their creativity on the pitch.
The excessive focus on isolated training interferes with the processes we try to teach for decision making in a football match.
The preference for players who fit a particular style limits talent diversity and ignores the growth of those who don't align with a specific philosophy or game model.
Coaches are seldom held responsible for their poor ability to develop the player, in youth and senior football, with the blame often falling on players or outside factors, perpetuating a culture of mediocrity.
To see a new era of improvement and development in football, we must shift the focus back to the development of the individual player.
Coaches must focus on fostering the players' ability to think critically by challenging them with new ideas and ways of expression in a safe environment.
Coaches must look for collaborative training sessions where the coaches and players can exchange ideas and experiment with different solutions.
Coaches must recognize that there is no one “best” solution or idea. They, like the footballer, must be ready to adapt to the unique strengths and challenges of their players.
Only through these measures can we push the ceiling of coach ability and usher in a new and exciting generation of footballers.
Afterword
The idea of a game model, in theory, is fine. The grievance many have with them is how ambiguous, similar and one dimensional the majority of them seem.
This manifesto encapsulates much of the disappointment many football fans, coaches, and football players’ experiences.
I am not angry with football, football coaches, clubs or footballers. I am simply exhausted from entertaining beliefs as a science. It is through beliefs and preferences that we turn our backs on learning a new perspective.
In an era where the ability to share ideas has never been easier, we see less and less nuance and more of an echochamber. This, in my opinion, stems from several ideas either not being challenged or, even worse, being challenged negatively.
The modern game model is more about serving the collective than the individual. While football is a team sport, it is the individual who gives the sport life. This is not a call to ask footballers to do whatever they choose, but it is a call to ask coaches to challenge their athletes with ideas that may go against their own beliefs in order to bring the best out of an athlete.
Not all football players are created equally and therefore deserve different solutions to problems in football. It is up to the coach and institution to help the footballer realize these solutions, rather than impose their own belief system upon them.
The game model should serve as a base for the coach or footballer to reference, but it is upon the coach and footballer to challenge each other for new (or old) ways of solving problems in football, rather than assuming one model or idea is and always will be best.
I hope that this manifesto begins conversations and challenges what people believe to be best practice. Change doesn’t happen without some sort of instigator and I hope that this is enough to start a conversation that doesn’t stop for a long time.