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Part 2 - The 7 year old 'Striker': Overcoming the challenges of player positional rotation

In part 1 (available here), we looked at the rationale and benefits behind frequently and consistently exposing young players to different positions during practice and games for their long term development. We also took a look at the variety of challenges facing coaches in translating player position rotation from our development plans to the field.


Part 2 gets practical and aims to provide coaches with ideas and approaches to begin to overcome those challenges...


Overcoming the pressure to win game:


When the pressure is from parents:

- Transparency and open communication are key. By outlining club and coach philosophy on development, winning and the importance of rotating player positions BEFORE parents are financially committed to the club gives those who strongly disagree the opportunity to find an environment that better suits their approach. The club may lose a few registrations but what price do you put on potentially avoiding the disruption down the line?


- Try using an external, outside voice to reinforce key messages – for example, organizations that provide information for sports parents or even quotes such as that at the beginning of the article. This can be useful in steering conversations away from becoming a ‘my opinion vs your opinion’ personal battle that won’t bode well for relationships for the rest of the season. If a parent doesn’t value my opinion, I’d like to hope that the words of Johan Cruyff might carry a little more weight!


- Try not to assume parental knowledge of what good development environments look like. Be clear with parents on the developmental advantages of rotating player positions


- Keep parents engaged and involved in their child’s development – don’t assume that the information you give a 9 year old on the field will reach their parents and certainly not in the way you want it to!


- Try to be consistent as much as possible – while there will always be situations where players are unavailable and other barriers to rotating all players like clockwork, we’ve found consistency goes a long way in reinforcing key messages and minimizing push-back.


- Be accessible – try to make time for parents to discuss any concerns (away from the sidelines) to prevent issues from building up and blowing up


- Try giving players targets to achieve during the game that are completely independent of the result – from experience, this can partially take the sideline onus away from the team result. Encourage parents to ask their child about how they felt they played, how did they do against their targets etc with less emphasis on ‘what was the score’ and ‘did you win’.


When the pressure to win is from/for our players:

Firstly, a question I’d encourage you to ask yourself - ‘is this truly for them or am I just legitimizing my own prioritization of winning?’ We’ve all momentarily been there at some stage, so as before, no judging, just some encouragement (from experience) to be true to yourself as a starting point.


I’m sure we all agree that it’s no fun for young players to lose consistently and it can damage their relationship with the game. While there’s no easy fix, below are a couple of ideas that might help in overcoming the barrier of your players need to win when looking to ensure player positional rotation;


- Rather than presume, can we find out from our players why winning is so important to them (as a team and individuals)? That should hopefully give us a starting point for how we can maybe begin to reshape their definition of success.


- Where possible, try to ensure that your team are playing at the appropriate level. ‘Surviving’ in a league playing your strongest players more often than others and in their ‘best’ positions just to maintain ‘gold’ or ‘division 1’ status isn’t really conducive to a developmental environment. Try to play at a level where you can rotate player positions and still achieve an appropriate balance of challenge and success. If that means moving down, then from my perspective, so be it.


- Think about working with your players to set individual and team targets/goals/challenges that can take some of the emphasis away from the outcome of the game – e.g. winning the majority of your 1v1s as a defenders, taking up positions in-between defensive lines to receive the ball etc. Can you create an environment where there are other ways to ‘win’ on match-day independent of the final score?


- Try to consistently build and reinforce player focus on becoming better over winning a game (and the role that experiencing different positions plays in getting better).


When the pressure to win is from your club:

As we touched on in part one, perceived or real pressure on youth coaches to win games from their club certainly exists in plenty of environments. This is perhaps one of the most challenging to overcome but there are definitely steps you can take to attempt to reduce that pressure as a barrier to player rotation;


- Perhaps the most obvious – can you take the necessary steps to identify whether your philosophy aligns with that of the club before you commit to coaching? I don’t just mean on paper, but actually what day to day practice says about the club’s philosophy and approach. This is perhaps easier for professional coaches who can move clubs more readily than say volunteer parents but even as a parent coach, consider whether this is the best environment for your child to enjoy the game and develop if there is an active philosophy of winning at the cost of development.


- Try to have the conversation with your technical department – e.g. ‘I’m feeling a pressure to win games that’s making certain actions and decisions for player development difficult – can we talk about it?’ These conversations will help you to better understand whether the pressure is real or perceived and opens the door to discuss your philosophy. If, despite you approaching it sensitively, the conversation isn’t well received, it maybe gives you a good indication as to whether this is the right environment for you and your child.


- Use advocates/examples from player success stories as conversation starters e.g. ‘I saw this blog, what do you think about us maybe trying some more of this?’


So what about the players who really don’t want to play in other positions? For me, it’s important for us to really understand why.


1) Our player who defines themselves/has become accustomed to being defined by a position.

‘I’m a striker, a goal-scorer’, ‘my son is a defender’, ‘my daughter is a playmaker’.

For me, particularly for U12 and below, it’s most productive for us to consistently refer to and describe all players as ‘someone learning all of the fundamentals required to be successful at and enjoy the game’. Not a striker, not a defender, not a playmaker – just a young player learning the fundamentals. From my experience, changing that narrative consistently within ourselves, our players and their parents can go a long way in laying the foundations in harmoniously rotating player positions to prioritize development.


2) Our player who wants to consistently play in a fixed position because they are ‘good at it’ or those who are hesitant to experience other positions out of fear of failing.


For me, both ends of the spectrum come down to the culture and environment that the players are exposed to at home, school and in our teams. How does this environment frame challenge, success and failing?


By creating a culture where challenging ourselves, being comfortable with being uncomfortable, failing (and learning from it) is valued over natural ability or what comes easily to us, we can begin to change the narrative.


As coaches, can we consistently encourage, praise and make an example of players who;

o Have the bravery to try something new (even though they may initially fail)

o Show resilience when they do fail

o Welcome a challenge

Can we consistently recognise and praise success that has come from hard work, risk of and response to failing etc over success that comes from natural ability or athleticism alone?

Can we ensure that this culture is consistent – not only in practise but also on game day?


From my experience, young players will actively seek praise and therefore often will look to change their behaviours and approaches in order to be recognized – as long as we’re consistent in what we are praising.


As coaches, we often face one or a multitude of these barriers and challenges when looking to consistently rotate the positions of young players in the name of long term player development. While they can be significant, for me, overcoming them isn’t insurmountable and we owe it to our players to take every step possible to ensure that a development philosophy consistently transitions from paper to pitch.


If the legendary Johan Cryuff (arguably one of the, if not the father of the what is admired about the current football displayed by Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City and former Bayern Munich and Barcelona) can overcome the barriers he likely faced, both internal and external, at the level and under the pressure which I’m sure he operated, in the name of player development, surely we can too?


I hope some of the ideas above have either provided you with something to ponder if you began reading this from a slightly (or completely!) skeptical viewpoint and have given those of you who believe in the necessity of player position rotation some ideas, tools and techniques to help implement it consistently within your environment.


Thanks for taking the time to read our first Coach’s Notes blog post – we’d love to hear your thoughts, views, questions and challenges. Please share with colleagues if you’ve found the article useful and feel free to let us know if there are any particular topics or questions you’d like us to take a stab at addressing next time. Contact us at www.thecoachscoach.net or on Twitter @thecoachscoach1


I’ll leave you again with the words of Johan Cruyff;


‘When a player with talent couldn’t defend, I put him in defence so he could learn, but that could cost a point. But I didn’t care, I was busy developing the player’


Happy Coaching!

Ross

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