The route to finding and exploiting space

Before I begin, I feel I need to give credit where credit is due.

Had it not been for me stumbling upon Todd Beane’s TOVO methodology as I was aimlessly scrolling Twitter one night, I would still be stuck in my old ways, coaching in a style similar to how I was coached when I was a youth player growing up in Ohio and Tennessee - a technical-centric approach where most exercises were done in isolation and the closest thing that required any real decision-making was the scrimmage at the end.

But the TOVO V1 course forced me to clarify exactly what characteristics I wanted to develop in my athletes and how this aligned with how I wanted my teams to play. 

Once I had clarity, I never looked back.

The importance of clarity

So what type of player was I trying to develop? This question was very important.

I needed clarity. Not only for myself but for my athletes and their parents. Here is what I came up with.

I wanted intelligent players with great awareness, players who were confident on and off the ball, players who communicated effectively with their teammates, and players who could find and exploit space and understand why they were doing it. After all, soccer is an invasion game, right?

Now, this sounds great but how would I accomplish this? How could I be more effective and efficient with the limited amount of time I have with my players when I only see them twice a week? Is it possible to train technical execution and decision-making at the same time?

Through my exposure to the use of rondos, positional play exercises, and the TOVO methodology, I believe I had found a very effective way to develop intelligent, efficient soccer players. And now, it was time to put it to the test. 

 

A method to the madness

Over the next 10 months, I implemented 14 principles of play with the use of rondos, positional play exercises and training games. 

It was very apparent that this type of training was something my players had never experienced, but I made sure I was very clear about why we were doing it - and it wasn’t long before they had all bought in.

 

Was it an overnight success? Absolutely not. Was it messy at times? Absolutely. Did some of the parents voice their concerns? You bet they did - which got me thinking.

Although I provided clarity to my athletes, I never provided clarity to my parents. So how did I handle parent concerns?

For one, I let the individual and team development do the talking, as on matchday the parents were starting to see their children become more intentional with their actions. Every thought had a purpose.

That alone probably would have been enough, but I decided to go one step further. I created a document outlining the types of players I was trying to develop, why I valued those characteristics, and how we were going to train in order to accomplish this. 

Now I know this may be outside of your comfort zone, but if you strongly believe in what you are doing then you should be able to have thoughtful, productive conversations with parents about it. 

I know my parents appreciated the transparency, and now they had some clarity. They could now see there was in fact a “method to the madness”.