Heavy Metal Training
What I'm going to start with is if we bombard our players with music. I don't mean having some music playing while players train to lighten the mood. I mean something loud and angry that obliterates them and attacks their senses from all angles. Upbeat music at a decent tempo can make sessions seem a bit more fun, and everyone has a good time. Is that how competitive games feel? Absolutely not. It's war. Ninety minutes of concentration, running, fighting. It can be a slog.
Take this basic three team possession rondo. Simple enough to understand. There are hundreds of exercises like this. Play is continuous. It is exhausting for the oranges, challenging for the yellows, and can be a bit tedious for the blues. It's sounding like a wet Tuesday night at Stoke. Players are working through the exercise technically, improving their understanding of patterns. If we play these types of games in complete silence, it forces players to keep their heads up, continuously scan, and make more exaggerated movements to provide cues to their teammates. With that in mind, we know that top players are doing this already, while constantly talking. The stream of information they give each other is continuous. They use verbal and non-verbal communication.
Now, for our experiment. A lot of teams that use music in training use non-offensive, bland, repetitive, generic, room temperature dance music. I find that stuff just awful. It's used because it's upbeat, has a steady rhythm to it, and is repetitive. I don't think that creates the right environment. That's chillin' in the club with your homies, celebrating the weekend. I propose that we place large speakers around the perimeter and blast heavy metal at the players. This is not due to a personal preference, as I will continue with my logic.
The above video is 2 Minutes To Midnight by Iron Maiden. The riff at the start is excellent. I'm getting side tracked. This is loud, angry, and fast paced. It makes you want to fight. That's a reasonable reaction, and here's why. Heavy metal has been shown to have a detrimental effect on some listeners when compared to other music because it can make the listener neurotic and paranoid. Isn't that how one might feel on matchday in front of a large crowd? When listening to music, our hearts often change to match the beat of the rhythm. The tones used can create emotions inside. As a lot of rock and metal uses the pentatonic scale, it's often neither happy nor sad. That's where neurotic and paranoid come in. After listening to that song, how do you feel? Probably not cheerful, probably not depressed, perhaps more angry.
With an increased heart rate, and potential negative thoughts entering the mind, we're putting our players into a mental and physical state similar to playing a tough away game. For possession games, we're often asking them to relax, calm it down, and play easy. That's hard to do when you're heart is racing and you want to fight everyone. Thus creating the juxtaposition that players face during big games. "How can I calm down and play it simple when so much is at stake?" They begin to learn the coping mechanisms of trying to relax and think clearly.
The next part is that the music would be so loud and hostile, players will struggle to communicate. We get the added non-verbal communication of silent football, but players are still allowed to communicate verbally, only they have to shout. Shouting, exaggerated movements, and being surrounded by hostile sounds, we begin to create a more aggressive atmosphere. Can you fight like an Allardyce team and yet play with the coolness in possession of the Spanish? Maybe this idea has been tainted by my own views on life, as I'm always calm, yet incredibly determined and resilient. Because I'm polite and relatively quiet, I must be a push over, right? If I truly were determined, I'd be gritting my teeth and shouting at people. It takes a lot of self-control to go flying into a big challenge, and to then play a smooth pass once you've won possession.
What's the point? It improves emotional control and communication by placing them in an environment where that is tested.
And for good measure, enjoy some Motorhead.
P.S. Here's a version of Motorhead covering Metallica's Enter Sandman. One of the comments reads "This song makes me want to break stuff." These are not songs you listen to in order to relax.
Eleven Versus More
The concept was for this comes from a Japanese team playing against 100 school kids. Here's a video of Real Madrid doing something similar.
You could play around with the number based on the challenge and the quality. Let's take the example of a US college side. Advertise for players from around campus to come and help out. They won't be as good as your players, but will most likely be decent. If your eleven were to play eleven of them, it would be rather one sided. Essentially we're looking at creating the stresses and pressures of a match day. When playing against our mates in training, it's not always 100%. Bringing in different opponents gets us closer to the match day experience. And now, if we make the challenge harder than what is experienced on match days, won't match days feel a tad easier?
That's why I'd be interested in playing against more than eleven players. Blackburn Rovers could not beat Barcelona in an 11v11. But what if Rovers were allowed three extra players? Or four? Or five? Barcelona would absolutely have the quality to win such a game, it would just be a lot harder. Would playing against fifteen Blackburn players be as hard as playing against Real Madrid?
Football is all about the creation and exploitation of space. By overloading one team, it means that this team will never have a weak side. Catching them out of position, and manipulating them so that gaps and pockets appear, would be incredibly difficult. And when they do get the ball, we'll have to defend like hell because they will have so many players able to go forward and counter. This teaches us not to be lazy and neglect our tracking back. That's usually how weaker teams score against stronger teams, by capitalising on a mistake, and punishing on the counter. The danger is clear when you're playing against fifteen or so players.
Won't that encourage your team to be exceptionally defensive? No, and for two reasons. The first is that it's training, so we don't care so much about the score, but about the process. The second is that my college team would be technically superior to the ringers we bring in off campus. Therefore we'd be able to look after the ball pretty well, it would just be a task to cut open the opposition with so many numbers behind the ball.
Some coaches like to do 10v11 to simulate a team having a man sent off. There's validity in that. The difficult part is choosing who misses out and why. We could do it if there were an issue with attendance, or a player was injured or fatigued. It's training though, and we shouldn't just be tested with only ten players, but also with our eleven. Run them ragged.
An extension of this, though not extreme, is to give the opposition an extra player so that they can double up in certain positions. Imagine if your right midfield is tricky, fast, and experiencing a lot of success, why not give the opposition two left backs? They'll still play a 4-4-2 or whatever formation you choose, just one position is covered by two players. With rules and conditions we can inhibit players. So if we say something to the right winger like "you can only take three touches" or "your second touch needs to be a cross" we inhibit how they play and the choices they make. Against two opponents they can still do all the amazing things they want to do, but it will now be more challenging.
What's the point? It makes it very difficult to find and create space. Players have to be much better with their quality of passing and first touch, and make more intelligent and better timed runs. Upon transition, there is no hiding or slacking. All hands on deck for the defence.
Eleven Versus Eleven With No Outs
Next up follows a similar theme, but provides a different type of stress. There will be more freedom within the pitch, as we're looking at even number teams. The rule is that those reds stood around the side play for the orange team. If the ball is going out of play, they do their best to keep it in, and they give it to an orange. They can also be used for switches, recycles, and long balls forward. Why not just punt it into the corner where there's a red, and then move forward to flood the box? There's also the added bonus that every throw will be an orange throw, providing the reds don't keep it in.
Huge emotional stress will be weighed upon the blues. It will seem incredibly unfair. It is. It will feel like they can't catch a break. Ever feel like that during games? The other team seems to get the decisions or the luck of the bounce. No matter how hard you try, it's not going right for you. The reds aren't allowed to come in and tackle the blues. They stay within four yards of the line. So if the blues have it, and keep it. it's not a problem. Just don't be sloppy with the ball because it will be a real pain having to work and win it back. I think that presents a valuable lesson. We're really hammering home the point of attention and care when in possession. Next time we play a real 11v11 match, imagine how relieved we'll be to find that we have throw-ins, and no one on the side keeping the ball in and giving it to the opposition.
There's actually little difference between these awful 11+ challenges detailed above, and the kind of things that teams often do in training. It's just done on a smaller scale. Any players or coaches that have been with me before will recognise these, or elements of them, if they just reduce the area size and the number of players involved. I've done 11v4 with the 11 only having one touch. I've done types of rondos where the outside players only pass to one team. Why can't this be a practice technique that is useful in an 11v11 scenario?
What's the point? The ball will rarely go out of play, and when it does, or when it is about to, it will go to the opposition. The team will have to work harder physically because the ball will be in play for long periods of time without stopping. The team will also be incentivised to look after the ball better due to the risk factor involved with losing it.
Training With A View
This last one is something I know that actually happens. There's many clubs in the US that train in environments where they have some form of elevated seating, be it aluminium bleachers, or a proper stand. There's quite a few coaches that hook themselves up to microphones when coaching. This means their voices can be heard all over the field. The idea with an elevated view is that you gain some kind of perspective that is not given at the touchline. This is the best view, in the picture above. It's the president's seat at Malaga's La Roselda. Perfect height, distance, and angle. Imagine the players playing their practice match down there, you're able to see the whole thing, and you can give easy instructions and advice. You wouldn't have to stop the session. You probably would have done that in a phase or function type exercise anyway. Now, you get to watch and assess.
Some high profile managers have preferred to watch from the stands, or at least link up with a scout or analyst who sits high up. If you're trying to play a diagonal to exploit their left back, it's hard to tell from the touchline if that was the correct time and place to do it. We see the game in two dimensions from ground level. Elevate ourselves, and we can view it from three dimensions.
The above video was analysis from my Saints side last season as we played Brighton at home. There was a stand at the side of the pitch that allowed us to film games from a higher vantage point. As long as the video wasn't zoomed in too far, the footage was quite useful. It's where I prefer to watch games from when I go to stadiums, and it's where I'd rather be as a manager than in a pitch side dugout.
Players hate the constant stopping of some of the UEFA B type sessions. They'd prefer to be left to get on with it. At the same time, they do want that advice and guidance. From the stand with a microphone, the coach can provide that.
Look at how the microphone works from a coach education point of view. This is the great coach educator Wayne Harrison. His microphone is for the benefit of the coaches in the audience. Imagine having the same view that the camera has, and yet all your players can hear you.
What's the point? The coach sees more, the players hear more, the players play more.
We'd all like the top job with the resources and the responsibility. What would we actually do when we got there? Here are some of my ideas.
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