Soccer Sense - How it impacts player performance

Have you ever wondered why all of your practicing with some of your players, or your entire team, is not translating into game performance?

For example you practice finishing with your strikers and in the next game they miss an easy chance, an open net. You practice passing and in a game your players are striking the ball too hard, too soft, or simply into the wrong direction.

You practice with your defenders not to dive into tackles, only to see them lunge at an attacker in the next game and be easily left standing behind.

We have heard a lot of coaches give us these examples asking us what they can do to avoid these errors and improve their team's game.

The first thing we need to state is that the difference between practice and a game situation is the opposition. Typicall in practice, you start drills with little opposing pressure, i.e. your players have all the time in the world to execute a drill. Typically with this time they can hit the net, deliver a pass, control the ball. As pressure increases, this becomes more difficult and mistakes creap in. But you are limited what you can practice by the skill of your team. If in competition you never play a better team, a team with more skilled players, stop reading now. You probably won't recognize the issues we described earlier. Although I would say that unless you have won the championship every year and have won every game, you probably want to read on.

In a game there are two key differences to a practice:

First, your opponents are determined to make you fail. They will put on pressure and thus take away the time your players need to execute. The better the opposition, the less time your players will have on the ball.

Second, the mental pressure to perform in a game puts stress on individuals. Fear of making mistakes actually causes mistakes. Under stress, people generally tend to fall back into bad habits. In other words, they lose control.

So how do you fix these problems?

Before you can solve a problem, you need to identify it's root cause. We suggest that poor execution of skills AND tactics in a game is caused by a lack of soccer sense. We define soccer sense by the intuitive knowledge a player has to allow their body to function automatically based on stimuli received and/or decisions made, consciously or subconsciously. An example would be for a striker approaching the goal to see the goal, the open space of the net, the keeper. Without pausing physically or mentally the player strikes the ball into the upper corner of the goal. The player didn't spend time thinking about where to shoot or how to execute the shot, it "just happened".

Well, it didn't really just happen. We teach mental speeds in our soccer programs and have identified the following mental speeds:

Perception

Anticipation

Reaction

Decision Making

Perception is seeing what is going on around you during the game. Seeing the ball, seeing players in motion, seeing spaces open and close.

Anticipation is sensing what is going to happen next before it happens. What is the player with the ball going to do? If a player has the ball, it is them anticipating a run by a team mate before it happens and playing the ball into that run.

Reaction is to quickly adjust to what actually happened. "I thought the opponent was going to pass so I anticipated intercepting the pass. But they actually took me on in a 1v1 so now I have to get into proper defensive position...".

Decision making is deciding what you are going to do well in advance of the ball being played by an opponent. If you are about to receive the ball, then your decision as to what you will do with it has to be made well before you receive the ball.

In sum total, soccer sense is the intuitive execution of these four mental speeds of soccer in any sequence that the game calls for. No time to think through them. You perceive a situation, anticipate the play, decide what you'll do, and react/execute. All automatically.

How do you develop players to get there? Run specific soccer drills that teach these mental skills over and over and over again. Ask your players to play pick up soccer with friends, over and over, and over. Ask them to train the technical fundamnetals over and over and over again so when the subconscious decision to (for example) take a shot is made, the body has enough memory to actually deliver the shot where the brain decided it should go.

You can't demand soccer sense from players, they either have it or they don't. Your job is to assess who has it and how much of it. Then decide if you need more and commit to training it.

All our practices train mental speeds of soccer.

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Fast Break Soccer - Competitive Pro

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