Oliver Saunders, a lead coach in one of Southampton FC’s pre-academy development centres and also a coach within the foundation phase of their academy, shares his own opinions and views on what success could be in terms of winning vs development from his experiences, and suggests how a balance between the two can be made.
However
we look at youth football, we are faced with choices and decisions that we deliberate over - we
weigh up the pros and cons and decide upon the best course of action. One of
the most deliberated is – should we focus on winning or development?
However, the environment you create doesn’t have to be one exclusively
for winning or development. Rather than seeing it as a ‘switch’ (on / off or,
one or the other) it is more a volume control or slider (like those you find on
a mixing desk). What is more there can be a slider not only for the team goals
but for each individual and for different games, giving players a blend of
experiences and focuses.
Consider,
Task / Mastery (we may see this as purely development) or Ego environment (synonymous
with a win at all costs focus).
Fig 1. What success looks like in
task/mastery and ego environments. Adapted from Dweck, 1986. Nichols, 1984
& 1989 and Ames 1992.
How
far you slide across depends on your approach. It could be you want to make
sure you balance between the two as much as possible. Joan Duda remarked that an overall (across the season / in the players’ experience) balanced
approach would essentially provide the player with the optimal environment in
which to flourish. Like a mixing desk though, the sliders are not always in the
same position for every song and indeed the whole song, or in this context a
football match.
Firstly,
a good start is to consider the environment you are going to create, perhaps for
that particular tournament or league. How does this change for the team and
individuals depending on the ‘importance’ or context of the game?
At an academy level most fixtures are not part of a league so this leaves periodic tournaments and festivals leading to regional and national finals, where the main (but not exclusive) focus is to win. There
is a clear philosophy of how the team and individuals are expected to play, which
the players know and are still currently learning.
So just
like individual sliders on the mixing desk, players have different learning
objectives which might be more outcome / ego focused (trying to beat the
opposite opposition player in the 1v1 battle) or more focused on mastering a task and the process (e.g. how and why to support your team
when playing out from the back).
These
considerations can be factored into the planning and preparation of the
team(s). For example, one individual needs help on improving their 1v1’s – this
means making sure they
are down to be a defender at some point(s). From this we might learn how
a player defends 1v1 under pressure where the objective is to win the game or
if they are just starting out on this target, perhaps there is less focus on
the result and more on the mastery of the task.
Successful or not, the opportunity for learning has to take
precedence. If we congratulate or commiserate without 1-1 feedback this will
not help players to learn or reflect on their performance.
For a team I took in a round robin tournament recently, the objective was to win all of our games. Our first game was against a team an age group below. Naturally, for me the slider moved a lot further to the development / Task Mastery preference, so I asked the team to play a formation that they had not had much practice playing, GK-3-2-1 as opposed to their usual GK-2-3-1. We had a brief discussion with a tactics board about the roles and responsibilities of each player and then played.
The game ended 1-0 to the age group below – embarrassment for the players. After a brief player-led discussion of why they had lost, the rest of the day playing against their own age-grouped teams, they went unbeaten. The lesson they had received was learnt. We did switch back to the GK-2-3-1 but not to the sacrifice of individuals’ learning objectives.
A quote that perhaps reflects the experience of that day at the group level: “I never lose. I either win or I learn” – Nelson Mandela.
The same day I was caught off guard. A young boy stated pre game he was going to score an overhead kick and he did. His team won 9-1. Witnessing it myself I was thinking how proud he must have been and wanted to let him enjoy his moment. However, I missed the opportunity to perhaps ask, “what was it about the attempt that helped you to score?” So congratulating the outcome rather than the process made that interaction very much near the ego / winning end.
“Successful or not, the opportunity for learning has to take precedence. If we congratulate or commiserate without 1-to-1 feedback this will not help players to learn or reflect on their performance.”
Those are examples where winning is the objective but the opportunity for development and learning still occurs and is indeed planned. So as before, this is less about one or the other but more a case of getting the balance right on your mixing desk for the team and also the players. In doing so, we can also select interventions (at the right times) that will give the players returns and hopefully gains in the four corners of their football education under different conditions or constraints.
Oliver Saunders
Oliver coaches in the Southampton FC pre-academy as a lead
coach at one of the development centres. He also coaches within the
foundation phase of the academy.
A graduate of the University of Bath in Sport and Exercise Science, UEFA B and Youth Award holder with experiences at other academies in England and youth football abroad. If only there was a car equivalent to frequent flyer miles!
A graduate of the University of Bath in Sport and Exercise Science, UEFA B and Youth Award holder with experiences at other academies in England and youth football abroad. If only there was a car equivalent to frequent flyer miles!
