If a team keeps battling selflessly throughout the 90 minutes and only manages two shots on goal, then of course the opponents are at fault because they keep “closing up the space” and blocking the passes.
Perhaps the mental blocks of individual players were the cause. - The coach’s excuses are never-ending. There’s certainly little hope for improvement.
In order to win, you have to score more goals than your opponent. That is if you really do want to win ...
The way that many teams play indicates no desire to win, and raises the question of what they actually wish to achieve during the 90 minutes of the match. If club, coach and even the team are in agreement on a non-committal playing style mixed with subtle pearls of footballing wisdom, there is no need to spoil this idyll. The ball is round and nothing will change this.
You don’t need the acumen and the sensitivity of our great philosopher Lichtenberg to come up with such thoughts and words. This quotation applies to many situations in life and yet many people have great difficulty in acting accordingly.
Not until it becomes apparent that something is going wrong will any thought be given to correction. And often not until it is very late. - However, thinking is not enough. If things are to improve, then there is a need to act by clearly outlining targets and developing a strategy.
There’s no denying that the back four has become established. Those who don’t play a back four are either fools or have been left behind in the lower leagues.
There is relationship of antagonism between the back four and the classic playing style with a sweeper: intelligence versus stupidity – ball-oriented versus player-oriented.
At present, nobody dares to question the back four. The spirit of the times determines the dominance of the back four so that no discussion of the advantages and disadvantages takes place.
Ball-oriented teams who focus on possession increasingly tend to avoid launching an immediate offensive. Instead, searching for gaps, they let the ball circulate in their own ranks, waiting to establish an attacking pattern leading to one of the offensive moves that they have planned and practised.
The higher rate of ball possession that results from this suggests a superiority that is not actually there on closer inspection. But who is really looking closely? Fantasizing about ball possession and superiority conceals the absence or shortage of strategy and tactics.
Hard though it is to believe, even at the top level of professional football, the prevailing idea is that goals can always be prevented. It’s just a question of the right way to play.
In a 4:3 victory, the topic of goals conceded dominates the match analysis. Of course it’s necessary to analyse and work out how the opposition’s goals came about but no more so than the goal’s you have scored yourself, if you have in fact scored any … In any case, players shouldn’t have to bow their heads and apologise for conceding three goals when they’ve won 4:3.
Conventional coaching is essentially restricted to raising mental and emotional abilities. One of the current buzzwords is mental coaching and it even proposes solutions for problems in team sports: “Players and coaches know that the decision to win is made in the mind. If two equally strong teams meet, the one with greater mental strength wins.” If only it were that simple ...
Such statements are not only wrong, but also incompetent in every respect. Mental coaching and support through sports psychology set the wrong priorities, which are unable to compensate for strategic and tactical failure.
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