“Get Your Head Up”, “Head On A Swivel”. Have you said this a few times in your coaching career? I know I have. However, today I avoid asking players to look up or lift their head (at least I try not to but sometimes the old phrase slips out). Instead I try to ask them what they could look for to solve the soccer problem in front of them. The game is consistently asking them questions and only by using their vision can they find an answer. Solving the problem requires them to lift their head, or in other words, place their attention in specific area of the field. The game itself will tell them to look up.  Once they do, they can then find the relevant information/cues/triggers.

All players of all ages will be able to answer the question; ‘What is vision’? “Using your eyes”, they will say. Most will also understand what being ‘Aware’ means. In fact it was in Nanaimo, British Columbia when I first asked a group of U10s these two questions. I then asked when would you use your vision & awareness. One said when you cross the street. Ah ha moment. Yes from an early age children learn:

What to look for,
Where to look for it,
When to look for it, and,
The appropriate response to what they see.

This is the process that all top soccer players go through within a game. Top players do not think about this, they have countless experiences that they draw upon and the response seems ‘natural’. Novice players either do not know the response or they do not understand the prior steps to the best solution. As ‘Decision Trainers’ we are here to help teach the process and assist the players discover of the solutions.

Too often we hear coaches in training and in games missing some, if not all of these steps. “Get your heels on the touchline”, “Pass it to Billy”, “Go at her”, “Shoot”, or “Send her”. Each of these statements bypass the entire decision making process. The coach is asking the player to execute a ‘coach decision’ and not a ‘player decision’. If this occurs enough, the players are never able to make their own decisions based on what they see in the game.

If we want players to be strong decision makers, “to place an old brain on a young body”, to create soccer intelligence or insight, then we need the players to learn through this decision making process:

What are you looking for? [Knowledge/Awareness – Reflect FOR Action)
Can you purposefully go out and find it? [Be INTENTIONAL]
Once found, do you have a solution? [EXECUTE]
Assess the result (success or failure) for improvement the next time you SEE that situation. [Reflect ON Action]

When the execution is prescribed by a coach, then the decision-making ability of a player does not improve. Players end up playing by direction, or by remote control, or by rote, but not by vision & awareness. Vision & awareness will take them into any team, any system, any game, and they will flourish … ‘without us’ standing beside them and telling them what to do each step of the way. Isn’t that the INDEPENDENT player that we all want to nurture.