Okay, Thierry. You’re right. Following the ball is not ideal when you want to get the full picture of the game. So we need to ‘watch the game’, but what does that mean? How do you do that? It’s not the most practical advice.
Let’s break it down into some actionable steps to help you or those you work with, coaches, parents, or young players, start watching the game.
First thing to bear in mind is that conscious gaze is our attention, and our attention are the things that we are aware of exist and are important.
Experts in anything have trained their attention by becoming knowledgeable in their trade. For example, a real estate agent has trained their eye to pay attention to important factors of a house that will make it easier to sell. A dog trainer has trained their gaze to direct their attention to the dog’s behavior that communicates certain emotions or actions.
This is the difference between a novice and an expert.
In terms of watching matches, you train your attention by knowing which factors will lead to having a better understanding of what is happening on the pitch, and more importantly, solving the problem on the pitch.
Before we continue, a quick reminder that football is a problem to be solved. Both teams have the same objective, score more goals than the opposition. Which means that they are both preventing each other from achieve that goal…
So what are the important factors that will help us solve football problems in a match?
DEFENSIVE SIDE OF THE BALL
The first is the relationship between the attacking team and the defending team. By this I mean when Team A is attacking, how is Team B defending?
For a novice, this may be a daunting task in itself so we have to break it down further.
Let’s start with the defensive side of the ball.
The easiest place to start is the first line of pressure or the front line. How many players are they using to start their defensive pressure?
The next easiest factor to direct your attention to is how many players are in their back line? Is it three, four, five, maybe six?
Lastly, now that you’ve identified the front line and back line, it’s now time to figure out everything in the middle. This can sometimes be the most difficult because everything between the front line and back line can get a little messy because there is often a lot of movement in this area. However, using simple maths we can figure it out; there are 10 field players so if you see there are two players pressing from the front line and the back line has four players, that means there are four other players who should be somewhere in between those lines. Those four players are the midfield line.