Thoughts on Charlie Francis and soccer

[svincenz]

@ESTI

In my college players, there were several girls playing 6 games a week right now, with their college seasons less than 5 weeks away. The games, 60min and 90 minutes in length, were leading to fatigue, and as now surprise, have lead to poor performance in workouts. So I had one dad keep a running clock of the amount of ball possession his daughter had in a game. From EPL studies, their estimates were ~3minutes per game on average. This dad’s daughter, a defender, had it a whole 8.6 seconds in the first half. Obviously most of the possession were quick one touch passes. Another player, a forward, had a total of 14 seconds in the first half.

So at this rate, 6 games x a generous 20 seconds of possession per game = 2 minutes total ball time throughout the week from games.

My point to these players are, you have a 6-12 week off-season, use it wisely. work on speed, strength, fitness, skills, and dont worry about the games. The athlete in discussion, also has been surpassed for a goalie who is 30 lbs overweight. When I expressed this to the girl and the dad, I thin they got my drift, maybe she needs more time with me and less kicking it.

Now obvious, at the professional level, things change altogether. But what is done to keep them there, and what it takes to get them to that level, are 2 separate things altogether.

Well, 6 games a week is not a matter of training program, it is a problem of sanity. Also (especially) at the high level is unheard of.
I’m totally in favour of time spent away from games during the off-season. At the same time, in the training program, some elements linked to games have to maintained to avoid problems when season starts (tightness, minor injuries etc.) . But yes, staying there and getting there are two different subjects, but too little - formal and informal - study has been done to disentangle the various drivers of performance. How about attitude (loosely defined, of course)? Do you think it is not important? Next time, look not at the skills, not at the athletic abilities, but at the attitude and behaviour of top players. A coach can do great things in that department.