If you've followed my account for a while you would have noticed my fascination with diagonality, a concept which is at the heart of a lot of my work. For a while I've been sharing clips and commenting on teams putting this concept into practice, occasionally sharing ideas on how to train this as well. The word itself is becoming more used in discourse but, like most terminology, can get misinterpreted or reduced. When Coach of PSG's U18 team, former Italian International and recent ex Juventus coach Thiago Motta once famously said- ''I don't see formations vertically, I see them horizontally. We play a 2-7-2*'' *the goalkeeper acts as part of the midfield 7. For many years I didn't quite understand what Motta was referring to, that is a pretentious way of articulating something rather simplistic like verticality. What did Motta mean with these comments? Could it be that he was referring to diagonality? I wanted to write something that speaks to th...
When I started this page over a year ago I wanted to not only use my account to talk about relational football and comment on tactical phenomena, I also wanted to show that interactions and connections can be the focal point of a methodological framework and a key reference for session design. I've had the privilege of speaking to coaches, academics, methodologists that have helped me refine, articulate and most importantly understand the type of coach I want to be. Over the first few months of this season to coach a reserve team , whilst searching for other roles, and I wanted to use this opportunity to present my ideas and way of working, aided by visual examples from session recordings. I recently shared a thread on x with these videos hoping that they be an insightful resource for those wanting to know how to apply ecological - relational- concepts in a training environment, this article broadens these concepts in more detail. My intention is to also to show those who de...