CREATING AN ENVIRONMENT FOR RELATIONISM

Written by Roman Quane (aka Jogo Funcional) 

There's been a lot of interest on X lately for uncovering the secret of relationism, how can I as a coach assimilate it? There must be a magic formula or training model that I can impose to get my players performing escadinhas/corta luz and toco y me voy? Initially, coming from a positional mindset, I thought the same.  In this article I look to explore how a coach can create an environment for relationism, I'm not going to hold your hand and give you exercise's but I'll look to provide insight into how we can create rather than imitate. 

There is so much information to us available online about positional play, you don't need to look far to see articles that go in depth and explain every intricacy of what it is- superiorities, third man, 5 lines of attack, rest defence and have all since become universal footballing concepts. Look on YouTube then suddenly several training sessions from positional coaches will pop up, the 4v4+3 positional games, Y passing patterns, up back and throughs and 10 v 0 automation work come to live on our screens. 

We get scribbling, understand the how from the why and we catapult ourselves into the ideals and beliefs of the positional coach. For a certain amount of time we are engrossed, we want to know everything about the half spaces, specific exercises and ways of generating control, you begin to consume football and no longer enjoy it as a spectacle. A few years pass, you realise you've seen everything and nothing surprises you no longer.

You'll notice that there's very little information about relationism on the internet in English, once you scratch the surface past a few well edited YouTube videos and Jamie Hamilton's thought provoking articles- in which his 'What is Realtionism' article acts as the 'master copy' of all western relationism content. As the conversation and interest towards relationism begins to gather momentum, coaches and analysts want to know how this can be imposed and a relations 'game model' can be devised.

It's important to get the concept of a game model out of your head, a game model implies that something is pre defined and within this blueprint there is idealism and objectives that need to be met. This doesn't give us fluency and human interaction, the two iron clad fundamentals of relationism, we must opt for playing language instead. Players perform functions and interpret their role in relation to the environment, we are not talking about mechanisms or predefined movement into a zone to create a structure. This laissez fare approach gives us the actions we want and that comes from a fundamental mentality shift that you must first undergo before understanding a relationism coaching concept. 

What Relationism proposes is that structures don’t need to come first, thus rejecting the necessity of forming stable geometric networks and structures to facilitate progressive football. The coach does not impose triangulation on the 3v1 Rondo’s or Positional games in training, with an emphasis on fixed positions or occupation of a zone on the pitch, on the contrary the player aims to move to wherever he feels he can best help the progression of the ball and interpret the game.

Relationism happens when participation leads to construction, for a player to understand what happens collectively the central idea must favour the individual. Benefiting those who compose and operate in tactical traffic jams, collectively this creates the conditions for self expression, nurturing the skills of the individual and developing the fluency of a teams collective play. 

Fluency is achieved with the actions of the individual, the whole team moves with the individual , not the other way around like we see in Positionalism, watch this move- it's not a result of individualism but team fluency. Connecting players, to connect one to the other so the action flows. Individual actions and self expression are orientated towards the harmony and collective force of the team. The corta luz, toco y me voy/tabela happens within the participation of construction. To create conditions so that creativity is evident. 

The players around him play better and so does he, there is no need to think too much about his actions but instead he needs to practise so he can find solidarity within the collective. We have to create scenario's where creativity can flourish. Every player has a different individual shine because the collective can never achieve this in isolation, the individual shine and excellence occurs more and more often in the football we propose. 

Creativity is afforded not just by freedom or the removal of positional scaffolding, it's a shift in mindset. You believe in the creative being and that is affected by the environment, in some games there is a possibility that a player will be less creative because the environment can limit you as much as it can stimulate you. The creative players at our school were the ones who played the most football, whether it be the cages, streets etc, they therefore develop engine stability and learn, perform and express actions without adult or coaching intervention. The player is free to create and ends up having a repertoire of  actions that he can perform from his intuition, recognition and game intelligence.

In Europe, we have learned the game exclusively through tactical aspects and coaching exposure, therefore it's disconnected from human relations. When we get to know each other and the competencies of our teammates, we do what we can to achieve 'fluency'. As kids we'd always pass more to the better players and resist passing to the bad ones, no matter what space they took up and how optimal it was. On a side note, this is also why kids are the best scouts, they are raised knowing how to identify a good player and bad ones. 

Believe it or not even in this 'disconnection' play was more fluent and progressive than those in zonal structures where every player has an equal responsibility on the ball, if one player isn't competent then the attack can't prosper. The disconnection in positionalism is associated more with the distances resulting in a lack of connection, a winger wide out on the far touchline becomes disengaged with the play and you see this in his body language. In Positionalism the player is treated as an object, a piece on the pitch that has something to offer for those who are watching, from the moment that he leaves the offering he is completely forgotten. 

In Relationism you are friends with chance and the uncertainty, interacting with the environment that is generative of the possibilities that the uncertainty may create. Deception is our greatest protagonist. In order to deceive you must perceive the environment, the essence of relationism is to create these relationships and priorities local and transient actions. To offer the best environment for the players to be able to enjoy the game in a more poetic way, they must reimagine their childhood and return to that state. Those who play football are always the children who live inside of us, no one learned to play football as an adult. If we kill the child inside the players then these types of actions don't occur. 

As Coaches how can we create an environment that facilitates creativity? We create the melody ourselves, we don't arrive to training with a script and get the players to act it out, there is negotiation. Training is modified, they will create their own training environment and they have the freedom to complete initiation tasks and activation exercises in a creative way. Give the players the freedom to do it in the way they think whilst encouraging socialisation and comfort, supporting the players with high talent and low social competence by helping them navigate it better. An example of this exact approach to an activation exercise bellow, the players try to nutmeg their teammates who are running hysterically around the perimeter of the playing area trying not to get caught out. 

We do our best work as coaches when we have a blank canvas, we can draw back on street football or Futsal as a way of giving the players self expression and letting them explore their own intuition. Relationism owes a lot to Futsal and the concept of universal players (being able to play every position and migrate into different roles throughout a move) and could be critical in relationism's integration into European football. We could even end up seeing more futsal coaches enter the professional game.

In training sessions we can replicate different environments to help the players find creative solutions, an example of this could be training with a much smaller football for close touches and control, whilst restricting the intensity of defensive actions like tackles to prevent injury. As I mention often in relationism we abandon the positional framework or scaffolding, so in our commonly imposed positional exercises we let the players play off of their initiation- opposed to operating in or occupying zones or fixed positions. 

Bellow is the same exercise, 3v3+2, but interpreted in two different ways- one where positionalism is imposed and one where it is not. In the positional exercise there is order, there are definitive objectives and coaching intention- the third man, the up/back and through, creation of superiority and directional play. A coach has clear pictures and intended outcomes that he has built his session around, these exercises are where the building blocks of Positional play are learned.

 In the second diagram we take away the engagement line and the two fixed jokers that were used to create order and reference and the players act off their own instinct. They can come towards the ball, the diagonals or Escadinha's can emerge, flick ons and dummies can be used to isolate a defender and the players appreciate perception a lot more and look to form dynamics based off telepathic understanding. The jokers, like every other player, have the freedom to relate where they see fit, could the coach use them in a different way than just achieving numerical advantage? Could they be used as a Tabela player, they can only pass to the player who they received from- forming the Toco y me voy tabela, or are they just there to perform a corta luz or create the Escadinha? How about Point scoring? Give the players an incentive to make certain actions- 1 point for a toco y me voy, 3 points for an escadinha _ corta luz, 5 points for a double escadinha. 

When a footballer feels stable in an environment he can produce more and harness his own skillset and creativity. There is a link to disillusion and unhappiness for those who are not spontaneous, whereas well being and happiness are connected to being creative. Diniz has spoken about this eloquently and in relation to how he would plan his training sessions. He says that he delivered better sessions that were spontaneous and unprepared opposed to ones that he'd planned in a schematic way. ''I have permission to change the training when I'm there. I do what I feel, not what I think". Diniz perceives the moment, he gets a smell for what's needed when he's out on the grass, he doesn't need to follow the microcycle to the letter and if something in his session is compromised its a failure. He adapts and he evolves. 

For a European coach this would be impossible to fathom, going against everything we've been told to do, microcycle, macrocycle, mesocycle of tactical periodisation, perfect exercises that compliment acquisition days, recovery days and so on. The physical, social, tactical and technical elements of the game model must complement each other, considering aspects such as intention, intervention, session structure etc. Spontaneous and unstructured training like what Diniz proposes with a lack of definitive objectives or 'order' is hard for coaches to comprehend. 

In an age driven by precise and meticulously planned sessions, attention to detail, before during and after etc, the coach has more power than ever. Expressive and player led actions don't emerge in these sessions so how would they occur in games? Coaches live and die by these pictures and screenshots in order to achieve the positional structure, leaving sessions tedious, stop-start and disengaging. When we plan sessions we look for primary players and then there is a domino effect in coaching away from that player, how could a relationst approach change that considering every player can be the primary player, is in focus and not there for 'structure sake'. 

Often, we end up constraining the players, the player has to operate within a certain protocol or framework, playing in modern football's image, this is the opposite of what we want to encourage. If you don't obey to the tactical structure and you score 4 goals it's kind of wrong or bad practise. The coach is disobeyed, undermined and their ego is hurt. The role of the coach is to create, relate and to find tactical, social and phycological solutions to problems that arise daily- if you don't talk to a player you don't get the best out of them. You have to be connected to people, not a regime or something that is pre-established or pre defined, there must be negotiation. By directing and dissecting everything that happens on the pitch, football is fighting against the phenomenon. Its incredible how coaches never interpret positionalism, at its essence total football which is something beautiful, in a perfect or idealistic way. 

Having so many talented match and data analysts in the industry has hindered the sport, it takes the sensitivity out of the spectacle, it's great when something extraordinary, euphoric or inexplicable happens on a football pitch and no analyst can give you an answer on how it happened. You can't articulate certain actions as if they were tactical principles or manoeuvres. This is why our tactical makeup must favour the people and their creativity. 

Physiology and data science has had a huge impact on the evolution of modern football, the head coach has been delegated far less control, each department runs as if it was its own business with its own targets and objectives all working (loosely) under the idea of the coach.  Coaches are being too influenced by hard data, a player runs X kilometres, has had X touches in the final third, his XG on target is X. This has had an affect on several areas of decision making; for recruitment, cardiology, training periodisation,  realignment of objectives and so on. 

To conclude, there are certain factors that create an environment for relationism, putting the human and human interaction at the heart of everything that we do is paramount, this must be evident in everything we do as coaches and it defines our football. We must do what is essential to us, even if that means rejecting the system that has brought us to where we are today, resisting the external or internal influence and putting the kid inside of us first. I don't agree with anything the system proposes about football, its development, norms and modernity. 

Science in 100 years will be different to what it is today, the same way science in football was alien to most of us 10 years ago. What doesn't change is giving the player the best environment to thrive in, the way people communicate change but inter personal relations do not, all of this inhabits the creative process of the player, coach as a whole. The Hunan condition of a person will always feel joy, sadness, love and that won't change. But science and technology manipulates these behaviours which causes change or shifts in mindset. It's a cycle that always looks to undermine human excellence and the phenomenon.