There's something bubbling in football's undercurrent. After many years of positional dominance the conversation seems to be meandering. An alternative has been proposed to Positional play's domination, as the discourse develops we will get exposed to more relational or functional teams, it won't be long before the masses will begin to want something more.
However, positionism's day is far from nigh, as an industry we created a linear and coherent approach to the 'development' of football. Rigid and sectoral curriculums and periodisation models were imposed as well as imitated, trickling down into the academy structure and now externally from the professional environment in to youth football. The positional model has also been strictly imposed on to how federation's educate their coaches, influencing several factors that shape how football will be played and directed in the long term.
The globalisation and homogeny of our sport, through the tactical structures and it's periodisation models, has made football worse from an aesthetic, artistic and socio-cultural perspective. Relationism challenges the homogeny of what Positionalism has become, progression through functional moves and relating to teammates in the ball zone will turn the tactical discourse on its head. Intended outcomes and generating superiorities is not what we look for, Relationism resonates with a specific culture, context and human interaction.
This kind of football enhances the qualities, emotions and imagination of the players, acting from spontaneity and your own creative being to form a bond with another human is extremely gratifying and euphoric. The individuals determine the space-player dynamic, encouraging them to search for and discover affordances in a more diverse and eclectic manner. The dynamics of these associations are unstable and chaotic, but this gives birth to a plethora of alternative and unpredictable solutions, all centred around human interaction.
Even though a spectrum will naturally exist between those who are radically positional and functional, with most lying somewhere in between, the core essence of what separates the two besides is playing from intuition but most importantly emotion. The player interprets the environment rather than the space- zone - player dynamic that is imposed, he gets a feel for the game to explore certain affordances that can be present. Blissfully untying the knots in the insanity that engulfs him.
Positionism doesn't give players these affordances, nor can there be negotiation in these pre defined space- player- structure dynamics, it is imposed and you must conform. Zone occupation is much more objective than subjective, rigidity, set patterns and pre defined structures replace the human interaction, organic and self emergent connections we see in Relationism. Reductionist coaching creates mechanisms seen in the games, the overuse of verbal instruction and interference from the coach married together with the game model 'a template' creates an environment where the coach is controlling and stifles learning opportunities and opportunities for self expression.
The On, Off and Away from the ball coaching technique that FA makes coaches adhere to is a good example of reductionist coaching. You must set the picture and coach the players furthest from the ball to begin with, then players around or local to it and finally the ball carrier himself. You should then think about who your primary player will be when planning an excercise and consider certain intended and unexpected outcomes as well as ones emergent as a result of your picture (i.e- your positional structure).
How would you coach on, off and away from the ball when the player-zone relationship is abandoned for transient, self emerging actions that result in clusters and congestion around the ball? Who is your primary player when the picture changes all the time, if that's something you coach surely you loose the capacity for a player to use his intuition? It's exactly the same when you think about coaching the before, during and after of an action. Who is the primary player in an Escadinha? There isn't one, deception is.
Coaching practise and terminology is dependent upon positional scaffolding and desired pictures, this acts as the blueprint you must follow for your session to be a 'success'. This whole way of coaching compromises imposing a relationist approach, demonstrating that it's not just a cultural barrier that needs to be removed but also there needs to be a shift in the way coaches are developed for a radical change in the types of coaches we produce. They must be given freedom to create and follow from an alternative stimulus, the FA education and its desired technical detail has been redesigned specifically to produce positional coaches and nothing else.
Ecological dynamics plays a big part in football, in which it helps create an immersive culture and influences how the sport is practised, with attention towards the socio- cultural and demographical constraints of a region. The positional model has been followed due to its success in the most prestigious competitions', its exposure in the media and our access to knowledge of methodological tools via the internet. The positional game has given birth to many universal constraints known the world over, the two touch rule being an example of how certain intended outcomes are imposed to the point of suffocation.
Federations are more than happy to accept and embrace this, for example when the FA looked to first impose a 'possession-position model' they called upon Albert Capellas (an ex Barcelona youth co-ordinator) to collaborate and help embed the methodology- subsequently creating the 'England' DNA. Or when Qatar appointed Felix Sanchez, a former Barcelona youth coach, for the 2022 World Cup. The information that our federations have acquired was gradually implemented and has now influenced coach and player development in their regions in training curriculums and coaching courses.
Everything revolves around the space-player- structure concept of desired pictures, subsequently we began to coach principles instead of a numerical system, unlike the days of following Arrigo Sacchi's 4-4-2 or following the 4-3-3 because of the dutch model. That's not to say the concept of importing an external idea is too dissimilar to what it was back then, now numerical superiority and how that is achieved takes premise over how players are numerical arranged in formation.
Thus the globalisation of football wasn't just imposed internally, external influence has played an even bigger role. Coaches didn't start adopting 3-2-5 or inverting full backs because their federation told them to, its because they saw the most dominant teams having success with it. We live in an age of content and are constantly exposed to football, meaning we are also exposed to new ideas, that's where positionalism and relationism have a common interest in their respective development and exposure. Foreign leagues are easier to watch than ever before, therefore systems can be imported wholesale from one footballing culture to another. This is also known as 'imitating ways of knowing'. Cultural enrichment becomes cultural replacement, creating football's own euro (positional) skepticism.
I myself imitated ways of knowing, I was incredibly fixated on the zone- structure dynamic that it blinded me from what the human being was capable of, qualitative superiority was achieved but it adhered to an imposed balance. Rest defence and having an optimal structure for transition moments was always centre in my mind during every training session and match. It had to be perfect or it would feel like failure, whether the opponent exploited it or not. In terms of templating and patterns, you as the coach give the players the solutions to what's going on during the game, they come to you for answers.
The player-coach interactions are neglected for unbearable lectures on the sidelines about nothing more than how they occupy space and questioning every decision they made. We took the decision making away from the players, in such they ceased to exist as the games protagonists, but as pawns in a tedious chess game. The training sessions are just opportunities to rehearse, replicate or reenact actions that happened or will happen on the pitch, 10 v 0 pattern work against mannequins, with up, back and throughs, overlaps and a cut back to finish. You arrive to the session with pre defined coaching points, you know exactly what you are going to correct and what detail you will embed before a player has even kicked a ball.
Isn't that a bad thing? Especially with younger players, you limit their capabilities and pigeonhole them into a mechanism, coaching them to fit the mould of a structure. Bellow you can see examples of exactly this, pre defined movements and positional structure at U14 level. 2-3-5, FB's inside, 10s in between the lines and wingers wide, this is all we trained for, to get this picture, break the initial line, penetrate the defensive line and simply let them finish the attack. Everything that we do in training and in walk throughs comes full circle when we see this come to life on the pitch.
I can't sit here and say that positionalism has made young players worse, especially at my first coaching role when I took over a school team, some players do thrive in imposed conformity and executing specific positional instructions. Creating a structure that exploits the key characteristics of certain players, particularly your front 5, facilitates this and like I said earlier optimal structure safeguards the loss of possession. But then there was other days where a player would get hardly any touches of the ball in training, because they was away from my desired picture, thus not giving them the environment to develop and prosper. The players improved exponentially over time but when a few players couldn't be there and when we'd have to deviate away from the 'structure' we found that we had no solutions.
Everything revolves around repetition of practise, of course there would be variation in our practises and certain primary intentions would be the focus of the session and what phase of our build up we wanted to coach but the information and language we used was always regurgitated. It got to a point where I was disillusioned coaching positionalism, a players individual positioning decided whether the exercise was a success or not, you stand there just correcting occupation and helping him understand nearby affordances that the structure gives. A third man is emergent, but can only occur thanks to the pre meditated and imposed behaviours in coherence to space-player objectives.
Recently, one of my followers on X had reached out to me, he was coaching in the academy of a Premier League club and was willing to share his experience as long as i kept them anonymous.
''Last year was the first time I was properly integrated in to the coaching team. As much as the exposure to the CPD and professionalism was excellent and a lot of the ideas being discussed there (in the academy) was innovative and new, I often had the sense that there was still quite a rigid framework surrounding session planning".
"For example, I remember discussing with one of the senior coaches at the time that I wanted to use a particular practise- one that would encourage some of the principles of relationism- and it was completely shunned. Effectively, I was asked to start again as it lacked 'positional realism".
"I think a lot of the academies now are trying to innovate and think of the next big thing but conflictingly feel they need to control and standardise everything, including the style of play imposed across an academy''.
I can sympathise with their story completely, as much as I haven't worked in the academy i tried for a long time to gain employment inside one, unfortunately working in these institutions is the only way you can gain entry on to the UEFA B/A courses. I spoke recently with the head of coaching at Portsmouth, I had enquired about a role with them but never got a response back, when I spoke to them about some of the opinions I had on academy periodisation, the positional vs relationist discourse and how or if functionalism could ever exist within an academy model in England, they dismissed my ideas and I was probably laughed out the door.
One of my friends said this to me once, ''perhaps your ideas are too much for some of these coaches, you come in all guns blazing with these theories and they have no intention to listen to you''. That's a common theme I've felt in football. how many people do you speak to that are genuinely taking in what you're saying or are they just waiting for their turn to speak?
I've encountered similar problems at university, my work gets scrutinised for not being academic enough, as you can tell I love critical writing but that doesn't fit well with the rigid nature of a university degree and how they mark assignments. Every assignment is around qualitative and hard data, not through looking at sport aesthetically or through the socio-cultural paradigms and certainly not 'opinion writing', which heavily constraints what I can write about. When I add references from online articles or studies that aren't approved by them, I get penalised heavily in the marking. Like in the academy, they don't want people who want to think outside the box and explore different arguments that you identify with, but they just want you to imitate and follow a pre defined model or path.
Like I mentioned at the beginning, this is something that has trickled down from the professional game, those at the top of our federations want a linear development pathway that goes from top to bottom, a mould that every player, coach and scout slots perfectly into. This is especially evident in the academy structure, from the foundation phase all the way to reserve and first team level the club sets out to grow players within these globalised ideals and acquiring an appropriate technical level to facilitate this. They learn to play football and develop their talent within the system or model that the academies propose.
Typically, the construction of a training curriculum throughout a cycle would include exercises that look to help players familiarise themselves with orientating space, their co-ordination, explosiveness and technical attributes (passing, shooting, control). Then, they are given specific practises that constraints them to play in a subnormal environment to find solutions they can also use on a match day- for example playing a positional game with 3 teams (4v4+3 or 5v5+4).
As they move from the formative to the competitive phase they move in to a periodisation model that prepares for competition. They begin to work on specific tactical tasks/breakdowns or walk throughs to coach 'the mechanisms of structure' , as well as the generalised, universal, positional and motor skill practises as an opportunity to make the pre defined coaching points I alluded to earlier. In the SSG's the universal constraints are evident throughout the players academy journey: the two touch rules, neutral players, bounce players, 5 passes must be made before scoring etc.
These session examples from Brighton's academy are a perfect example for this, the 'brilliant basics' and 'academy playbook' that coaches are expected to coach from, if you want to work in academy football this is the blueprint you must adhere to. This shows how a tendency to 'copy and paste' practises without sensitivity to the social, cultural and historical context has been embed into football and universal practise. As James Vaughn says in his study, in football limited ways of knowing amplify the reductive, overly analytical and decontextualised approaches of coach education and on field practise.
A lot of academy coaches will talk about how they coach principles not a system and that this model allows them to produce hybrid players capable of performing several mechanisms, which prepares them for first team football, which to an extent is a fair defence. It's not uncommon to see a player debut in the first team out of position, so having understanding of a universal model that he's been raised in will not only help him adapt but find solutions in the subnormal environment. Players like Vidal, Gary Medel and David Alaba were perfect examples of how being positionally versatile could give them tactical longevity in the positional age that others didn't have.
But when principles are universal and not specific to yourself as a coach, your players and most importantly the socio-cultural factors, you could argue that imitation of external influences and imitating a way of knowing is the only thing that is being imposed. Exceptionality is lost in the player, it's coached out of them, if you kill the child inside of the player then these inexplicable moments that we love to see in football just won't happen. It's not about what is considered to be good coaching practise or not but it has become universal practise, we exist in a model that imposes a globalised way of viewing skill acquisition and it's damaging our sport more than a lot of people realise.
This goes back to the overarching theme in this debate about how a player is treated as abstract in football, a means of creating systematic advantages and objective rationality, the player is removed from the human being. This is detrimental to its development within football, one performs an action, is capable of thinking, expressing emotion, being creative from their own intuition and theory of mind (one's mental state, obtained knowledge, intentions and beliefs). In the positional age we have only come to think about football rigidly and that is evident in academy football and coaching education. Football can be viewed through so many different paradigms but all with the ideals of humanity, human interaction and social competence at its nucleus.
A human is a form of life, they are not meant to be rigid, as much as there might be specific factors that indicate a specific form of life, the human mind is fluid and dynamically receptive to being influenced by certain behaviours. This leads into the concept of identity, in football we talk about identity as if it was life or death for a tactician, every UEFA A licence coach making a presentation will almost always say ''we have an identity or ethos'' in their game model and talking about cultural factors before going on to explain how they wish to import a globalised model.
Managers who don't have an identity or fail to assimilate it are scapegoated in the media, Ten Hag was criticised for example for having no identity, whilst at the same time when asked about identity Carlo Ancelotti rejected it and is totally content with that. Human beings are not fixed, not everything has to be formalised and concrete. Thus, organisation, structure and purpose can be present in fluid changeable dynamics that can change all the time.
Another aspect to consider is the coaches previous playing exposure, this is something that will become ever more present in the following years, those who played in the positional age will take their hand at coaching and regurgitate the information they received as a player. The player has two choices, the first to either go into the academy and take the U18/U21 team and gain experience coaching positional football in a controlled environment before going into the professional game. The second is to join a lower league side and begin to implement these ideals straight away, bringing along other coaches who understand and shared the periodisation model and training methodology that the coach was exposed to as a player.
Xabi Alonso is a good example of the first, before joining Bayer Leverkusen he spent a few seasons coaching Real Sociedad's B team and gained promotion to LaLiga Smartbank (Spain's 2nd division) before going straight back down. Alonso, who was coached by many great coaches, looked to implement a style that he could easily transport in to his first professional coaching role. The third man, up back and through, space-player- structure dynamic and composure on the ball is evident here. As much as analysts have tried to class Alonso as a 'relational coach' I still think he resembles more of a positional coach, especially when you listen to his interviews, he is just a little closer to the centrism of football tactics than some other coaches.
In modern media we are fascinated by 'coaching trees' to see how much influence certain managers have had in how the game has come to be played. Coaches like Bielsa, Guardiola, Gasperini and Ragnick have all influenced their former players to go into coaching and continuing their ideas, as well as coaches who didn't play under them that were influenced by their ideas externally. For example, Jorge Sampaoli is probably the manager who has resembled Bielsa the most (at least in the attacking phase) throughout his career, despite having never once played or coached under him.
This is something that will recur forever in football, ex players and ex members of a coaches technical staff (especially the ones that didn't have a career as a player) will continuously look to follow on from their previous coaching exposure and import these ideas wholesale. We've seen this with Enzo Maresca at Chelsea, Pep Ljinders at PSV, Mikel Arteta at Arsenal and Andoni Iraola at Bournemouth (*more a student of Valverde than Bielsa in my honest opinion). Relationism grows organically and is being preserved in Brazil because of this, Diniz spoke about this recently: '' I did not want to teach football, I just wanted to migrate from my ego as a player. The joy I wanted to have when I was a player but didn't because I wasn't very technical or adored".
Could ex players who played in positional teams throughout the entirety of their career make a radical shift towards coaching Realtionism? Fillipe Luís could be one to keep a close eye on, having spent over 15 years in Europe he went back to Brazil in 2019 to Flamengo where he'd be coached by Tite- one of the leading figures in the eurofication of Brazilian football. Luis took over the first team and has been slowly implementing elements of relationism, the tabela escadinhas and toco y me voy's are all there to see.
However, prior to taking over the first team at Flamengo, Luis' first entry into coaching was with Flamengo's U20 side. What's interesting as he was seeming to use a more positional- space orientated model- look at Emérico Herschel's tweet, it's made me very curious. As he rightfully asks, does he have functionalism in his veins or does he just think it's the most suitable style for his players? We've also seen coaches like Thiago Motta mixing together relationism and positionalism. Relational concepts can exist within positionalism and vice-versa, structure can still be imposed but the necessity of following the 5 lanes of positional attack are withdrawn, players in between the defensive and offensive depth are allowed to relate towards the ball. In other words, a team that plays with functional players and positional ones.
I had the privilege of coaching at the Gothia Cup in the summer just gone, taking an U11 school team, it was a fantastic experience and the tournament itself was incredible. I hadn't coached since leaving my old team in January, having a lot of time to reflect, dwell on and question who I want to become. I didn't what to coach what people expected me to do.
I went to Sweden, along with my joint coach Joe, where we decided to intervene as little as possible. When you go to a tournament and you have had very little preparation like we did, a lot of coaches would've tried to take centre stage and put on a clinic for the players and give them the pre defined solutions, instead we gave the players a few concepts and then let them find the solutions in the environment and that was evident in our training sessions. As Mark O Sullivan put in his excellent study 'there is no copy & paste, there is resonation and inhabitation', designing more neutral or open tasks (to interpretation), coaches can facilitate creation and innovation in athletes, encouraging them to search and discover affordances in a diverse fashion.
We did lot of 4v4s and wave games, games where we incorporated a tabela player or incentivised functional movements. We was fortunate that in our team we had 2 or 3 very functional players that loved moving with the ball, pushing beyond, offering give and go's, flicks, meaning that relations tendencies were naturally afforded. In the clip bellow you'll see all these affordances in the environment being realised as a result of giving the players the freedom to play from their intuition and creative being. Relating towards the ball allows for diagonals, opportunities to offer the tabela/toco y me voy to emerge.
Coaching felt liberating again, seeing the players express themselves and enjoying their football whilst taking a step back made me truly realise the mistakes I made in my early years in coaching. After reaching the Quarter final, beaten by GAIS a professional top division Swedish side, I came back from the tournament with a renewed purpose. My passion for football was reignited, having seen our school team (who we had a handful of sessions with) go toe to toe with a professional academy, who train 3-4 times a week, almost come out victorious using a relational approach. A month later I started my X account as a passion project and started sharing what I'd unearthed and articulating how I feel.
In summary, as much as the federations themselves don't set the tactical trends for others to follow domestically throughout the footballing pyramid, its been interesting researching how the current model is so biased towards positionalism and producing coaches and players in coherence to this 'model'. This makes it harder for relationism or an alternative to not only break through but prosper, I've found that in football people embrace new ideas and are open minded- until you start to challenge the fundamentals of what they've been told to believe in, then your ideas will naturally meet a hostility.
As the discourse around relationism starts to gather more momentum, with new studies and research into it through the lens of skill acquisition and ecological dynamics, it's important that we challenge and critic football. The lack of alternative present in the tactical discourse has meant that our way of thinking about the game has become too rigid, football seems to be a closed shop but we have an excellent little 'wedge' that we can use to challenge how the game is being played. Never settle for less if you believe it can be better.
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