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Could a team be totally autonomous?

 


Sport gives people a sense of identification and personal resonance, yet in the modern game Football is becoming more about cybernetics and controlled mechanisms as tactical approaches get more sophisticated. There is a motion that suggests that the idea of autonomy can simply not exist in modern football, structures are too important and the intensity is far too great, to break away from a match plan designed with militaristic precision risks tilting the pendulum away from control to uncertainty.

What happens in the game is often pre meditated and coach coded, coaches seek to eradicate chaos as much as possible and bring the game closer towards the grips of their control, training sessions are designed to expose players to as much familiarity as possible so nothing can be improvised once they enter the pitch. People in the game are talking about this issue, we have noticed a shift in how football looks and feels, people want to return to an era where each game had an air of mystery about it, the childlike hope that anything could be possible once a ball is kicked. Structure dominant discourse about football analysis corrupted that childlike feeling, for coaches and lovers of football a like.

The idea of a team without tactics is often laughed off by many, the concept of the game model is irremovable at all levels of the game and tactical analysis became so mainstream to the point where Twitter analysts became influencers. Henceforth, we see a lot more people discussing the importance of freedom within a team's organisation and the varying influence a coach or an institution has on harnessing the creativity and intuition of a player and aligning it with the top-down tactical blueprint imposed. Has the pendulum swung too far away from unpredictability to scripted control?

Yet those working inside the game see player led approaches as the necessary evolution, there is an appetite for this type of conversation, my X account is a proof of that. All it needs is guiding those who want to explore it to the right information and tools, there we create something organic and personal, rather than looking to implement something that is being done over and over again.

This article is written with this in mind, exploring different topics with the intention that the reader looks deeper into these topics and start to consider how they can be implemented into a methodological framework. I've broken this article into different sectionsautonomy, adaptive systems (empathic resonance groups), non linear interactions, self organisation and synergies.


Tactical autonomy  


To first understand autonomy we must understand Self determination theory, by psychologists Deci and Ryan (1985). It is a theory that emphasises the importance of three innate psychological needs for optimal functioning; autonomy, competence and relatedness- Patrick (2012). When these basic needs are supported, individuals experience enhanced intrinsic motivation, self regulation and well-being- conversely, when they are exposed to controlling or unsupported environments; motivation, growth and self esteem can be diminished.  


Autonomy relates to the feeling of being in control of your own actions or choices, rather than being pressured or coerced (Patrick 2012). Players with tactical autonomy can make real time decisions without top down instructions from the coach, Deci and Ryan suggest granting players autonomy enhances intrinsic motivation and creativity on the pitch. However excessive autonomy without guidance may lead to chaos with players unaligned in the teams overarching strategy- prioritising individual actions over collective performance. It’s fundamental that a team has a shared system of values. 


Competence relates to feeling effective and capable in one's environment, mastering new skills and having a sense of confidence in your abilities (Patrick 2012). Players must feel capable of executing autonomous decisions; training practices must be representative of game scenarios to build perceptual skills, tactical awareness and decision making, fostering a sense of competence- Davids et al 2013 


Relatedness refers to feeling a connection to others, experiencing a sense of belonging and having meaningful relationships- Patrick 2012. Being autonomous in a team’s structural organisation means players need to be connected and not undermine team unity. Competence embedded in a cohesive team culture - relatedness. When these 3 things are felt by a person they experience internal drive. 


Tactical autonomy emerges when players adapt their actions in relation to changing game contexts, guided by local interactions rather than top down control. Actions should arise from decentralised decisions rather than explicit instructions or coach coded solutions, player movements should compliment the teams emergent functional behaviours. Players need to develop situation to action coupling, orientating their game to their teammate and pairing synergies to the relevant phase of the game to make connections. 




A tactically autonomous team thrives when players are given freedom to make decisions - autonomy- what they want to do and what they can do, they feel a sense of control. In football players make decisions unconsciously because of the speed in which they have to make decisions. Coaches need to help players achieve a greater sense of control of their own actions in a game that provokes unconscious decision making- in other words the flow state. 


The players are collaborators, they have as much input to the teams strategical direction than the coach, their propositions are equal, that is true empowerment not dictatorship. It's more spontaneous, connective, artistic than any copy and paste model, thus the coach must transmit a shared system of values and intentions. A team is a network of interactions and micro societies that accumulate together to form shared possibilities. 


Coaches need to enhance game insight through reference coaching, asking questions to provoke conscious thinking in the individual through open dialogue and helping attune them to key references to help them overcome contextual in-game challenges. This allows players make more purposeful decisions and unique to them, players need to exchange telepathic information prior to the moment of ball reception and to share intentions. The coach needs to guide players in this information transfer to help play come to life supported by training that builds decision making, perceptive skills, diversification of technique, movement. Coaches need to facilitate these kind of discussions between players or player-coach.




Adaptive systems & Empathic Resonance groups


Football teams can be viewed as complex adaptive systems, where players (agents) interact dynamically with each other and the environment- opponents, ball, pitch- to produce emergent behaviours (Durate et al 2012). behaviours evolve as a response to receptive information and knowledge about the environment, these can be the actions of the opponent, characteristics of the players and attunement to game affordances. Teams are dynamic entities, interacting non linear environments with the environment, human organisms should not be seen as closed systems like machines with technical wires with clear separable cause-effect relations amongst components, functions and regulation profiles (Pol et al 2020). 


The concept of spheres of local influence refers to the localised decision making authority players have within their immediate spatial and tactical context on the pitch. Each player operates within a sphere defined by their role in the team and the dynamic interactions with nearby teammates, the opponents and the ball (Frencken et al 2011). A player's local sphere of influence includes the area where they can directly affect play; these spheres are interconnected and require coordination, one action can cause a cascading effect across different spheres. These spheres are highly adaptive and shift dynamically, effective teams align individual autonomy with collective synchronisation, as seen in Dutch Total football- Oudejans et al 2012. 




The football pitch is typically divided into spaces and zones to generate space, the emergence of which will be used to prioritise relevant analytical variables that allows players to prepare for the next space. These types of space are classified in accordance to this criteria; degree of influence of players present, the level of relationship between co-operating elements (players from the same team and the opposition) in the ball zone. Most of tactical discourse is centred about zones, structures & micro details that constrain exploration. No system can be understood in isolation; it is inseparable from its environment, with which it maintains a relationship of co-production (Morrin 1991). Complex adaptive systems are no exception, in which the organisation has its own smaller system - or sphere of influence-  that responds to local information to form interactions. 


The most prevalent similarity in all of the best teams is that they capture the opposition in your rhythm before changing it, players share a system of values that prioritises interaction. I refuse to believe in the concept of possession or progression phases, final third phases, I believe in controlling the game with rhythms and distances, if we are close together we exchange information better and we know when we have to slow it down or speed it up. The complex cannot be learned analytically, it is necessary to interact in a unfilled environment where interactions between all aspects that have significant influence on the optimisation of an athlete (Serra 2015) 



When referring to adaptive systems, the conception that arises from the theory of complex and dynamic systems, the game can be considered a system within itself. Each subsystem will contain smaller spheres of influence that co-operate with each other at any given time. The game is a living system of expansions and contractions, deforms and shifts, living elements that vary from systems that make up the game. The game is continuously mobile, changing and adapting. 


The phenomenon of emergence allows these systems to develop collective intelligence and shared intentionality, they self organise without centralised control. The coaches aim is to prioritise, develop and strengthen these synergies within these spheres of influence, synergies over correct spacing. Tactical concepts are important but play is decided by shared understanding and synergies, this cannot be undermined.


A player can change the intended outcome whilst continuing to use the same motor pattern to attain new emergent outcomes (Pol et al 2020) ; a reverse pass, a dummy, a pull-push (futsal)- all of which by nature go against and try to outwit the opponents flow. These actions alter the trajectory of team attack, a player changes the desired collective intention- arising from the ebbs and flows of the game. 



Footballers embody two differing roles- Instigators or Deciders; to instigate attacks are formed from player led instruction (verbal & non verbal cues) and understanding of what is needed to find a progression. Deciders launch the breakthrough inside the block with moving actions, accelerating the rhythm opposed to setting it.  A group of players can consider a move and assess how many are needed to promote and execute this and if there is a necessary structure that needs to be present. For instance, a structured build up shape to create height, width and depth to create space in between the opponent’s organisation or an emergent structure- a line of three in a line structure.

The player with the ball dictates the tempo, but the functions of those around him dictate every potentiality, players need to use this information to propel the attack when these opportunities arise. This knowledge can't be transferred by the coach, it happens when the players are exposed to challenge and reach an on field maturity that allows them to regulate and self organise their progressions. They play from an emotional connection, it has resonance, each action represents something far greater than a man and a ball, it's about multiple players receiving and exchanging thoughts in the heat of action, in the traffic where there is jeopardy, they have to adapt and co-ordinate accordingly to realise their destinies. 

A player's physio-behaviours are important to team integration, Seriul-lo proposes that we should enhance resonance networks within the team so players understand their teammates individuality as much as their own. We have the opportunity to optimise behaviours that correspond to emotions, self expression and mental structures. Each player represents a world of their own, they  perceive, conceive and execute strategic group tactics- players are attuned to the microgame 2v2/3v3  to solve problems that arise locally and improve the context of the team- collective. These players must share a system of values, intentions and inhabit an environment of intimacy.

A players’ body orientation will define a players visual field, which will define perception space and a blind side. Body orientation defines a repertoire of facilitated behaviours, close to each element that generates reactions from either teammates (looking to collaborate) or opponents. Often coaches attune players to the half spaces as a reference for positioning and structural organisation, instead of attuning them to supporting the ball carrier diagonally or pushing into the blind side when there is no threat to the ball. The body profiles of the players interacting with the ball - carriers, potential receivers, anchoring players, potential goal scorers- can help the collective self organise and form situations of superiority based on the trajectory of elements. 



Trajectories are responsible for the formation of dynamic advantages, which occur when a player is able to enjoy space and time on the ball as a result of its speed in relation to the opponents ability to occupy the playing area in that specific moment- Seriul-lo 2017. However, Seriul-lo argues that players need to be first ‘positioned’, then adjusting their body profiles, then adding the respective behaviours of the phase space to realise these trajectories and dynamic affordances. In the Liverpool goal above you see correct positioning yet positioning in accordance to 360 perception, every single player at the beginning of the shot is connected to the ball diagonally.


Could this be correct positioning? 360 perception gives you an improved vision of the pitch, better access to blind spots, allows a player to angle off, receive back foot drive, use the nearest opponent and teammate as a reference for the next action. What about the intention of the move? Liverpool choose to circulate on the outside with Konate playing higher, moving the ball on the outside diagonal to find the gap inside and utilising the opportunity to go against the momentum of the opponent's shift


Coaches should ask players to be able to lead attacks not by tactic board solutions but by communication, intention, activity around the ball carrier and perception-action coupling. These are the references that lead to attacking strategy instead of structural solutions, proposals are negotiated and complimentaryInstead of coach-player knowledge transfer, this emphasises the need for active (mindless) transfer of understanding, players orientate their actions according to the functions of their teammates, creating the preconditions for the greatest possible synergies to emerge.  Instead of attacking through structures, attack through intentions, references and guiding players to receive the ball as effectively as possible in the most effective areas- they decide which of their tools they can use to exploit it. 




Non linear & dynamic interactions 

The starting reference for any team are connections and dynamics, this is understood by attuning ourselves to how active the players are around the ball, if the play has flow (looks natural and unpredictable), if creativity is present (how a team uses the receptive information to create an advantage) and how they find solutions- diagonal perception, dribbling, give & go's/counter movements. 

Understanding football as a complex adaptive system, a team being a result of synergetics and ecological systems, therefore the training process of such a team must prioritise non linear science,  non linear pedagogy and differential learning. A team has to identify key positions to attack in the defensive block, collaboration is achieved by open coach-player | player-coach dialogue. Team dynamics between players are continuously evolving, these developments are essential if we want these synergies to flourish.

Football is built from mutual understanding, shared intention and varying layers of communication- geared towards creating a mutual idea and executing it. Decision making comes from players being attuned to affordances through, around and over, their familiarity to situations and situational priorities. Expert players, while performing a certain action are already evaluating their environment and deciding what their next action will be (Serra (2015) . Traditionally, the coach promotes certain information to optimise one's decision making in the tactical and strategical landscape in these meso structures.  

Tactical- solving problems that arise during the game 


Strategic- improving the teams context 


Socio- affective, emotional/expressive (creativity) and mental structures - having a shared system of values and understanding the function a player has in a group 



Positional organisation is not dominant in the creation of these advantages and synergetic responses, nor should concepts emergent from positional structures be omnipresent in every phase space. This is where football leans towards shaped intention rather than exploring environments. Phase spaces and group tendencies reveal potential scenarios but one particular scenario should never be pre dominant. 


Positional structures can undermine the coordination capacities related to having direct contact with the ball, hindering collective effectiveness of these interactions. Spatial control is seen as the universal way of establishing dominance or threat over an opponent, where a team's true excellence requires the telepathic understanding embedded in these mesostructures. It’s necessary to embrace these chains of interactions, contemporary co-ordination and dynamic affordances, all of which intertwined with the movement and location of the ball. Thats why I consider Pep's Barcelona to be the most misunderstood team of all time, we spent so long overemphasising intangible zones to occupy spaces when the real answers to why this team was great was shining all along. Chains of interactions, synergies amongst teammates and player characteristics.




Empathic resonance groups, or socio-affective structures, refer to invisible bonds generated between groups of individuals, who understand each other and collaborate at an above average level of effectiveness. These groups are responsible for the emergence of socio affective advantage, these links between players can alter the decision making process and types of interactions present in team mesostructures. 


This connection is achieved by collaborating in a small sector of the pitch through favourable interactions and orientating yourself to your teammates capabilities- though this can also be achieved at distance. Exploiting the telepathic understanding that exists between a center back and a striker for long passes, as an example. Interactions are self-assembled and adaptive, with structural and functional versatility- as seen in relational meso structures (e.g- emergent lines of diagonals), giving the group the capacity of attaining outcomes from shared intention with structurally different or mutating components. 


Superiority can exist without numerical advantage, the intentionality of movement is frequently modified by the intervention of opponents, the unexpected must be solved with creativity present, making it impossible to rely

on automated solutions. Relations create conditions to explore these uncertainties, actions are products

of space, time, desires, varying sentiments and perceptions, once you see it you can't ignore it.




Individualism in football refers to the unique characteristics of each player at a moment in the game and how they choose to harness their own capabilities. It’s difficult to specify the exact receptive information that constitutes the identity of each player, it is therefore optimal to approach it through certain mental structures that shape an individual's decision making- interaction. A coach should not seek to compromise the phenomenon of individualism. 


Knowing the player profoundly will allow us to understand the chances of success he has under certain conditions, this guides decision making from the player and coach-player interactions and dialogue. There will be players who interact differently depending on which teammate has the ball. Players who are given the ball despite being at a disadvantage (numerical/ positional) but can find creative solutions because they perceive the game well and have diversification in their technical toolbox which they can call upon instinctively because of previous exposure to situations or acquiring decision-action through trial and error.


Empathic resonance can also be seen as an element that hinders collective performance, groups can lose effectiveness when they co-operate when they search for a specific intended outcome within these two elements. It’s important that in these meso structures a team doesn't have overdominant and pre-defined solutions irrespective of the context and demands of the game. Exploring various Interactions are better for the development of play due to the lack of co-ordination or attunement to certain game affordances. 


Conditional structures give a team the energy that the game requires; Expressive-creative structures are present in the individual's ability to execute creative actions in accordance with the receptive information of the environment, that are difficult to predict based on emerging behaviours. Understanding a players ability will provide coaches a greater ‘certainty’ when it comes to producing disruptive situations and how to compliment the intervention of surrounding players to the ball carrier's expressive capabilities. Diversity is created by creating synergies through the strategic manipulation of constraints _ Pol et al 2020 




Being aware of this encourages the coach to foster autonomy in player interaction to optimize creative proposals, player led strategy to resolve and respond to complex situations. The location of players can be significant in receptive information-  when dribbling having players close enough to combine with and when combining having the opportunity to change direction and dribble. These factors shape how players collectively interpret phase spaces. We must learn to live with uncertainty, which is an inevitable feature of complex systems. Uncertainty is not a flaw to be eliminated but a reality to be embraced - Morrin (2008)

Coaches should seek to create environments in which players get better at attacking small spaces, develop these 'off the cuff' moments to get more emergent returns, rather than fixed outcomes or targets. Coaches should be training attacking with numerical inferiority if they would want to play against the momentum of structured defence then our practise should reflect that. As supported by Goncalves et al 2016, high inferiority underloads in training lead to high levels of self organisation and affordances.


mechanisms - controlled movements vs circular causality 


Football by nature is unrepeatable, yet too much of what is embodied on the pitch is a result of meticulous, robotic, controlled movements top down from the coach. By imposing rigid structures, coaches risk compromising player autonomy, intuition and adaptability. Football is likened to a chess match, every move having a strategic purpose, players are micromanaged and less space for the individual to thrive- those that look to circumvent these confines compromise the strategy. Coaches are more concerned about overarching principles, referred to vaguely as one’s philosophy, which is transferable from one group of players to another in spite of the wider context. Machine learning techniques, such as random forest classifiers, have revolutionised tactical analysis by identifying patterns in player positioning and passing sequences- Herald et al 2022. 


Coaches in the modern game must adhere to strict methodological criteria and universal principles, in which decontextualisation and tactical prototypes are present in how coaches seek to implement their game models. Teams are tactically organised based on external influence and vague ways of knowing.  The importation of this globalised model was done specifically to produce only 'positional' coaches, embedding universal principles and establishing an organisation to promote repetition above all else is paramount to 'assimilating' a model. Standardised training curricula and templates may not reflect important local cultural context, undermining the development of a coach's creative and adaptive skills in session design. 

This is where the idea of 'best practice' is so prevalent ; a coach must define learning outcomes, construct pre-defined teaching and learning opportunities for efficient coaching interventions and design sessions that facilitate this. Coaches are often told to intervene and stop the session when the players have done something 'correct' to then reward and create an understanding of what needs to be 'repeated'. The disconnect between the player and coach in its practical implementation when using these 'copy paste models' leads to the coach neglecting context in favour of universal principles, fulfilling institutional obligations and conformity.  Fostering self emergent outcomes are not encouraged as we have over constrained the acquisition process.  

Coaches must have complex dynamic principles and be receptive to the change of state that continuously occurs during a match, adjusting to the co-adaptive performer-environment process. Coaches must do more to strengthen athlete- coach interactions as a way of promoting a team's strategic direction. Instead of overprescribing players with centralised solutions or positional structures, coaches should give players 2 or 3 concepts that should guide the strategic direction of the team.  


Circular causality, a key feature of complex adaptive systems, describes the non-linear, reciprocal interactions among system components, where each element influences and is influenced by others, leading to emergent behaviors (Capra, 1996). In football, a team operates as a CAS, with players, coaches, and tactics interacting dynamically to produce collective outcomes. A player’s action, such as a pass or movement, triggers responses from teammates and opponents, creating feedback loops that shape subsequent actions. These loops, driven by circular causality, generate team behaviors that cannot be attributed to a single cause but emerge from the interplay of multiple interactions (Mitleton-Kelly, 2003).



Self-organization occurs when football teams adapt spontaneously to dynamic game situations without centralized control (Holland, 1998). Players adjust their positions and decisions based on real-time cues from teammates and opponents, forming coherent patterns through local interactions. This adaptability, enabled by circular causality, allows teams to respond effectively to unpredictable challenges. However, successful self-organization requires shared understanding and trust among players to ensure cohesive responses within the feedback-driven system (Duarte et al., 2012).

The concept of Self organisation, a process in which a pattern of a system emerges solely from interactions using local information- without reference to a global pattern. The pattern is an emergent property of the system, not imposed by external ordering influence. As described by Yates, in self organising systems pattern formation occurs through interactions internal to the system, without intervention externally. An emergent property cannot be defined by examining these properties (concepts) in isolation, it requires understanding of the interactions amongst the systems components. Football is more about state of mind than tactics, a team has its own identity and organisation, coaches must offer guidelines about solutions without expecting players to follow them rigidly.

Instead of rigid positional rotations, in relational teams players look to orbit the ball carrier as a way of promoting solutions, redefining the local picture and effecting how players can effectively intervene with the ball. Increasing the unpredictability potential through synergies, whilst being sensitive to context and affordances creates a new type of organisation. The emergence of co-ordinated and shared intentions, formation of inter-personal synergies. The interdependence, temporal relatedness and circular casualty of constraints acting at different levels and timescales integrate all dimensions and levels of performance in a correlated way (Pol et al 2020) 

Coaches must understand that sport is a matter of teaching its participants to learn better instead of influencing their movement patterns for in game execution. Coaches should have a clear framework of what they want to achieve, coupled with a holistic approach to session design to maximise the similarities between training, game references and non linear principles. No two problems are identical, neither would two solutions, yet coaches are over-reliant on globalised methods or external tools for knowledge transfer of decision making, technical fitness and execution. 

A coach should adapt to the team's dynamics, acknowledge the importance of identifying with the local culture whilst embracing unpredictability and chaos in order to move away from coded coach dominant approaches. Coaching should provoke conscious thinking and make players aware of key references- optimising conditions for the individual (their unique 5 strengths and weaknesses), optimising the conditions for emergent synergies and helping them navigate problems proposed by the opponent and the natural dynamism of the game.


Control vs spontaneous synergies | Team organisation- externally organised vs self organising 

Self organisation promotes a new way of redefining what it means to have an 'attacking organisation' - typically analysed or determined through the sole perspective of how the players have aligned themselves in relation to the 3 lines of defence, midfield and attack. Structure can mean something different when we choose to reimagine it, build a team attacking organisation that is decided by movements and episodical pairings according to player characteristics, the synergies emergent between teammates and the gaps between opposing players- opposed to concrete structural gaps.  

This proposes a football that goes beyond anticipation and into telepathy, creating the pre conditions for the greatest possible synergies to emerge- as Yiannis Tsala often says. The player and the teammate should be a coaches primary references, not universal principles- football should not be determined by universal solutions and external organisation where attacking dynamics are contingent on creating and finding the third man. One specific concept should not be overemphasised, nor should youth players have their perception altered as a result of the tactical preferences of the coach. Teaching players to view the game through this lens creates more adaptive players, who look to explore their environments, intuitions and emotions to better co-ordinate actions.

Coaches should look to promote the conditions where synergies, interactions and relationships should be at the heart of a team’s organisation, acting as a powerful life force. Everything should be central to achieving a telepathic understanding between its participants, where collaboration and rhythms are emphasised in the process. Complex systems are recursive, meaning they are self-referential and self-organizing. The outputs of a system can feed back into it, influencing future behaviour and creating loops of cause and effect. Rather than seeking to eliminate chaos, it can be a source of creativity and adaptability. This perspective encourages embracing ambiguity rather than striving for absolute control or predictability. 

How can synergies be fostered? A player must know the game through the eyes of his teammate, that should always be the starting point, sharing intentions and values as a way of increasing collective efficiency and link technical actions and tactical intentions. Dualities, the game of 2v2, create the conditions for synergies to emerge as both players constantly realign their thinking with the present information- in the environment- and spatial references. Totti and Cassano embodied this at AS Roma in the early 2000s- ''we speak the same language with our feet, we played with our eyes shut, we played in a state of trance , we became as one''- from Mi Chiamo Francesco Totti documentary.


To summarise, Tactics are identified and built by emotions, sentiments and the psychology that is present in every attacking insertion. As coaches and analysts we should look to think about football in a more progressive way than tactics' in its objective nature with concrete principles, schemes and structures predominant in our perception. They should never have been considered the starting point. 

Structure creates conditions for certain affordances to be more emergent, the challenge top level coaches face is implementing a structural base without compromising the potential for diversification and spontaneity in player-group actions. Football is episodic and situational, synergic concepts, emotions and rhythms must be paired together. The role of the coach is not to prescribe solutions but adapt to the context and co-design with his players to facilitate this, concepts must be prioritised before structural requirements and universal principles. 




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Serra (2015)- Espacios de fases. Como Seriul-lo cambió la táctica para siempre 


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