A pracical guide for coaches
COACHING PHILOSOPHY
A pracical guide for coaches
ASHU SAXENA Founder + Chair | United Soccer Coaches Asian-Pacific Islander Coaching Community
“
As much as trophies matter, leaving something that’ s built to last is the most important thing to me.”
– Emma Hayes
United States Women’ s National Team Head Coach( 2024 Olympic Champion)
Coaching philosophy often is thought of as a preferred style of play, responses to moments in a match and choice of formation. Certainly, those are aspects to consider, but it is much more than that. Given the celebration of United Soccer Coaches 85th Anniversary, let’ s look at the evolution of coaching philosophy through the decades.
In general terms, some of the prevalent views include:
1940s-1950s
Physicality and fitness were often emphasized and trained separately from work with a ball; direct play and basic systems such as 1-2-5-3(“ WM formations”) were employed; coaches expected discipline and
were more authoritarian in nature.
1960s-1970s
Sides from Hungary and Brazil, as examples, began to use more fluid, short-passing styles causing coaches to think more in terms of coordinated movements and team shape instead of just effort and rigid formation; Dutch Total Football( Michels and Cruyff of the Netherlands) introduced ideas such as interchange of positions, spatial awareness, collective pressing, also influencing players to become more versatile and coaches to become more sophisticated
in their approaches.
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