Saturday 3 March 2012

Evaluating Players.

"Know your Players" is a mantra of good coaching. Below is a good format for looking at those who can and should form the core of your starting group. This also gives you a solid base a coach for planning targets for improvement. This set of evaluations has a South American theme looking at aspects of South American play while providing a useful insight in general for coaches.

The main factors to evaluate technically/ tactically are:

-How?
-Why?
-When?

Dynamic warm up with and without a ball. This allows players to be evaluated in terms of flexibility, coordination, agility and basic comfort on the ball if ball work is included 1 ball per player.

1v1 small grid variations. Using this you can evaluate the ability of a player on the ball and defending. In this phase you are looking for technical quality and also decision making ability.

Defending
-Tackle or delay?
-Positioning between goal and ball.
-Good technical qualities in 1v1 defending.

Attacking
- If defender approaches correctly does he/she attempt to use changes of direction to unbalances and move past the defender?
-If the defender approaches too fast does the attacker attempt to pass him'her quickly?
-If the defender stands of or is too slow does the attacker shoot quickly?

Small sided games on multiple small and large goals. Each team has one goal to defend an opposition goal to attack and one/ two other neutral goals which both teams can attack. The rules of these games are:

- Can't shoot/score on the same goal consecutively players must reposition to attack another goal.
-Use one or two balls.

These games are looking at the communication, positioning and movement skills of the players as a group.

-which teams are dropping back into or staying in defensive positions? and are they using safe play holding positions and taking few risks with the ball?
- Which players are dropping in when defenders have the ball to create options to progress the attack? and are they looking to play forwards in where possible? can they use direct running and shooting when the decision is on?
-Which players stay forward? do they look to make runs into space for quick passes? how to shoot and when? can they link up play when no shooting chance is on?

This looks at how players think around the game and enables you to look at which players are dong any part of the above with comfort.

Other small sided and larger sided conditions for 11v11, 8v8 and 5v5. Once the above small sided game variations have been looked at move onto larger sided game variations to evaluate more conditions using the following:

Evaluate speed of decision making and movement of ball:
-Play from 3 touch to 1 touch maximum. Play will be good quality at the start and decrease as the touches allowed become fewer. Good players although having a maximum will use less than the maximum and make the right decision consistently. Players who can play with 1 touch consistently and make accurate decisions should make up the core of the team in positions of attack wingers, one forward should be able to link using 1 touch play, sweeper/libero, defensive midfield player and attacking midfield player.

Possession: Is there diagonal support on the ball defensively and offensively? Ahead and behind the ball? How many times to players lose the ball when passing? How much of the players play is on the ground? Is support for the player on the ball consistent and constant?

Receiving: Are players receiving the ball and switching it to the opposite side from which they received it? In order to move the ball in opposite direction to the pressure zone. Allowing for quick counter in free space.

Technical factors: is the ball on the ground as much as possible? except for when crossing and shooting.How strong are players with weaker foot? and outside of foot techniques?

Positioning: Using two balls can teams balance defending and attacking?

Sprints. Using different distances and variations of sprints against a timer to evaluate speed.

Shooting. On 2 large goals. Work on both feet and look at power, accuracy and technique. Control, first touch with inside or outside of foot? Correct positioning of standing foot to the ball? Correct technique on connection with the ball.









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