Designing Training Situations: How to simplify 11v11 by reducing but not removing football constraints

When preparing a training session, many coaches struggle to design training situations that reflect the reality of an 11v11 match. The main reason is that most coaches do not have 22 players available for training. This means they are forced to simplify the 11v11 game and design a 10v10, 9v9, 8v8, or even smaller-sided training situation, depending on how many players show up. Unfortunately, this simplification results in players interacting with unrealistic spaces and distances compared to the real 11v11 game. How often have you watched your own training session and thought your players were behaving in ways that does not look like their natural behaviour in an 11v11 match? Another reason many coaches struggle to design realistic training situations is the lack of access to a full-size pitch. Often, they are forced to develop players’ football ability and fitness using only half a pitch - or even less. Again, this leads to unrealistic situations where space and time are much more limited than in a real 11v11 match. Attacking becomes unrealistically difficult, while defending is underloaded. How often have you watched a half-pitch session and felt like you were observing a game of pinball rather than football? Coaches may also face the challenge of designing smaller-sided training situations - such as a 4v4 or 7v6 game - without knowing what to do with the remaining players. Have you ever faced the dilemma of worrying about how to keep those players engaged while focusing on your main training objective? All the problems above (and many more) will be addressed in this book. We will introduce a new way of thinking about designing training situations - one that simplifies the real 11v11 game without losing its context - so players will always interact with realistic football situations. Coaches no longer need to worry about unrealistic spaces and distances or about what to do with the extra players. Regardless of the training objective, number of available players, or pitch size, all players will be involved in meaningful, game-like scenarios. Thanks to this new methodology, the transfer from the training pitch to the game 11v11 will be maximized. Raymond Verheijen (1971) was an assistant coach at four World Cups and four Euros with the national teams of The Netherlands, Korea among other countries. At club level, he worked for Manchester City, Chelsea, FC Barcelona, and Feyenoord. Verheijen delivered coaching courses in 100+ countries and published the best-selling books Football Periodisation, Football Coaching Theory, Tactical Principles and Analysing Football for his coach education organisation Football Coach Evolution (FCE). Marcel Lucassen (1963) implemented a tactical framework for all national youth teams at the German FA (DFB). He also served as Director of Football Development at the Dutch FA (KNVB) and as Technical Director for the UAE FA. At club level, Lucassen worked for VVV-Venlo, TSG Hoffenheim, Al Nasr FC, and Arsenal FC. Currently, he is the Head of Football Development at N.E.C. Nijmegen, and serves as a freelance Technical Expert for FIFA and a mentor in the FCE coaching courses.