Why Communication Is Key?
August 29, 2008
How much do you communicate to your teammates on the pitch? Do you provide direction when pressure is on coming? For example, “Watch your back Bill, man coming from your left. Look at James up top - he’s got Seth to support him - play to his feet”. This type of communication helps teammates immensely and should be a significant part of your game.
What does communication look like?
Communication – is how well you listen to, instruct, guide and help teammates verbally.
ON THE PITCH
Communication is used to carry out instructions and tactical changes. This has become common practice in modern-day football. Forms of communication used during the match are: vocal anchors, gestures and signals.
Each type can be assigned to an individual, a unit and/or the whole team. Preordained commands/signs or gestures have been used to play offside and press opponents as a team. Often the spine of the team (center forward, center midfield, center back and goalkeeper) would use these forms of communication to keep the balance of the team formation.
OFF THE PITCH
Managers and coaching staff are able to influence the squads’ communication skills by interacting with the players. Often used at the Half-time interval and before/after a training session/match. This can be with an individual, small group or the entire squad. Resulting in an improvement to the working environment and overall harmony that aids the day-to-day running of any large football club.
5 Ideas for action:
1. Look at Captains of National teams and big clubs, how the use the technics of communication available on the pitch
2. Listen to interview and make a note when you feel the player or coach has a good media profile of the pitch
3. Ask advice from players/coaches who you respect
4. Attend courses provided by local or national sporting bodies on this subject
5. On the pitch, this tool is as important as any other skill, never neglect it and always look for new ways or new languages to enhance this tecnique
As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here. Be sure to also subscribe to FFC by email or RSS - just visit the subscribe button in the top right corner of the page.
What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share?
Resources:
Switch On Your Confidence
August 21, 2008
Who controls your thoughts? You guessed it - YOU DO! Do you believe in your abilities or do you doubt them? Think about it a bit.
How can you expect to succeed if you don’t believe in yourself? Having confidence in your own abilities plays a major role in your ability to succeed. So, what is confidence really?
Confidence
Confidence – is your personal belief in your ability to do something, your emotional state of mind.
What confidence looks like?
If you think you cannot do something chances are you won’t. If you think you can do something chances are you can. If you do not believe in your own ability to achieve a goal you are creating your own competition. Why would you do that?
If you have to play against an opponent you must know that you will out compete them. Once you allow doubt into your mind you give your opponent a teammate and now you are playing against them and yourself. Now, the probability of success when you play 2 against 1 are that you will lose most of the time. It sounds so simple right? Believe it or not, it is that simple.
Make Up Your Mind To Achieve
Once you make your mind up that you have the ability to achieve something you will. Maybe it takes a few times but, if you do not believe in yourself, achieving success is much harder than it needs to be.
Confidence is a mindset. Think of it as a light switch that you have the power to turn on or off. If you are not confident in your own ability - ask yourself why? What makes you unequipped to achieve success? How can you change the elements in your thoughts that create timidness?
Professor Raj Persaud said, “true self-confidence comes from an attitude where you “promise yourself, no matter how difficult the problem life throws at you, that you will try as hard as you can to help yourself. You acknowledge that sometimes your efforts to help yourself may not result in success, as often being properly rewarded is not in your control.”
“If you have no confidence in self, you are twice defeated in the race of life. With confidence, you have won before you have started.” - Marcus Tullius Cicero. (Quotes Sourced from Wikipedia)
Ideas for Action:
- Start every activity by believing in your ability to succeed.
- Spend time visualizing what your success looks like. Then BE Successful.
- Make up your Mind and understand that BEING SUCCESSFUL IS A STATE OF MIND.
- Hang out with positive people and ignore negative people.
- Read about confident athletes and practice their strategies to maintain confidence.
What ideas, input, experiences or resources can you share about confidence?
As part of FFC’s series on, “24 Key Elements To Being A Great Footballer” we are discussing each key element in 24 successive blog posts every Monday, Wednesday & Friday over an 8 week period inside the respective Game, Body and Mind sections. For more information about the 24 Key Elements get our Players Assessment Kit here. Be sure to also subscribe to FFC by email or RSS - just visit the subscribe button in the top right corner of the page.
