Category: Decision Making Process

Fotball coaches and players are always saying “we need tomake the right, or better, decisions”, but do we even know what makes up decison making and if not, than how do we know how we can improve decision making?

Hopefully this helps clear that up a little more so here’s a nice little graphic I made for it:

I love a good feedback loop and here’s another one being:

1. Tactic
2. Decision
3. Skill/Technique
4. Execution

STAGE #1 – TACTIC

As you can see above I don’t even have decision making first in the decision making loop above because the decision you make is a result of a bunch of other processes you go through to reach it.

The first stage is tactic and this refers to the expecation of the coach and the rest of th team when you receive the ball, or need to pressure the opposition ball carrier.

Both of these game actions can occur allover the ground so different tactics will be expected to be used when the game model indicates so.

So let’s say you receive a free kick in the defensive 50 and the ball takes a relative long time to get back to you and the opposition defense has used this time to get back into their preferred defensive formation.

Most teams will have a different tactic to follow for this slow/closed play game action versus a fast/open play game action – they won’t, and shouldnlt be the same or you’ll be very easy to defend.

So the tactic expected to be used will now dictate where you scan and what you scan for and the information processing phase goes into overdrive.

The tactic is usually just a preferred team based player/ball movement option that all players are in on so that the scanning and information processing phases can be performed as fast as possible and you can start moving the ball before the defense can react and get them on the back foot straight away.

As mentioned above the tactic may be in your team’s game model, it may come from your coach, it may be something you’ve come up with your team line but the more players that can know about it, the better because you donlt just want 1 good passage of play – you want to link passages of play to get the ball as close to your goal as you can, as fast as you can – and that doesn’t just happen with 5 players knowing the correct tactic for that instance and the other 13 playing 13 different games at that time.

In great team’s the average level of game intelligence is usually higher than the opposition and they can assess situations on the fly and with their experience in many scenarios, they are able to predict what to do based on seeing a lot of patterns of play over their careers and this builds their great anticipation capacity.

Great players don’t react faster, they predict better because if you’re reacting your already behind.

I just want to quickly mention that the information processing phase might be the most intricate part of this entire loop as the factors that decide what information if you see as a whole and then see as the most relevant, is based on a host of temporary psychological factors.

For example if the game model tactic is to hit up a 45 degree in board kick into the middle of the ground off half back then if you’re playing well and have just made that kick earlier in the game, then you’ll be very confident to attempt and make that kick versus if you just missed one that resulted in an opposition goal and now that option doesnlt seem as safe to use, and you’ll shift your information gathering to somewhere else, when youer teammates are still working on the initial in board kick tactic.

This is where coaches really need to ask their players questions on what did they see and how did that drive what game action they used immediately after that, whether it was in line with the gane model or not.

STAGE#2 x DECISION

Once the player has recognised what tactic is expected to be used in a particular situation, and once they have processed the information in front of them, now their decision of what to do next is made.

So you get the ball and you know the basic tactic of what’s next which will re-direct your vision to that part of the ground – if you didn’t know the tactic then you’d spend all your time searching for the next tactic instead of moving through the 4 stages of decision making and you’ll be wrapped up in a tackle or foced to bomb the ball for territory with little direction or accuracy.

Things are working well up the ground as well and your teammates have started to move to those spots that you are looking towards the get the ball too.

So now it’s all about who is where the ball preferably needs to get to.

Are they in a lot of space which gives my kick more room for error?

Are they in a tight spaced which givesmy kick less room for error?

Do I have the capability to execute a kick into this tight space?

Can I go back to a time where I executed a similar kick into tight space like this?

Am I feeling confident enough right now to attempt this kick?

Do I feel in safe enough psychological state to attempt this kick in the event that I turn it over?

If not then is this the best option right now?

Are there other and more easier kicks to teammates that I can do right now?

And the loop starts again of which all of this happens in a split second.

So now when you say “you must make the right decision” along with anxiety building language (must, have to etc), you can now start top see the barriers that each player could have up and why they don’t quite make the decisions you think they should.

At this point you can now assist them in making the “right” decision or help them be able to find other options immediately.

STAGE 3 x SKILL/TECHNIQUE

Stage 4, execution, easily the most used stage of the decision making process for a few reasons.

The main reason being that the coach can clearly see if the ball got to should have got to, and where it needed to go, or not, and this is how players are judged a lot of the time.

But knowing what we do now about decision making, the reasons for this will lye far deeper than most coaches care to know or delve.

The final stage of most learning models ends in autonomy which is the ability to perform an action on demand but the other side of that is that when that action isn’t successful is that by this stage you should also have the ability of self error detection.

This refers to the player being able to assess the action based on the 4 points above:

• Correct
• Successful
• Incorrect
• Unsuccesful

To take that a bit further:

• Correct = a correct decision using the correct skill/technique (ball made it to the right person)
• Successful = a successful decision but incorrect skill/technique (ball made it to the right person but maybe the kick fell short putting them under some form of pressure)
• Incorrect = an incorrect decision using the correct skill/technique (a safe backwards/lateral kick around half forward that’s not in your game model but a successful kick)
• Unsuccessful = either or both incorrect decision and skill/technique (kicking error)

If players have reached a level autonomy through your/the coach’s training enviroment and design then players can pretty quickly sum up what correct/incorrect actions were made at any given point of the game and this helps tremendously in building game intelligence.

Inexperienced players will make mistakes and have no idea why they occur and how to correct them, your mid-tier players will have this knowledge for some actions but not all and your experienced players will have this knowledge for most, if not all, game actions.

If you want to make your coaching gig a lot easier than presenting a framework like this can assist them in some self learning which usually sticks a lot more in the brain then simply being told from someone else.

You have now made your decision of what to do with the ball that falls in line with your team’s game model so now you move to phase 3 being skill/technique which refers to what skill and/or technique do I need to use to make this decision successful.

What you need to take into account here are constraints (things that restrict what you can do right now), affordances (things that present opportunities for you right now), what they are and how can use work around or with them.

Does the player I am about to kick to prefer softer kicks than hard kicks?

If I don’t kick it straight enough then do they have the ability to quickly react to the ball and be able move to make the mark?

Does the receiver prefer to receive the ball in open space v closed space?

Is there a wind that could throw my kick off line?

Is the ball slippery which might affect my ball drop and ball contact?

Has an oppsootion playerbeen dragged out of the tight spacde by another teammate providing the affordance of extra space to 1 side of my designated target?

Is the player on the mark close (constraint) or far away (affordance) from me?

What do I need to alter if they are close to me?

If I don’t move away from them what type will I have to do?

If I do move away from them then what other kicks are open to me now?

All these thoughts and more again occur in a split second but it is all this information that now brings you to your technique as now you  know what type of kick you need to do.

This is another reason why kicking mechanics assessment is way overrated in my book because every single kick you do in a game, even set shot goial kicking, is different as they are all performed under different conditions (distance, angle, ground side etc).

STAGE 4 x EXECUTION