The pursuit of wisdom in any walk of life quickly reveals that what you think you know is not nearly enough to get you to where you want to go. As I'm starting out in my football journey I challenged myself to reach out to those already working in various roles in football to answer a short list of questions. My goal wasn't to get answers but relevant perspectives on the game within the game.
Here is DB:
Here is DB:
How did your first opportunity in football come about?
My first opportunity in football came about completely random and spontaneous. I was traveling through the United States in the year after my graduation from High School. I wasn’t really that deep into coaching and football analytics but I tried to start analyzing and writing for fun in my free time for TheFalseFullback.
In our working chat, one guy told us that he needed an assistant for the upcoming season. We chatted a bit and it was soon clear, that we would be a really nice fit and wanted to give it a try. We knew about the enormous difficulties and challenges this cooperation would bring and it was a hard decision, but I knew if I wanted to make myself a name in the football coaching scene I needed to make that step.
What attracted you to scouting/analytics? What’s more intriguing now names or numbers?
It was the general desire to know more about football. Nowadays, if you want to become a good coach you need to have knowledge on every aspect of the game. Analytics, Scouting, Tactics, Sport Science, Psychology and, and that may seems a bit odd here, Philosophy. I recently come across the so called T-shape:
If you think of Liverpool's coaching staff for example you can see they have an expert for almost every small detail of their game, like a Throw-In-Coach for example.
And I think that sooner or later first team coaches will no longer be specialists in one specific topic (like the ones I addressed above e.g. tactics etc), however where good and more average coaches differ now is the coordination between these areas and the use of the given knowledge.
Their main job is to coordinate them efficiently, to keep everyone in the team happy and to ensure that everyone will do everything for the clubs success.
So to be “I-shaped” in terms of coaching knowledge and a Generalist regarding every smaller aspect makes you a really, really good coach. You need to realize that if you don’t know much about data analytics, you will never know the advantages that it brings to your game, even though you have a great assistant.
For that reason I took a dive into analytics and scouting. There are certainly different approaches to a wider knowledge of football, analytics is one of them, and for beginners it is very easy to start because you just need to watch a game and to think about it.
Who/what is the first player/concept you "found"? What caught your eye?
Later on I talked a bit about the magnificent turn around Julian Nagelsmann was able to pull of in his first season at Hoffenheim. Back then I was supporting them because I was curious how a 27 year old guy will perform in a die-hard relegation race against far more experienced sides. In the first game he played a 3-1-4-2 and he continued to do so. The shift between three at the back and five at the back against the ball was not that common in this time, so I watched these games over and over again.
Nagelsmann and Hoffenheim won 6 out of their first 10 games since his arrival which secured them a 15th place and another season in the first division. Playing three in the back wasn’t really my favorite system so I watched the games and took notes about small positional changes and team principles, and finally realized how powerful this system is.
Who/what is the player/concept you "missed" on? What did you learn from it?
Before I started coaching I was a huge fan of predetermined principles, almost like moves everyone had to do in order to start successful attacks. But as soon as I started coaching I realized that I underestimated the impact of randomness in football and learned that small individual principles lead to a more successful approach.
Tactics, Tactics, Tactics. Watch games, analyze games and talk about them with someone who probably knows more than you. I learned that, as a coach, especially as a youth coach, your players always ask you: “Why”? Why should I do that? Why should I run there? Why should I make this pass? And if you don’t have a really deep knowledge you can’t answer these questions.
Of course you will answer them, but not precisely or you somehow give mixed signals. A great advice I heard from Rene Maric once was that on your way to the pitch you should think of every question that comes across your mind while thinking of your prepared training exercises. Every small detail is important. If you can answer everything; dive deeper; ask more. Repeat that over and over again.
Knowledge is nothing that grows straight. You will have set-backs, you will struggle and you will fail. But that’s all part of the process, have faith, be curious all the time, don’t hesitate to ask for advice, and keep on grinding.
Do you see player development as more of an art or a science? Is development on the club or the player? Why?
I think it’s a mixture. And one is granting the other. If we don’t see the art behind a development of a player, no science will help us to help them to grow. And on the other side, if we don’t use modern approaches and tools with all their variability and creativity we will never get a player to a point where the art starts to fascinate us all.
Allen … for three … history shot … bang.
What coach/player/team inspires you? Why?
Of course there are many great coaches out there, who one should mention somehow. But If I could only name three it would be certainly Marcelo Bielsa, Pep Guardiola and Julian Nagelsmann. Bielsa's desire, passion and love for details is absolutely unmatched and a big inspiration for my everyday life. Julian Nagelsmann opened the door for many young coaches with his success (for me his biggest success is still his first season at Hoffenheim where he was suddenly announced as their new head coach (as I mentioned earlier)) and I don’t think I have to say something about Guardiola's impact on all of us.
What advice would you give to someone wanting to get into media/analytics?
If someone who is interested in doing sports analytics full-time I think it's crucial to be great in either parts, sports and analytics. You should definitely have a great knowledge and interest in the sport you aspire to work in, because it's so important to connect and transfer all the given knowledge into recommended actions.
Furthermore, I think some technical background like coding, database stuff and modeling statistics should be in your profile, too.
What is your favorite app/tool to use (for fun!)?
I love Tactical Pad for designing and recording training sessions, but VLC Editor needs to get a shoutout too.
As a football analyst/coach you can learn from many sports. Let's take basketball as an example. Mid-Range Jumpshots are almost old-fashioned and their data driven change to 3 point shots or close range shots is very intriguing and I wonder if we will see something similar sooner or later in football.
Of course if you think of golden shots and golden assist zones etc, but I think there is many more to explore. Where should we force a turnover to get the best shot out of it? How should we set up our rest defense, especially the goalkeeper? Should we allow shots with a generally worse xG value more freely and frequently in order to avoid shots with a high xG? Should we completely avoid long distance shots? (I know Tiago wrote a nice comment about that, you should definitely read it) but anyway, I think these are the kind of questions we have to ask ourselves as analysts and coaches more deeply in the near feature.
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