Fellows Book Online Version 2020

44 Chris Carling (French Football Federation) led this workshop and started by asking what we can transfer from Jean Charles Trouabal’s talk to football, highlighting the ability to adapt the French relay tactics in regard to the demand of the moment and the ability to take risks. Frederic Lipka (MLS) added that it was very interesting in terms of synchronization and making decisions, two things that we can directly compare with the collective needs of a football team as the best individual talent needs to connect with other players of his team. We can easily make the analogy between the experience of Jean Charles and football demands. You can have a great plan, but you need to be connected to the moment and the situation, listening to the feelings and sensations. This will help you to understand the needs of the situation and to be able to adjust your decision based on the movement of your teammates. To prepare ourselves during training is important but the experience and the instinct of the athlete can make the difference on the performance day. Chris continued by highlighting how sprinters not being the best performers get ready to give the best performance of a lifetime. Being open to changes is important but Chris asked, “in football, how much freedom can we give to a single athlete compared to a collective decision?” Marco Montini (Italian Football Federation) answered saying we need to note the difference between closed skills sports and open skills sports. In football, we need to push our players decision making skills as much as possible. Mathew Portas (English Football Association) put the focus on the practices that we put in place: “do they help the players to understand the team that surrounds them? Do they help the players to get the best out themselves? From the performance side, are we maximizing the opportunities to take the best out of the team? From the youth development side, are we exposing players to enough different situations to allow them to understand how they are performing in relation to their teammates?” The variety of practices will help them to become a better senior player. And then he came back to the relationship between risk and reward; from the physical side, “how much should we take risk pushing players to prepare themselves to be close to break down? In term of the strategy and tactical side, how much risk are we able to take?” Regarding this risk/ reward challenge , Mathew added “if we train ourselves on risk, we should become better managing it.” Following those comments, Fred reinforced that training it for a long time from a young age will allow players to adapt and make the best choice. Even more if players have known each other for a long time. Based on the rich experience of the player, the risk becomes calculated and less random. Fred used the words of Claude Suaudeau, a famous former French coach, “Talented players are very expensive but the relationship between them is priceless,” making the point that they need to work a lot on this relationship to train football players. This will allow them to perform together and make the best decision according to their teammates and their common experience. Carlo Castagna (Italian Football Federation) was quite impressed by the story and how athletes not being the best in the world were able to sublimate themselves to Jean Charles Trouabal Workshop 3