By Tom Mura
Question - What do you talk with your team about at half time?
How do I decide what to focus on with my team during halftime? Sometimes there seem to be so many things we need to do better that I don’t know where to start.
This is a challenge for coaches at every level. There may be many things that you see your team doing wrong but the key is find the one or two adjustments that you can make that will have the most impact on the game.
When I look at a game I ask myself five questions:
• Are we able to win the ball?
• Are we able to keep the ball?
• Are we able to move the ball into the attacking third of the field?
• Are we able to create goal scoring chances?
• Are we able to finish the chances we create?
These questions help me to identify the area of the game that we are struggling. We may not be creating chances but the core issue may be that we’re not able to possess the ball through the middle third to get it into the attacking third.
It would be a waste of time for me to focus on how we can create chances if the team isn’t able to move the ball into the attacking third. So asking these questions in order will help you to identify the first thing that is breaking down.
Once I have the area that I need to focus on then I look for what we can change to be more successful in that area. There can be many reasons that a coach isn’t able to say, ‘Yes’ to one of these questions but it usually comes down to one of four factors:
• Technical
• Tactical
• Formation
• Personnel
These factors apply to each of the five questions. Technical relates to how we are performing the key skills required in that area. Tactical is how we are applying those skills. Formation is how the team is setup and the number of players devoted to a certain area of the field. Personnel is who you have in those areas.
I look at these factors in this order as well because there’s no use in addressing an issue with your formation if the players are struggling with the technique required to be successful in that area of the game.
Once you identify the area that where your team is first breaking down and the key factor that is causing it you can address those things with corrections and adjustments that will hopefully improve your team’s performance in that area.
Sometimes this process can have a huge impact on my team’s performance and other times correcting issues with one area only exposes issues we need to solve in the next area. But that’s what coaching is really about; incremental improvements over time that lead to a better individual and team performance.
By Tom Mura
