In high performance football, coaching staff have fewer and fewer training sessions due to the high frequency of matches. This means that the focus of the work is often on developing or improving the team’s own Game Model, or the match plan to beat the next opponent.
Therefore, there is little time left to develop individual and collective fundamentals that can make the difference in the tactical evolution of the player and the team. This is where the Individual Tactical Analyst comes in. This figure focuses on working on the more ‘micro’ aspects of the player, performing complementary work and valuing different content/individual fundamentals.
The Individual Tactical Analyst is a relatively new profession in sports, especially in football. Even more so because it is so new, many markets have opened up to this new area of performance and are looking for professionals who are qualified.
Download this task and take the first step towards a new career!
Aspects of working as an Individual Tactical Analyst:
- The first aspect to highlight is the improvement in the player’s self-awareness. By carrying out more personalised work, it will allow the player to know which behaviours should be strengthened, which should be improved and which should be avoided.
- The second aspect is the improvement in the decision-making criteria obtained by the player. When work is provided on the individual fundamentals, the selection criteria and perception obtained regarding the actions to be performed during a match are more productive, obtaining a higher percentage of effective and efficient actions.
- The third and last point is the increase in the prospective potential obtained by the player, expanding creativity and the variety of resources. The player will have a greater capacity to analyse the different elements of the game and, therefore, will know how to solve actions in a different way without mechanising certain behaviours.
The importance of mastering the fundamentals
In order for the Individual Tactical Analyst to carry out their work and obtain results, it is essential that they master the collective and individual fundamentals, with the aim of strengthening the skills and tools that will allow the player to resolve the tactical situations in which they will find themselves during the competition.
We organise the fundamentals into: those that are associated with situations in which a player finds themselves in due to their position on the pitch (Individual Fundamentals by Position), to a playing line (Group Line Fundamentals), and those that are related to the area of the pitch in which they appear .(Universal Collective Fundamentals)
Fundamentals are important because they provide a solid base for the development of more advanced skills. When a player masters the fundamentals, he or she is better able to perform more complex and creative actions on the pitch.
In addition, fundamentals help players develop a better sense of the play. When a player understands the fundamentals, they are better able to read the game and make good decisions out on the field. A player with strong individual fundamentals will be able to have a positive impact on the game, and therefore on the collective performance of their team.
Furthermore, collective fundamentals will help us to improve and optimise certain aspects of the team. Firstly, it will allow us to coordinate the different lines of the team, i.e. it will help us to ensure that the players in the same line move in a coordinated way and, in turn, offer homogeneous responses to specific situations. Secondly, their training will help to coordinate the actions of different players located in different areas, such as the intervention zone and the cooperation zone.
The MBP Individual and Collective Fundamentals Courses
At the MBP School of Coaches, we have listed over 170 individual and group fundamentals to help you improve your players. In these programmes, you will learn:
The most important fundamentals for football
How to identify them live or on video
What details are important for your player to improve performance
How to use technology to conduct 1 to 1 sessions with your player(s)
