"Guardiola wants to make football better."
- Cruyff
The level of cognition determines the height of how you see the world. How you see the world, how you understand football.
The world of football is undoubtedly a complex, random, yet sensitive universal system.
Further, football is a contradiction between a "chaotic system" and a "structured organization".
The team is a stable organization formed by a series of players who influence each other and work together for a common goal.
With the development of modern science and technology, chaos theory, system modeling and other theoretical concepts are becoming more and more mature, Guardiola based on the above scientific research has also gained a deeper understanding and cognition of football, thus establishing his own training model.
In this article, I lead you into Guardiola's "tactical periodicity" training model, starting from the cognitive level, to the scientific, systematic, collective, and individual methodology.
Guardiola's perception of football
Guardiola's perception of football is based on chaos theory and fractal theory.
The application of chaos theory in football
Chaotic phenomena occur in volatile objects or systems, and a football game is like a complex chaotic system, whose complex randomness is reflected in every detail of the pitch.
The complexity in football comes from a series of factors that interact with each other in the game.
For example:
1. The complexity of the tactical thinking level of coaches and players.
2. Differences in the level of players.
3. The variables of interaction between team members of tactical thinking.
4. A series of unpredictable problems caused by confrontations between teams.
5. Environment of the venue (home-away differences)
6. The weather of the game, etc.
City's coaching staff is reviewing the game to clarify the rules behind "complex" football
All of these factors reflect the complexity of football, and this complexity cannot be simplified, but can also be broken down into different degrees of complexity. As an element of the chaotic system, the inherent randomness of the player makes the game more unpredictable and more confusing, which is also the essential reason why the football game has suspense and attraction.
A small adjustment or a small movement of the player, if not correctly guided and adjusted, may have a very large impact on the outcome or a certain period of the game, or even a "disaster", which is the "butterfly effect of the football game", the so-called "difference of a millimeter, lost a thousand miles." ”
Only when we recognize the characteristics of "chaos" in football games can we make good use of "chaos theory" for chaos control.
Grasp the deterministic factors in the system, use a simple model to obtain clear results, increase its predictability, use the results it brings to expand the expected value, and convert the chaotic motion trajectory in the system to the desired periodic orbit.
The construction of this model (game mode) will be the focus of the following introduction.
The importance of fractal theory to understanding football
The team is a whole, the part is a fractal, and the players are part of the team as a whole and a functional unit.
The biggest feature of fractal theory is "self-similarity". Applied in football, self-similarity reflects the relationship between the whole (team) and the part (the player).
From a macro point of view, the "part" has "self-similarity" with the "whole" in the statistical sense, which is explained by the fact that the performance of the players and the performance of the team often show "consistency". In the chaos model features, there are many subsystems with different properties, which reflect the properties of the system from different angles and ways, similar subsystems represent the basic characteristics of the whole, and subsystems cannot be separated from the system.
By extension, "the whole is also different from the sum of the parts", and the overall strength of the team is not a simple addition of the abilities of the players to each other.
At the same time, "part does not represent the whole", the excellence of a player does not represent the excellence of the team as a whole, only on top of the performance of the overall team, the performance of the individual can be truly understood its function and meaning.
In the tactics room of the City Football Academy, technical analysts use a wide-angle lens to analyze the relationship between the whole (the whole team) and the part (individual).
It is with fractal theory that Guardiola can further make a breakthrough in football cognition.
Fractal theory breaks the barrier between the whole and the part, the chaos and the rule, the order and the disorder, the simple and the complex, the continuous and the discontinuous, finds the medium of their mutual transition between each other (that is, the similarity between the part and the whole), allowing us to know the law and order in the chaotic system of football, the whole from the part, and the part from the whole.
From cognition to practice, repeat the staged training in the form of a model
The birth of any training mode is based on the coach's cognition of the game, and different cognitive levels create different training models.
The "tactical periodicity theory" is the result of the development of sports science over the years and the intersection of sports theory and other sciences. I use 3 key words to summarize its content, namely model, staging, and cycle.
Model thinking in football matches
The application of model thinking to the field of football is mainly inspired by the chaotic system cognition of football games.
In the face of chaotic systems, we need to simplify the complexity of football games through simple models, and design each training session to be the same game mode that the coaches expect. Grasp the deterministic factors in the system, use the advantages of the model, and improve the certainty of football matches.
At the City Football Academy, Guardiola designed its own unique model of the game for the team, improving the certainty of the game
There are many types of football training models, among which the tactical periodicity theory is particularly important for the construction of the game model, which is mainly composed of seven modules.
Tournament mode construction
1. The strength level of the player
The level of strength of the players determines what kind of game Guardiola will take. The strength level of the players is the basis of the game mode.
2. Club culture and national football culture
Before building your own playing pattern, you also need to consider the club culture and the culture of national football. Guardiola's Manchester City adopts the style of pass-control football, but the national football culture of the English national team is not such a style, so Guardiola is more considering the strength level and technical characteristics of his players when building his own game mode.
3. The club's objectives
The club's goals are divided into two parts: long-term goals and short-term goals, the long-term goals are a long-term plan of the club in the next 3 to 5 years, and the short-term goals are the club's pursuit this season.
4. The concept of the coach
The coach's philosophy is usually ideal, ignoring the philosophy of football under the technical characteristics of players and the characteristics of national football style. Although he is not decisive for the construction of the game mode, the head coach of the club still has the conditions and is more capable of guiding the club to carry out targeted reinforcements according to its own football philosophy, and Guardiola is the representative of this.
Manchester City's training base
5. The 4 moments of the game
The "Tactical Periodicity Theory" divides the football game into four major moments, and these four moments cover almost all the situations on the football field, which also reflects the staging principle of the tactical periodicity theory and reduces its complexity.
At the same time, these four moments are also the "logical structure" of football games, and each team has to go through these 4 parts in each game, but the difference in how much time has passed.
The first moment is the transition from offense to defense, when the team loses the ball but has not yet organized the correct defensive position; the second stage is the defensive organization stage, which is when the team has achieved the correct defensive position and is trying to regain the ball.
Stage 3 is the defensive transition phase, where the team wins back possession and the opponent has not yet entered the defensive structure they are supposed to occupy; stage 4 is the offensive organization phase, where the team controls the ball and faces an organized defense. This stage is also the most important stage of Guardiola's Manchester City team in training, and it is also the longest training cycle of a game stage.
Each tactical action of an athlete, no matter which of the four moments of the game appears, includes decision-making (tactical dimension), specific movement (physiological dimension), movement or motor skill (technical dimension), and the emotional state of the game (psychological dimension).
Therefore, an athlete with good technical condition can choose the most appropriate behavior for different scenarios of the game, and these behaviors are always in line with the tactical context at that time.
The tactical dimension should be the main training element, but the tactical dimension does not exist independently, and only makes sense if it interacts with the other three dimensions. This means that the dialectical unity of tactics, techniques, psychology and physiology is inseparable in training, and is also reflected in the training and tactical training principles around each of the four game moments.
6. Organizational Structure
The organizational structure is the formation and framework of the team, which is the basis for the implementation of all tactics. Different formations can also reflect different ways of playing and strategies. Although the standing structure between players is only a state of space, a clever combination of space can play a role in restricting and promoting players during the game.
Guadalcans City's frontless structure
In recent years, Guardiola has had his own innovation in the organizational structure of the formation, whether at Barca or Manchester City, which will also help him to build a different style of the game.
7. Competition Principles
"Passing is not an end, it's a means."
The principles of the game are divided into big principles and small principles, the big principle is the principle of multiple people when executing coaching tactics, and the small principle is the principle that different players in different positions should follow when facing different situations.
General principle: Take Guardiola's Manchester City as an example, when the team loses the ball, Guardiola requires 3 to 5 players to close the players who have broken the ball and complete the pressing in the high position.
Small principle: Simply put, every player on the pitch must move the opponent as much as possible by passing the ball during the game, thus forcing the opponent to expose the empty space.
Guard city backfield "2+3" structure
The purpose of creating a clear game model and definition is not to allow players to mechanically follow pre-designed behavior, but rather to have a clear game model, which is mainly aimed at reducing the blindness of player behavior, and the emergence of models will give players more time to exert their creativity.
The meaning of the principle of periodicity
"You must keep playing like this, we have practiced thousands of times, every move has been practiced thousands of times, the last time!" Come on! For our goals. ”
- Guardiola
The training mode goes from the game to the game, and uses the particularity of the training to combine with the game.
Each training session is strictly based on the subdivision scenario of the 4 game moments, and is designed to be the game mode expected by the coach. Highly simulated game environment, systematic to repeat the training of their own team's tactical principles, and the cycle repeats.
At the Etihad Stadium, the TV in the Manchester City dressing room rotated the team's corner attacking tactics, and Guardiola was constantly edifying the players
Such tactical periodic training enables players to translate the game pattern designed by the coach into a habit, and only when the brain experiences the same similar situation and records it, the tactic becomes a "subconscious", which is subtly implanted into the "DNA" of each player.
This tactical cyclical training method is designed to enable the team to better understand and react quickly to all possible game situations.
epilogue
The level of cognition determines the height of how you see the world.
The development of modern football is accompanied by the progress of modern science and technology, and we have changed from a chaotic understanding to a clear and orderly "split"; from a single factor consideration to a multi-dimensional guarantee; from an experience-based intuitionist to a comprehensive school supported by a data model.
As long as you have an open learning mindset, then you can embrace this fast-moving world.