Go Sports Life

This is the second part of my interview with Gavin Pugh. 

Part One Is Here

AK: How do you like your teams to approach the game in regards to their mentality? Do you want them to come out and be the dominant team from the first whistle? Do you stay safe and play defensive? Does it switch from game to game?

GP : There is something to be said about the tactics of the game, the style of play. I don’t believe any team should ever go 100 mph and be in your face all of the time, unless you are the Argentinean U17 National team, who plays 4-3-3 and presses everybody, harasses them all of the field. That is their style of play, but their fitness level is at an unprecedented level. I don’t believe for 99% of teams that that is a practical option. For my teams, obviously we have our strengths and our weaknesses and we are very aware of them. We play to our strengths and we try to minimize our weaknesses. But ultimately the answer to your question comes down to the team you’re playing. What is their system of play? What is their style of play? How are we going to deal with that, both short term [first 10 minutes] and long term over the course of 90 minutes? We always want to be dominant, but domination does not always have to come from high pressure. More often than not, it can come from wearing a team down through tactical possession. I’d like to think that my teams are tactically savvy in how to defend behind the ball, but domination for me is possession, tactical understanding, preserving energy, making the ball do the work and exposing a team’s weaknesses relentlessly and making smart decisions, so absolutely - our team’s approach switches from game to game. There are times when we want to sit back for two or three minutes and take a look at our opponents shape, particularly against the teams we know who like to change their formation, system of play or style of play frequently. So we’ll sit back for two or three minutes and find what we are looking for, then we will have a plan of attack for that situation.

Something I like to do myself, is really prepare for each game. Prior to each game I like to prep myself. If we are in the first half and we are one goal down, two goals down, or three goals down, a goal up, two goals up, three goals up, what will I do? So I already know what I’m going to do in each scenario. I do the same for the second half. If it’s 0-0 at half time and we take the lead 15 minutes into the second half, more often than not I’ve already got some kind of pre determined thought as to what I would like to do for the rest of the game. Whether it is continuing to press for more goals, or maybe shutting the game down. Maybe it is changing formations or changing our style of play. These are things that a coach should always have in mind going into a game. That is true preparation.

AK: After hearing about all that prepartion, what do you feel about the tournament set up where teams are expected to play 4-5 games in a weekend?

GP : I read a really interesting article on the MYSA website a while back by Jay Martin called “Stop The Tournaments. I Want To Get Off.” I truly agree with Jay’s comments and it makes me question the role of tournaments in youth development. Ultimately the article describes how we travel somewhere on a Friday night. We have an early night, followed by an early morning. We cram breakfast in. We are out of our home environment so we don’t have opportunities to eat well. We scramble over to the fields, which typically are understaffed with volunteers and referees. We play the game. We finish. We debrief quickly. Then we’ve got to get somewhere to grab some lunch - if we’re lucky. Try to digest something nutritious. Only to go back to the hotel, again, if we’re lucky. Shower. Put our new jersey’s on and rush back to the field for the next game. It’s frantic, and poses problems in relation to recovery, tactical understanding off the field, and health issues, particularly dehydration when you are playing 4-5 games in 2-3 days.

So at no point does the coach really have time to sit down, review, debrief and look at went on during the game with the players. Maybe we saw a formation we haven’t played against for 12 months. We need 30-40 minutes to talk about it. Talk about player’s roles and responsibilites and how they change. We also don’t have time to rest and recuperate, to mentally and physiologically repair ourselves.

The next thing you know we are back at the field playing another game. We’re tired. We may have picked up an injury or two and we’re getting players strapped up. Before you know it, the second game has come and gone. The players are exhausted. They have no interest in the rest of the evening. The coach struggles to keep their attention. They want to eat and go to bed.

The next morning is even worse. You wake up, maybe win, and ultimately if you’re doing well you’ve got to get ready for a semi final or a final in the afternoon. The players are tired and they have had not time to reflect tactically or technically on the games, they are starved of appropriate sleep, energy levels, and mental strength. You then play the final and if you win the players are all excited for two or three minutes, but then they want to shower, get in the car and go home. So again there is no time for a debrief. There is no time to talk about why we were successful and a day or two later is no use to the coach. So from a coach’s perspective, tournaments are a nightmare. It is no easier with a 9 year old team or an 18 year old premier team.

Amongst all of this, parents are wanting to pull the kids away. They’ve got a grandma that lives 15 minutes from Indianapolis that they’d like to see. Parents don’t understand how necessary team meatings are to regain mental strength as a unit, or how important they are to regain our composure and our thoughts. So parents are certainly a distraction when you’re away.

So ultimately tournaments are a hinderance, but they are also a necessity in this state because we don’t have a spring season. We want to participate and play at the highest level and win State Cup. You’ve got to get as many games in as possible to do that. Now the states like Illinois and Michigan have got a spring league so they’ve got a number of games already, whereas Minnesota teams have to chase tournaments all over the country at additional expense. Then we come back to Minnesota where everybody wants to rip on every other team. “I see that Team X went down and lost 4-0.” Nobody knows that Team X only took 13 players due to injuries. They couldn’t take a goalkeeper. Their National Team player was away. And these non-soccer people rip on these teams and create this negative cycle before the season even starts.

AK : Some people say that one player doesn’t make a difference. That is not true. It makes even more of a difference at the Youth level than at the Professional level because at the Professional level, they can adjust what they do, They can bring in players and make changes, but at the Youth level if you are missing your best player, there is no doubt that it really hurts the team.

GP : I appreciate that everyone has an opinion and they are welcome to it. But the people doing it have probably never played soccer and know very little about the technical and tactical development that happens from U9-U18. So for me it is very important that the players are kept in a bubble away from those external pressures. Something that I talk with my players about on a daily basis is controlables vs uncontrolables. Tell me what we can control? We can control what we eat, how we warm up, how we mentally prepare, how we talk to eachother, how prepared we are for the game, what time we put our uniform on, how many balls we have at training. We cannot control the referees, weather, the surface, the start time of the game.

I don’t know how many times we’ve been to a tournament and you’re warming up your team, bringing your players to a peak, and then you look around and there is one referee and you’ve got to wait around for another 10 minutes. So you’ve got to deal with adversity. That is something that we can actually train for. You can create that scenario in a training session. That is something that I do. We’ll have a training game and I’ll invite another team in and tell them we’re going to start at 10 past three. Have your boys ready to start then I’ll ask the coach. Then I’ll tell my players we are going to get ready to go at three o’clock and I’ll get my guys all ready to go and peak at three o’clock. Then I’ll tell them “Guys, we’re going to start in another ten minutes. Keep yourselves going and bubbling over for that time.” It is something we can train and prepare for at tournaments. Do we slow it down? Do we get a drink? Do we keep on going hard? How do we change our activity? What intensity are we working at? We must as coaches look at controlables vs uncontrolables.