10,000 touches a day

10,000 touches a day

This sentence stood out for me - thinking of Tuiloma who has played in every position on the pitch, or what merrick is seeking with some players; how important is the ability to play multiple positions, vs specialisation in a position? Thoughts?

Styles in Spain (tiki-taka), Italy (catenaccio), France (carré magique) and Germany (gegenpressing) all utilise tactics requiring technically sound players with the ability to interchange positions on the pitch: a skill acquired through relentless repetition.

Talk to Declan. Then get a life.

JM, not really a meaningful contribution unless you expand on your comment

the phrase 'relentless repetition' kinda does it for me.

OK, it's not for you. Seem to work pretty well for the Dutch though.

If you can play 1 position better than anyone else you'll always get picked

Coaches like to have on field options

Being technically adept is not the most important reasoning behind any players ability to be multi-positional

I liked the article bringing up the question "what is the actual desired end result". 

for instance using the Coerver model with 10000 touches regime would improve both ASB Prem and Mainland MPL / WPL in 6-8 years time. 

Sometimes being versatile is actually to your detriment. Can't think of any examples in football but I was thinking rugby with players never being able to crack the starting rotation because they offer more being versatile from the bench to slot in anywhere.

Same with baseball - if you can cover every position defensively but don't stand out at one place, then you're probably going to be a utility guy.

It's pretty hard to doubt the 10,000 touches ruling - it's simple that more and more practice will easily make you a better technical player, it's just to make it to a high level you also have to have the physical elements - strength, build, speed, toughness etc

Yeah it's seldom mentioned but Genetics are a major player in who is able to perform on a world stage. 

There is a book recently released that hacks into the 10000 hour theory. 

"Chris Milicich, former NZ soccer coach of the year and national Under-20 coach, is heading up the newly formed St Peter's College academy as well as taking the reigns of the First X1.  He is quick to quash suggestions the academy has been set up to rival the work done by the likes of Kevin Fallon at MAGS or Fanny Hay at Sacred Heart. "It's for kids who want to be soccer players", he says. "It's about longterm development, it's not about St Peters teams winning. It's about developing footballers. The byproduct is that St Peters teams will get better by default. the learning curve for the players is strongly down the 'game intelligence' route c.f. at what would be a more traditional academy. "Game intellgence is better than skill development," he says. " I've stood on two sidelines at World Cups and our players just aren't smart enough."

The academy focuses on players in years 7 -10 and Milicich likes what he has seen so far from the 52 who are training four mornings a week. That number may be trimmed to 42. St Peters school has some 22 football teams.

- from yesterday's NZ Herald: School sport section.

Good luck Chris. You'll need it.

Interesting. I disagree in that our biggest issue is our players do not have a quality first touch. You look at Nelsen, Reid and Rojas. Those guys have a deft first touch and it creates them so much time to be able to do what they want. Our guys 2nd touch is usually a tackle. I think improving the first touch buys our players so much time and slows the game down for them to make the right decisions. Watch the CWC and the first touch of the ACFC guys vs the opponents. You can see the difference it makes.

Lot of it about at the ACFC Under-17's. Fitter they are, the more tackles fly in. Chris M would weep.

Lessons in technique (no. 341) - the squirrel tackle: grab those nuts.

Lessons in technique (No. 367)  - Gamesmanship : Don't bite off more than you can chew.

"When it becomes serious, Marco holds often too long the ball hits the wrong decisions." Frank Kramer, coach of Spvgg Greuther Furth, explaining why our Marco isn't getting much game time in Deutchland. 

- see Marco thread on NZ players overseas