Futsal

1BUILDING YOUR DNA AND GAME MODEL

Before any coach analyses their players, they must first analyse themselves. Why did you first get into coaching, and what do you want to achieve within futsal? Perhaps you're a football coach hoping to use futsal to enhance your footballers' game, or maybe you're a national league futsal coach seeking to take your team to the next level. Whatever your background, there are two broad aims that drive the vast majority of coaches: development (improving players) and performance (winning games).

Of course, many coaches will want to develop their players and win games of futsal. However, knowing which of these aims you prioritize will help you to set up your side, manage your team's identity and approach the game with specific tactics (not to say that development does not happen in performance - it just has to be balanced with other priorities). Against a superior side which presses high effectively, for example, do you choose to develop your players by encouraging them to play out from their defensive zone - even if they lose possession and concede goals - in the knowledge that it'll improve their ability to play under pressure despite increasing the team's chances of losing? Or, do you choose to concede possession high up the court, sit in a deep zonal defence and seek to counter-attack when possible, knowing that such tactics will reduce your players' time on the ball and development time in general? The coach will always be balancing these aspects, and the best ones will balance them enough to challenge the players at their disposal.

What do you want from your players?

Self-analysis does not end there. Understanding your strengths and weaknesses will help you to understand the best way to work with your players, along with the ideal assistants and staff who can complement your coaching style. Even the world's best coaches have weaknesses! Being aware of how to work with them, how to improve them, and how to make sure those weaknesses do not impact your players, is important. Once that awareness is there, action plans can be put in place to turn those weaknesses into strengths. What experiences do you need to have, for example? What tools are available to help you improve? What and where can you learn? When do you want to have improved by and how will you do so? Self-analysis is a constant, with coaching developing with experience and as new ideas come into practice.

In that regard, futsal is an excellent tool for coach development. The coach is central to everything that happens on a futsal court. While a football coach may give guidance from the sidelines during a game and is limited to pre-match and half-time for tactical input with the whole team, the futsal coach can sub players on and off whenever they like during a match to give tactical input and is also allowed to call one strategic timeout each half. Substitutions are unlimited, and coaches often choose to sub their entire team at once (known in the game as a 'Russian four' or 'quartet') to disrupt their opponents tactically, but also to give important tactical guidance to a set group of players. Each 'four' can have a set strategy, changing the flow of the game with each substitution. As coaches can select up to fourteen players in a matchday squad, there is scope to have a varied squad with diverse talents.

Talking tactics.

Futsal success relies on the capabilities and togetherness of the entire squad.

With just five players on court at any one time, every tactical tweak has a far greater impact than in a typical football match. Assessing these tweaks will help you to improve as a coach, enabling you to better service your players. The game gives constant and rapid feedback for players and coaches alike.

Looking at the game in minute detail and learning through trial and error allows for effective development. How should your players take advantage of 1v1s or 2v2s, for example, rather than always focusing on overloads?

Once self-analysis is engrained as coach, it's time to also understand what you have to work with.

UNDERSTANDING YOUR PLAYERS

All futsal players are not created equal. Each player has a different journey. Each has their own personal armoury of skill, their strengths and their weaknesses. It is down to you as the coach to make the most of what you have to work with, choosing how you develop the players at your disposal and ensuring they work well together. Make their strengths the team's strengths.

As such a tactical game, the level of experience of your players will naturally dictate the approach you take. While beginners need most work around basic technical concepts such as control, passing, moving, feinting and shooting, developing skills such as the toe-poke and the scoop pass, advanced players need to work more on high-level concepts such as pressing, blocking and 4-0 rotations. Elite players, meanwhile, must master their decision-making, mentality, game effectiveness and reaction times.

For players to develop and perform at the top level they must be competent at individual actions and tactical capabilities, paired actions and capabilities and working in threes. All these concepts and capabilities fit into any team system, which then underpin team strategy decisions. This is why futsal has been developing footballers for many decades. Rather than seeing futsal as a different sport, in countries like Brazil futsal is simply the small-sided game of choice that all players need to pass through to become competent footballers or futsal players. Indeed, it could be argued that the informal pick-up games seen in the streets of countries like Brazil more closely resemble futsal than football due to the reduced time and space, along with the use of toe-pokes, sole controls, use of the body and creation of overloads, amongst others.

This is illustrated by the futsal development pyramid, which incorporates futsal's threshold concepts.

In the concepts, the higher the level and stage of player, the more focused training becomes on game strategies as a team, rather than an individual. Every player must come through the pyramid from the bottom up. Without the foundation levels of the pyramid, it is challenging to work on the team tactics and game strategies needed for success. However, even older players need to get better at working in pairs, threes or fours (the 'games within the game'). Some concepts cross over between football and futsal, such as inverted full backs and three in a line - both of which are championed by innovative coaches such as Pep Guardiola.

Inverting the Pyramid

The futsal development pyramid shows why domestic structures are so important to international success.

Good players will operate well in these concepts and be adaptable to a team system or strategy.

The futsal development pyramid is key for player development in futsal and football and is a great reference point for where players are. For example, Paul McGuinness talks about the 1v1 capabilities of players using his own quadrant tool as a model for coaches to see and improve individual game qualities within the perception phase, decision phase and execution phase. This is in relation to individual capabilities such as timing, disguise, positioning, movement, technique and scanning.

The futsal development pyramid.

Paul McGuinness's quadrant tool can be used to showcase individual capabilities that create space and opportunities for players.

Of course, understanding your players does not just relate to their on-court performance. Understanding them from social, technical, physical and psychological aspects is equally as important.

Dominating Dualities

Timing, disguise, positioning, movement, technique and scanning are not just individual capabilities. They should be done with and without the ball, and should be connected to other players - either in dualities, threes or fours. Any player can improve this part of their game - either in recognition or perception of the situation. These 'games within the game' should be a staple part of any futsal player's diet. The more they practise with teammates, the stronger the chemistry between the two will become.

These movements - often paired - between them and others can be vertical or horizontal. Many of the combinations can be found in all systems of play in the futsal development pyramid. The better that players are at individual, paired and threes connections, the more adaptable they will be to different systems and the higher they are likely to rise up the futsal development pyramid. They will begin to understand little details about their teammates - where and how they like to receive the ball, what options to offer them, what movements do they tend to make - that enhance individual and collective performance.

Once you begin to build up an idea of the players you have to work with - in addition to your own self-analysis - it is time to build your tactical game model.

BUILDING YOUR GAME MODEL

A game model helps players and coaching staff alike understand why you as a team do what you do, who you are as a team (your identity) and how you play. These are the foundations upon which all great teams are built. If players don't understand why they're being asked to carry out a certain action, your game model will fundamentally break down.

There are many ways to build a game model and it can be done with or without taking the players into account. For example, you might have a game model that...