Analysing Football

What will happen if ten different football coaches analyse the same clip of a player performing an incompetent football action? Although there will be some overlap, the coaches will give ten more or less different explanations for the same mistake. How is it possible that these coaches do not draw the same conclusion when they analyse the same football action? The logical explanation for the variation is the lack of a universal and objective tool to evaluate football actions. Most coaches around the world have developed their own subjective way of analysing the performance of their players. Obviously, this has consequences for player development as players are forced to perform training sessions based on the subjective and random interpretations of the coach. This book is written because players deserve the best possible and reliable feedback, independent of who is coaching them. However, this is only possible if their coach would analyse football with the help of a universal and objective analysis tool. This book is the first attempt ever in the world of football to meet the need for such a tool.

When performing a football action, most of this interaction between the player and the football context is INVISIBLE. The communicating and deciding by the player are not visible to the coach from the outside. However, this INVISIBLE part of the football action is often where the mistake takes place. In this book, we will introduce the method of reverse engineering which allows coaches to evaluate not only what a player DID execute (visible) but also what he TRIED (chose) to execute (invisible). This method is based on the universal tactical principles, game insight principles, and football technique principles, as well as the latest knowledge about unconscious processes in the brains of both players and coaches.

Raymond Verheijen (1971) was an assistant coach at four World Cups and Euros with the national teams of The Netherlands, and Korea among other countries. At club level, he worked for Manchester City, Chelsea, FC Barcelona, and Feyenoord. Verheijen delivered coaching courses in 100+ countries and published the best-selling books ‘Football Periodisation’ and ‘Tactical Principles’ for his coach education organisation Football Coach Evolution (FCE).

René Marić (1992) is a UEFA Pro-License coach who has been an assistant coach at Red Bull Salzburg, Borussia Mönchengladbach, Borussia Dortmund and Leeds United. He also holds a Master of Science in Psychology. Maric is currently the Head of Coaching and Playing Style Development and the Under-19 head coach at Bayern Munich. He is also the co-owner of the coach education company Spielverlagerung GbR.