AN INTERVIEW WITH WAYNE HARRISON ON SOCCER NATION; SAN DIEGO
SNN: Where have you coached youth soccer?
Wayne Harrison: I have coached in England, the U.S and United Arab Emirates. All parents are focused on winning. Americans are not worse but the only place there youth players get paid is in Dubai. U9 players actually get paid to play and get bonuses for winning.
SNN: You are pleased you moved to San Diego. What are you looking for?
Wayne Harrison: A competitive youth soccer club that will embrace my developmental coaching and training. My training philosophy is designed for the player to think and not to be constantly instructed by the coach while on the field during a match. I believe that it is important to improve thinking and decision-making as the game is getting quicker.
SNN: How does a coach make soccer players think under pressure on the field?
Wayne Harrison: Getting someone to think for himself or herself can become habit forming and that is the goal. Teaching players to form good habits that last a lifetime.
But you have to teach players when they are young, in the golden years when they are U7 to U11. If you can teach a U10 player to think and realize his options, then you have a learned behavior that can last a lifetime.
It is critical to know what your options are and to know what to do with the soccer ball.
The more you solve soccer problems on the field, the better a player you will become. It is like developing muscle memory. My book explains this all. This approach also allows for mistakes on the field to be corrected.
One sentence: Accessing options before you receive the ball
SNN: It sounds so logical.
Wayne Harrison: It is, but no one has written a book on this before. I have checked.
SNN: Why is One Touch the best training for developing players?
Wayne Harrison: This training approach takes the player to the next level. It transforms them into a thinking player.
Winning requires mental preparation. Developing mental readiness is not a 5 minute job, it requires years of training.
American players are very physical and the game of soccer is very physical now, I think.
SNN: How can we improve soccer in America?
Wayne Harrison: American players could be more cerebral. Some players have the ability to assess what to do with the ball naturally, but others do not. We can teach it.
Players should use their peripheral vision to be able to know where they are passing the ball. The one-touch approach allows the speed of play to stay quick enough not to lose the ball to a defender.
SNN: Who are great examples of famous players who use the one-touch approach?
Wayne Harrison: Barcelona’s Xavi Hernandez is a great example. One of the greatest English soccer player of his generation, Paul Scholes, is another player who uses the one-touch style.
SNN: What about Cristiano Ronaldo?
Wayne Harrison: The spectacular players like Messi and Ronaldo, who beat players 1v1 and score goals, usually win the title of World Player of the Year, and they are deserving of it of course. But I hope one day the less spectacular but equally effective players like Xavi will win this honor. Xavi creates the chances for others; the passing player should be recognzied, not just the dribbler.
EFFECTIVENESS is the key to the great player.
Ronaldo has awareness with lots of touches. I am referring to awareness with one touch. The one-touch training is designed to train the mind when to take one touch and when to take two touches or run and dribble the ball.
SNN: Why do you coach?
Wayne Harrison: I am a teacher, I like to teach, I like to help develop players and I enjoy working with kids. I have a real love for it. I am always challenged to find different ways to communicate to my players and different ways the training can suit them.
SNN: How involved do you think parents should be in the development of their player(s)?
Wayne Harrison: Parents should know what coaches are doing to teach their kids. Parents are paying the money and are entitled to know what coaches are doing. I have really comprehensive player evaluation forms that I hand out to the parents. The evaluations do not always make the parents happy, but…
SNN: What do you look for in a player?
Wayne Harrison: Game intelligence. Regardless of the age of the player, you can see game intelligence in an 8 year old.
Game intelligence is the when and where and how and why – the skill factor, understanding where to be and when to pass and where to dribble
The continuum of training… When you see a player dribbling past numerous defenders and then lose the ball, often you hear people say “bad luck.” The player looks spectacular, but he is not effective. He does not know when to pass the ball before he loses it. This is lack of game intelligence. A lack of the skill factor. But we, as youth coaches, need to teach the when and where. The when and where are more important than the actual technical skill, which is easier to teach.
In the continuum, a player might not have great technique but might know when to pass and have great game intelligence.
Many players are very good technically, but the when and where needs work.
SNN: How will this impact the game?
Wayne Harrison: The players will think quickly. Take for example, Barcelona.
Barcelona has proven great soccer is all about the mind. Barcelona has small players who think quickly and have great game intelligence.
When I played at Blackpool F.C. in England, Alan Ball was a great player on the team. Ball was named the best player in the World Cup when England won in 1966 and he was just 21 years old. Alan Ball was the epitome of one touch play, and to be honest I couldn’t do it like he could. Alan said to me, and I quote, “I don’t need one touch, I need half a touch.” This was in 1979.
I realized then that I wasn’t good enough at this and that it was a bit too late for me. I lacked this capacity to identify my options early enough, and this held me back. I might need 3 touches, Alan might only need half a touch, and this is when I realized I needed to teach. Alan inspired me to be the best coach I could be.
Then, years later, I saw this style of soccer being played when I watched Barcelona – it was magnificent.
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WAYNE HARRISON’S ONE TOUCH TRAINING AND THE IMPORTANCE
OF AWARENESS
The awareness concept is teaching players to recognize their options “before” they receive the ball, thus speeding up decision making and improving field vision and general speed of play. The designed objective of this training is to make the players think for themselves and problem solve, not have coaches think and solve the problems for them; otherwise the players learn nothing for themselves.
The concepts of coaching and training come together with this philosophy. It uses a methodology that guides – not commands – the players to solutions. The coach has to encourage self thinking in the players. He has to ask questions to get them to think about the problem and how they need to solve it themselves. The coach must encourage and offer positive reinforcement.
The training philosophy is designed to help this with specific conditions inherent in it to guide players to the right decisions. Training is at a high tempo, which creates stress; the stress creates mistakes in training, which forces players to learn from those mistakes. Mistakes are accepted; negative criticism is not allowed where decisions are made that did not work in a particular situation. Players are told that they learn how to get it right through making mistakes. Therefore, players should be more relaxed in training and in games, knowing mistakes will not be negatively challenged.
The Awareness Training model of development was devised to assess the strengths and weaknesses of players. There is a link among the aspects of player makeup – psychological, technical, skill, tactical and physical – and the associated positive words of the continuum. In order of sequence, the coach has to asses these word associations:
- Look/Observe (before receiving the ball)
- Communicate (can be a two way positive of the players themselves on the ball or their teammates off the ball)
- Position (feet and body preparation)
- Control (unless a one touch-technique is needed)
- Technique
- Skill (when and where)
- Mobility (movement off the ball)
- Transition (possession changes)
The first step is relating word association with actions to identify the strengths and weaknesses of players and how to correct them. Second comes individual building blocks (awareness with many touches at the younger ages and awareness with few touches as they get older).
Next the coach adds unit and team building blocks (awareness with few touches). Finally, awareness training needs to be structured to apply to all age groups beginning with simple individual developmental concepts at approximately 8 years old and moving through to advanced team training concepts from 12 year old and onwards.
How many times have you looked at a player and felt he or she was a good player, but just lacked something, and you couldn’t put your finger on what it was?
This continuum can help in this identification. The solution is to value the different parts of the player’s makeup separately, and then to add the values of the different parts of the whole together to make the final player.
So, while the whole (the player) is very good, improving “one part” (it could be the “skill” part or maybe the “look” part, which most of them often do not possess initially) will make the whole (the player) better. For this to work, the coaches of awareness training must be quality demonstrators.
So what exactly does “awareness” mean?
Awareness in soccer means stages of thought (psychological) processes combining with technical, skill, tactical and physical aspects and their ensuing movements in play.
Though also relating to identifying “when and where,” awareness applies in “specific moments” to maintaining possession with one touch or many touches of the ball. This training is primarily designed to help the players to learn to think for themselves more quickly with one-touch play, and to improve their decision making. It also helps them to think/decide more quickly and effectively than they did before they were shown and taught this form of training.
One-touch training helps this develop more quickly than any other training
So what does one touch play help to teach? It is psychological – training the mind – as well as training the body. For the individual receiving player it teaches a variety of important lessons.
Quicker Thinking
The game is getting much faster, so players need to think much more quickly to be able to cope with this increase in pace.
This means they have less time to make decisions. So, one-touch creates “quicker thinking players.”
Quicker Play
Because the game is getting faster, players have less time on the ball, so a natural progression to cope with this is to use fewer touches of it. This means using one touch more and acting more quickly particularly in tight situations, hence observation before receiving the ball is a necessity. One-touch play forces the player to do this if they want to be successful.
This means looking before receiving the ball and assessing options early. It requires a look over the shoulder, to the sides and behind the player before receiving the ball
Body and Foot Preparation
One-touch means getting the body/feet into appropriate position to receive the ball. One-touch develops body positional awareness in a player (e.g. a player may need to let the ball “run across the body” to “save” the touch).
Improved Technique
One-touch demands and promotes technical excellence when distributing passes received in the air (foot, thigh, chest, head). It also improves the first touch by lots of practice relying just on that skill.
Improves and Speeds up the Skill Factor
This is “decision making” awareness – “when and where” situational play. Skill is the end product of technique: the how, why, when and where of the technique.
Faster Ball Movement
The ball is moving faster, too, as well as the players moving faster. This suggests quicker passing sequences. Faster ball movement, faster running of the players and quicker closing down by opponents means everything is quicker.
Thinking and decision making have to match this. Hence being very good and successful at one touch play is an essential part of a modern day player’s makeup.
Limited Space Possession and Tight Situational Play
One touch teaches players how to maintain possession in tight spaces or when closely marked.
Ball Mastery
One touch requires players to demonstrate ball mastery when receiving (for example, cushioning a pass to a teammate in close support vs. hard pass to a teammate supporting at a distance). One-touch teaches players how to correctly “weight” their passes.
Fitness
More frequent and quicker movement off the ball means players have to work harder to support the player on the ball, as they have little time with it and need instant help. If the ball is being passed consistently by one-touch, then the ball is travelling faster and more frequently. The players have to work just as quickly and frequently off the ball to cope with this and maintain possession of the ball; thus it improves specific soccer fitness.
Time Management
One-touch play means thinking quickly and identifying options early. This in many instances can give the player more time on the ball because they have already seen where the space is to play before they have received the ball. So, it creates time on the ball to allow for more touches, if needed, by identifying options earlier
Identification of Players and Space
It offers the means to a faster identification of players’ positions, both teammates and opponents. It helps a player identify more rapidly when and where to pass, whether to feet or to space, and where the space or player to pass to will be.
On-the-Ground Patterns of Play
One-touch encourages passing on the ground to maintain possession so it is easier for the next player to control the ball.
For the attacking team, one-touch training has significant benefits.
Movements OFF the Ball
Training with one-touch means the player receiving the ball has to move it on quickly, therefore players have to move OFF the ball more quickly to help support the player receiving it. This is a very important aspect of one touch training, as it involves all the other players off the ball and their positioning to help the player on the ball, preferably before they receive it so it can happen more quickly.
Style of Play
One-touch training encourages a fluid, attractive style of play and develops a good tempo and speed of play
Combination Play
One-touch training encourages combination play, such as wall-passes, set-up passes or third-man runs. There is no better play than a give-and-go one-touch pass combination to beat defenders. It is difficult to defend against, especially in and around the attacking third or the penalty area when quick play is applied.
Aesthetic Effect
One-touch training is “pleasing to the eye” (think of Arsenal, Barcelona or Manchester United).
Counter Attacking Play
One-touch training is useful when teaching the counter-attack, as fewer touches means the ball travels faster
Ultimately, one-touch play is designed to improve the player’s first touch in the redirection of the ball, to help players identify their options before they receive the ball and thus know which option next is best. This next option may not be a one-touch pass in the actual game situation but may be a dribble with many touches, a turn, a run with the ball, a cross, a pass or a shot.
By learning one-touch passing – which to be successful needs the player to be able to identify options before receiving the ball – players develop an awareness of many things including teammate positions, opponent positions and where the space to play to is. One-touch is challenging mentally, physically, technically and tactically, and better players will thrive on “one-touch sessions” and rise to the challenge of them.
Soccer Awareness 