What are your players looking for before the ball arrives?

We’ve turned some of our general coaching discussions and practices into a few thoughts for our latest blog on scanning in football.

Michael, from Tactx, talks through our simple approach - see the ball, see the danger, see the next move and how to help players build that habit in training.

We’ve also included three practices from our Individual – Mastering the Game collection for you to try with your players.

📖 Have a read here

We’d love to hear what works for you. Do you have a favourite practice or cue that gets your players looking around before they receive? 👇

Iliman Ndiaye signed for Manchester City this week for around £65 million. Six years ago, I signed him for Hyde United on £100 a week.

Full story's in the blog, but the short version: he was a squad player in Sheffield United's under-21s, we picked him up on loan on transfer deadline day because he'd run out of other options that January, and by the end of his first training session my assistant and I both knew we had something different.

There's a moment from that first night I still bring up. A skill game, groups of four or five meant to be keeping the ball up together on the way to a target on the halfway line. Ndiaye just scoops it onto his own head and sprints the length of half the pitch with it balanced there, drops it in the target, jogs back for another go. His group were in stitches making dolphin noises at him for the rest of the session.

Nine games, one goal, season cut short by the pandemic. Not a stat line that predicts £65 million. But watching him week to week, you knew. Scanning, supporting, securing the ball under pressure, all miles above the level. Supply was the part that had to catch up, and once it did, here we are.

Full story here: https://tactxcoach.com/blog/i-signed-iliman-ndiaye-for-100-a-week

In Case You Missed It 

Evening everyone,

We have started turning some of our daily discussions into weekly blog posts.

A lot of interesting topics come up between us that we can't always turn into content, so this felt like the right way to share them. Our latest post looks at some of the data we have compiled over the years on 1v1 practices and why the simplest actions sometimes have the greatest effect.

https://tactxcoach.com/pages/blog