Johan Cruijff said this about head checks

In which direction do you do a head check?

We have talked about which situations you have to do a head check and when you want and don’t want to do a head check. But you also have to know where to look. We already talked a bit about this in the pre-and post-head check. The direction of your head check depends on the location of the ball, the opponents, and your position. The direction you want to do a head check-in is the side that you can’t see with your peripheral view. This comes back to the field of vision we talked about in a previous article.

Sometimes this means turning your head left, sometimes right, and sometimes both ways. You want to turn your head in the direction where there’s the most important information to be collected. For a defender this can, for example, doing a head check to see if there’s coming a threat, for a striker this can be to do a head check for opportunities to attack. This is a constantly changing variable because the direction changes all the time, dependent on your position and the situation.

This often means that you do a head check to the contra-side of where the ball is located. Because that space is out of your peripheral view. An important detail here is body positioning, how is your body positioned in relation to the ball. A midfielder can make things a lot easier by turning his body sideways. For example, a central defender has the ball and is looking to play to a midfielder, if the midfielder is facing the defender straight on (chest is pointing towards the goal), then he has two blindsides and has to do a head check to both sides because opponents can come from both sides in his back. By positioning sideways (with his chest facing one of the sidelines) he only has one blindside to check. Positioning sideways has technical advantages as well, it makes it easier to turn forward with the ball.

The distance of the head check

Something we haven’t found an optimal behavior on Is the distance of the head check. It seems like different players have different behavior with the distance of the head check. Johan Cruijff once said: “when you have the ball, look to your teammate furthest away, because then you see everything on its way”. While this may sound very logical (all the pun intended), we’re not sure if this is true. What we have noticed in different players is that they have consistent behavior based on preference.

This means that most players have a preference of looking left or right first and looking close or far away. This is decided by what eye preferences the player has. Which eye is dominant and what kind of vision do you have, do you see things better at long distances or short distances. Of course, some players can do both, these are often the best players as well. That we don’t know the optimal behavior on the distance of the head check, doesn’t mean we can’t work with what we already know. Knowing what preferences you have with looking left or right or far away or close can make you aware of your behavior and train this. To know what eye is dominant, do this eye test https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Gbkca4RM-4

As a coach, you can train this by making players aware of this, and then you for example give them the assignment to only look to their weak side in training.

The value of a head check

Everything we have described so far can be executed perfectly. The situations of doing a head check, the moments of doing a head check, the direction of the head check, and the distance of a head check. But all this is worth nothing if the value of the head check is not sufficient. What we mean by that is, you can do everything in the right way, but if you don’t identify, organize and interpret the information the right way, the head check has no value.

So the most important thing of the head check is not doing it, doing the head check is just the start. It’s most important to make the right decision based on what information you got because of the head check.

Because football is so fast nowadays, time is also an important factor. The head check and making the decision has to be fast, otherwise, you’re too late. So the faster you recognize a situation and collect the right information, the faster you can make a decision and execute optimally. A lot of modern coaches are talking and training more on cognitive skills and including this in their training. One of the tools they use is video. https://www.sportbible.com/football/news-hoffenheim-manager-julian-nagelsmann-is-doing-live-analysis-20190301

At Tactalyse we believe that by studying individual football clips you can speed up this cognitive learning process. For example by watching all crossing situations in a match and looking at what behavior the player is showing. Think about the different moments of the head check (pre, in, and post), when the player shouldn’t look in crossing situations, in which direction the player has to look and what the distance of the head check should be. Together with the player we go through these situations and analyze the perception, the decision, and the execution.

Our video analysis always has a translation to the football field. It fits in with the philosophy of trainers that want to put players in challenging football-specific situations. The main reasons to put players more often in stressful real game situations are:

So that players get more experience, they identify the situation, and their brain can process the information faster. For example, a 20-year-old player has been in 1.000 specific situations, while a 30-year-old has been in 10.000 specific situations. By watching these specific situations individually with players you can speed up the learning curve.

The player gets trained to organize information in their brain, when the situation arises in a match a player can organize this information faster.

By actively studying individual football clips and translating this to the football pitch, the players get better at interpreting situations.

Doing a head check is something that’s not physically hard. Your muscles won’t get tired of doing 100 head checks, but your brain will get tired of doing head checks and processing the information. Constant new information that your brain has to process and make decisions on gives mental fatigue. So if you train this every day your brain will have more stamina in processing information and making good decisions.

Summary

The direction of your head check depends on the location of the ball, the opponents, and your position. The direction you want to do a head check-in is the side that you can’t see with your peripheral view. You want to turn your head in the direction where there’s the most important information to be collected. For a defender this can, for example, doing a head check to see if there’s coming a threat, for a striker this can be to do a head check for opportunities to attack. This often means that you do a head check to the contra-side of where the ball is located.

Something we haven’t found an optimal behavior on Is the distance of the head check. It seems like different players have different behavior with the distance of the head check. What we have noticed in different players is that they have consistent behavior based on preference.

With a head check you can do everything in the right way, but if you don’t identify, organize and interpret the information the right way, the head check has no value. So the most important thing of the head check is not doing it, doing the head check is just the start. It’s most important to make the right decision based on what information you got because of the head check.

Because of the high tempo nowadays in football, it’s important that decisions get made quick. At Tactalyse we believe that by studying individual football clips you can speed up this learning process. With watching individual football clips players get more experience, they identify the situation, and their brain can process the information faster. The player gets trained to organize information in their brain, when the situation arises in a match a player can organize this information faster. By actively studying individual football clips and translating this to the football pitch, the players get better at interpreting situations.

In the previous article, we concluded that a head check is that what separates the average players from the top players. To read what a head check is and why we have to do it, read this article. Read here.

In this article, we will talk about the basics of doing a head check and gradually go deeper into ‘the art of doing a head check’. Because doing a head check is way more complex than simply turning your head and focusing your eyes on something else. Mainly because football is so fast-paced with constantly changing variabilities.