This strategic decision made Matthijs de Ligt

This strategic decision made Matthijs de Ligt

 

We talked about how decisions form and what stages of decision making there are. To read back that article, click here. In this article we will go deeper into the subject of decision making, we will discuss the two types of decisions that you can make.

The two types of decisions

We already touched the surface of the two types of decisions that you make within individual tactics. The first one is operational individual tactical decisions, operational decisions are quick and without analyzing. You make these on automatic pilot. These are the decisions you make when you play football. You don’t have time to analyze, you have to make a decision quickly otherwise you’re too late. An example of this could be the decision to shoot or to pass for a player. This is an operational individual tactical decision. The player doesn’t have the time to stop and think about why it’s best to pass or why it’s best to shoot. The player has to decide otherwise the timing is off. These decisions come from memory, previous experiences are stored in the brain and when you get in a similar situation you will respond in the way that you previously did in this situation. That’s why the famous saying of the Greek philosopher Archilochus is so true, he said; ‘Under pressure, we don’t rise to the level of our expectations, we fall to the level of our training’. That’s why it’s so important to learn and train optimal behavior because, in high-stress situations, you will make operational decisions that are stored in your brain. If these are non-optimal they will come to light on the most important moments, which will result in a bad outcome. 

The second one is strategic individual tactical decisions, strategical decisions are made by analyzing different possibilities and concluding on a decision methodically. Strategical decisions have a longer timeframe, for example, a pre-season, a season, a post-season, or maybe even your entire career. An example of this could be to focus in pre-season on the individual tactical decisions that the coach thinks are important for your position so that you get in the starting eleven. For a central defender, this can for example be to be as good defensively as possible, for example, you on what the optimal way is to defend in duels and aerial duels so you don’t lose any, you focus on the optimal way to block shots and/or you focus on how to defend crosses optimally. All of this with the goal of your strategical decision in your mind to get a spot in the starting eleven in the pre-season by defending in the best possible way. 

Strategical decisions and the four pillars of football

To be a complete football player and get the maximum out of your career there are four aspects that you need to develop. These four are technical skills with a ball, physical, mental, and tactics. 

A lot of players already made individual strategical decisions based on technical skills, they train 1 on 1 skills training in the off-season with lots of ball touches. Physical training has gotten a lot of focus in recent years as well, players seek external help from physical coaches to work on their physical. Mental skills are also a part of a lot of football players, they hire a mental coach to help them with their thoughts and mental state. By hiring these specialists you make an individual strategical decision to get better at this area of football. This specialist will work with you on what you have to improve and after a learning period, you get unconscious competent in the skill, because you did it so often that you can do it on automatic pilot. At this moment you can take good individual operational decisions in this area. 

Why don’t players hire a specials for tactics?

The one specialist that we think is missing though is an individual tactics specialist. Rarely do we hear that players make strategic decisions based on individual tactics. One that did make a strategic decision based on individual tactics is Mathijs de Ligt, he made the decision to go to Juventus and the Serie A to learn defending from the best. 

But we rarely hear that a player has an individual tactics specialist helping him. Which is weird because football nowadays has become increasingly more tactical, research has shown that a player has the ball between 1-2 minutes in a match. The rest of the match a player is making tactical decisions. So shouldn’t individual tactics have much more attention from players?

This is where Tactalyse helps players. Tactalyse has a unique and independent methodology, that’s based on scientific knowledge and real game examples. By showing the tactical decisions made by a player in game situation through video clips, Tactalyse makes players aware of their operational decisions. If we think back about the four stages of a decision, then we see that this is the first step in the learning process.

 

 

So while operational decisions are very important for the outcome of matches and you definitely need to get better at this as a football player. Everything starts with the strategical decision to improve yourself as a player in a certain area.

 

SUMMARY

There are two types of decisions, operational individual tactical decisions, operational decisions are quick and without analyzing. You make these on automatic pilot. These are the decisions you make when you play football. The other one is strategic individual tactical decisions, strategical decisions are made by analyzing different possibilities and concluding on a decision methodically. Strategical decisions have a longer timeframe, for example, a pre-season, a season, a post-season, or maybe even your entire career.  

To be a complete football player and get the maximum out of your career there are four aspects that you need to develop. These four are technical skills with a ball, physical, mental, and tactics. 

A lot of players already made individual strategical decisions based on technical skills, physical and mental. By hiring a specialist you make an individual strategical decision to get better at this area of football. 

The one specialist that we think is missing though is an individual tactics specialist. Rarely do we hear that players make strategic decisions based on individual tactics. This is weird because football nowadays has become increasingly more tactical, research has shown that a player has the ball between 1-2 minutes in a match. For the rest of the match, a player is making tactical decisions. So shouldn’t individual tactics have much more attention from players?  

By showing the tactical decisions made by a player in match situations through video clips, Tactalyse makes players aware of their operational decisions.