Coaches’ experience of the importance, development and integration of decision-making and visual exploratory behaviour in an elite football academy setting

ABSTRACT

Effective visual exploratory activity (VEA) and decision-making are integral to being an elite football player. Despite this, there is a lack of understanding regarding how these skills are coached and developed in a youth academy setting. Twelve male, football club youth academy coaches were interviewed to develop an understanding of their approach to coaching VEA and decision-making. Using a reflexive thematic analysis, the findings highlight that in order to maximise the impact of developing VEA and decision-making, coaches and players need to work together to create a shared understanding and common language using a combination of questions, phrases and video analysis. Integrating VEA and decision-making successfully in developmental sessions were viewed as most effective in opposed, chaotic training, which provides frequent opportunity for players to utilise problem solving skills (cf. develop conditional knowledge). Developing and delivering “chaotic” sessions was impacted by coach experience and development of the coach–player relationship.

KEYWORDS:

• Coaching
• scanning
• structured sessions
• decision-making
• visual exploratory activity

Introduction

The ability for a football player to make accurate decisions both with and without the ball during a game of football is a key component to successful performance (McGuckian et al., 2018c). Decision-making can be defined as the process of selecting the most appropriate response or action from a range of possible options to achieve a specific game play outcome (O’Connor et al., 2018b). In football, decision-making is a complex process influenced by a player’s technical ability, the team’s game plan, team formation and the game context. Adult football players can make over 500 decisions per game (Luhtanen et al., 2001) of which 40–60 of these decisions occur whilst in possession of the ball (Dellal et al., 2011), with each period of possession lasting no longer than 1.1 seconds (Carling, 2010).

In a dynamic, complex, and open skilled sport such as football, several decisions are often made concurrently as a player is required to identify movements of several players and recognise the relationship among them to inform decision-making and predict the most likely outcome (Araujo et al., 2009; Williams et al., 2006). These skills develop through sport-specific adaptations that include improved perceptual-cognitive skills. The superiority in decision-making skills among elite football players is partly attributed to the visual information acquired prior to making the decision (McGuckian, Cole, Jordet, Chalkley, & Pepping, 2018b).

Football players know that it is important to engage in visual exploratory activity (VEA) in order to make better-informed decisions (Pulling et al., 2018). Jordet et al. (2013) investigated how VEA might positively affect performance when the player is in possession of the ball and found that players who performed more visual explorations per second had a more successful pass rate than those who performed fewer visual explorations per second. McGuckian et al. (2018b) also found that a higher head turn frequency and excursion resulted in a higher likelihood of the player reacting quicker and performing an attacking action. McGuckian et al. (2020) later found that players visually explored more extensively when in possession of the ball and less so when out of possession during transitionary phases. Most recently, Aksum et al. (2021a) found that players would perform VEA for a longer duration when the ball was travelling in a predictable manner irrespective of player-to-ball distance or playing phase. Opponent pressure negatively affected visual search frequency (Aksum et al., 2021b), pass success and positive body position (Pokolm et al., 2022).

Considering that decision-making is influenced by VEA, and that frequent VEA is linked to the success rate of passes, it is important to understand how both decision-making and VEA can be developed in order to improve player performance. There has been limited exploration of the strategies coaches believe would improve decision-making (O’Connor et al., 2017), with definitions and descriptions of decision-making varying between experienced youth football coaches (O’Connor et al., 2018a). When investigating pedagogical strategies used by experienced youth football coaches, O’Connor et al. (2017) found that coaches predominantly used small-sided games which provided opportunities to replicate real-life scenarios through guided discovery, prompting decision-making by providing cues or solutions and manipulating the game. In addition, McGuckian et al. (2017) demonstrated that manipulating task constraints resulted in increased VEA on a smaller pitch (33.5 m × 16.75 m). Although these sessions present opportunities for explicit learning, the nature of the session is often very “stop-start” and there are high amounts of instruction which is not representative of a real game environment. Not all coaches support this approach (Thomas & Wilson, 2014; Thomas et al., 2017) favouring less structured, free-flowing practice games (Côté & Abernethy, 2012). More experienced coaches (higher coaching or educational backgrounds) have been found to give more frequent instructions on VEA and this occasionally took the form of direct questioning (Pulling et al., 2018). However, it is not clear whether the questions were simplistic lower order or divergent higher-order ones, with the latter being preferable (Harvey & Light, 2015). This suggests a more implicit approach to coaching VEA is preferable and is in line with a more traditional, coaching centred approach (Ford et al., 2010).

Contemporary evidence-based research in skill acquisition, motor learning and expert performance have highlighted optimal training approaches, but coaches are often unaware of or ignore these activities in favour of emulating other coaches, their intuition, and aligning with the aims of the club (Partington & Cushion, 2013). Coaches have found the transfer of knowledge between sport science and football practice to be poor (Brink et al., 2018). This results in considerable variance in coaching approaches to decision-making and VEA. O’Connor et al. (2018b) have suggested that further research on coaches’ conceptions of decision-making is needed. Existing research shows that coaches who frequently provided players with instruction and feedback on VEA were less likely to report barriers to coaching VEA, such as it being difficult to coach, lack of knowledge or lack of resources to coach effective VEA (Pulling et al., 2018).

In terms of evaluating VEA use in players, Pulling et al. (2018) found that subsequent player behaviour, direct observation and assessing player understanding as important indicators. Within those areas, awareness, decision-making and quality/speed of action were also identified as important. However, Pulling et al. (2018) were unable to ask participants to elaborate on their responses due to asking closed questions via an online survey. Combined with the largely quantitative research detailed above there is currently limited insight into how coaches developed VEA and decision-making in their players. Performing retrospective interviews about coaching practice would provide a more detailed description of how VEA is developed. Therefore, in order to enhance knowledge and understanding on how coaches develop, integrate and view the importance of VEA and decision-making, the aim of the current study is to investigate and interpret coaches’ perspective of these areas through open ended, retrospective interviews and discover what motivates their personal approach to developing VEA and decision-making. By providing a deeper understanding of VEA in coaching, epistemological gaps will be highlighted and provide areas for improvement in coaching practice.

Method

Methodology and philosophical underpinning

This study adopted a constructivist paradigm which is concerned with the co-creation of meaning through language between researcher and participant (Braun & Clarke, 2021). Coaching in a professional football club academy is largely a social activity where ideas and best practice are shared (Occhino et al., 2013) but coaches also operate individually when implementing these ideas and strategies with various age groups, so a constructivist approach fits well when exploring this unique environment. When using a constructivist paradigm, the role of the researcher is active and meaning is co-created by participants and researcher Participants construct their subjective world using language and the research contributes by discussing their experiences, asking follow-up questions and combing biases/experiences to co-create a narrative (Willig, 2013).

A reflexive thematic analysis with an inductive approach was selected to compliment the constructivist epistemological approach described above. Reflexive thematic analysis is a method for developing, analysing and interpreting patterns in qualitative data (Braun & Clarke, 2021). It is flexible enough not to be tied to any one epistemological viewpoint (Braun & Clarke, 2006; Willig, 2013). Within a constructivist paradigm, thematic analysis is appropriate as the researcher is able to follow reflective steps and identify patterns in the data which can then be developed into themes and ultimately a narrative that supports the participant’s experiential view of their coaching setting. These steps are non-linear and require the researcher to re-visit patterns, themes and the original transcripts to construct a story which is relevant, informative and resonating with the reader (Finlay, 2021).

Researchers’ positioning

The first author volunteered at the club’s academy on a part time basis and was involved in the practicalities of setting up matches, but not involved in any coaching or pedagogy. This allowed the first author to build a rapport with the participants gaining some understanding of their approaches to coaching and player management before any data collection began. The first author had no previous football coaching experience at any level but was familiar with the rules of the sport and the overall structure of the elite football academy environment as detailed in EFL Youth Development (2023).

The second, third and fourth authors contributed towards the studies aim and conclusions. The fifth author advised on the philosophical approach and qualitative methodology of the study. The fourth and fifth authors gave input into the interview questions and construction of themes that arose from the data as critical friends i.e. “a trusted person who asks provocative questions, provides data to be examined through another lens, and offers critique of a person’s work as a friend” (Costa & Kallick, 1993, p. 50). In this sense, the fourth and fifth authors reviewed the initial interview script and gave critical input into the types of questions being asked and how they fitted with the research question. Assumptions, previous experiences, and biases were also reflected on and used to adjust the interview guide. They also acted as critical friends, providing reflections on the themes that were created from the data, assisting the first author by challenging whether themes were appropriate or informative (Smith & McGannon, 2018).

Participants

The participants in this study consisted of 12 male coaches aged between 22 and 49 years old (34.2 ± 7.7 yrs) who were all employed by the same UK-based League One (Tier 3 of the English football league structure) football club’s youth academy (Table 1). The participants were selected if they held at least a UEFA B Licence which is prerequisite for coaching at the elite academy level and were employed in either the Foundation, Youth Development or Professional Development phases. The coaches recruited also worked exclusively with academy players between the ages of 8 and 16 years old at the club in question. This allowed for a homogenous sample with common experiences and characteristics (Smith & Osborn, 2003).

Table 1. Demographic details of the coaches.

Age Group	Coach Name	Coaching qualification	Time spent coaching in total (M = 11.62, SD = 5.47)	Time spent coaching with club (M = 3.71, SD = 4.5)	Highest educational qualification	Club coaching hours per week
Foundation Phase (<9 to <11 years)	Tom	UEFA B Licence	10–14 years	<1–2 years	Undergraduate	5–10 hours
	Phillip	UEFA B Licence	3–5 years	3–5 years	College
	Frank	UEFA B Licence	6–9 years	<1–2 years	Undergraduate
	John	UEFA B Licence	10–14 years	<1–2 years	Undergraduate
	Robert	UEFA A Licence	10–14 years	<1–2 years	Undergraduate
Youth Development Phase (<12 to <16 years)	Mick	UEFA A Licence	15 years or more	6–9 years	College	5–10 hours
	James	UEFA B Licence	15 years or more	10–14 years	Postgraduate
	Sam	UEFA B Licence	15 years or more	10–14 years	College
	Mark	UEFA B Licence	10–14 years	<1–2 years	Postgraduate
	Luke	UEFA A Licence	6–9 years	<1–2 years	Undergraduate
Professional Development Phase (<17 to <21 years)	Greg	UEFA A Licence	15 years or more	<1–2 years	Undergraduate	>10 hours
	Craig	UEFA B Licence	<1–2 years	<1–2 years	School
	Daniel	UEFA A Licence	15 years or more	3–5 years	Postgraduate	>10 hours

Procedure

Following ethical approval from the author’s institution, semi-structured interviews were used in order to capture the participants’ experiences. The interviews were in-depth, occurred one-to-one, and took place in a private setting free from interruption or distraction. Interviews lasted between 40 minutes to 1 hour and 1 min (52 mins ± 8 mins).

The beginning of the interview consisted of a pre-amble including information about the study and research ethics. Following this, the participants were asked a range of demographic questions. The main interview consisted of three main topic areas; decision-making, “scanning” and expertise and challenges associated with coaching. The term “scanning” rather than VEA¹ was used with the participants, as in the initial meeting when seeking access to the academy, the academy manager indicated that this term was used universally throughout the club and across the sport.

VEA focused questions included e.g. “How important is it for a player to develop the skill of scanning?” and “When do you believe scanning should be introduced to players?”. Other questions included “What is it that makes a coach feel comfortable/uncomfortable about coaching these sessions?” and “What approach did you take to coaching scanning, what were the outcomes and how did you reflect on this?”. Regarding decision-making, questions included “what attributes does a good decision maker show?” Regarding challenges to coaching, questions included “what opportunities are there within the club that facilitate coaching and in particular, improve decision-making and scanning in the players?”. All questions were developed according to guidelines presented in Willig (2013) and were open-ended and non-directive.

Data analysis

Analysis followed the reflective phases detailed in Braun and Clarke (2021). The first phase of the analysis involved becoming familiar with the data. While going through the transcripts line-by-line the first author also listened to the recordings at the same time. This allowed the first author to become grounded and immersed in the data.

Through data familiarisation initial codes were created. The first author generated 80 codes across the 12 participants but often these codes had a high degree of similarity so were then refined based on shared meaning to a list of 30 codes. The codes were then clustered into themes. Initially, themes were clustered under the three main areas of the research question which were 1) developing, 2) integrating and 3) viewing the importance of VEA and decision-making and scanning. Themes that were outside the scope of the research question areas but still related to coaching practice both in the wider general sense and specifically to the club in question were not immediately discarded but were set aside should any more direct relevance be subsequently generated.

We then cycled through phases two to five of the six phases (i.e. coding, generating themes, developing and reviewing themes, reviewing and refining themes) adhering to principles described by Finlay (2021). During this process we asked ourselves questions such “Is my thematic analysis coherent and does it relate to the central ideas of the research?”, “Has my thematic analysis been rigorously and reflexively engaged, and systematically evidenced?”, “Are the names and descriptions of my themes informative, relevant, and rich (as opposed to being obvious, irrelevant, or bland)?” and “Have the thematic descriptions been written so as to be sufficiently resonant, memorable, interesting and/or evocative? (Braun & Clarke, 2019)”.

Rigour

Three appropriate techniques were used for rigour that complemented the qualitative approach used by this study. Firstly, questions in the interview guide were developed by the first author and then reviewed by the fourth and fifth authors as critical friends. Secondly, these same authors also acted as critical friends on the analysis of the notes and subsequent themes that came from the transcripts. The fourth and fifth authors promoted reflection, exploration and alternative interpretations or explanations as the themes emerged from the notes. Smith and McGannon (2018) define critical friends as not aiming for consensus, rather they challenge and develop interpretations made by one researcher in order for them to construct a sound argument that relates to the data being examined. Finally, member reflections were conducted in order to share findings with the participants and to further expand understanding of the data analysis. Member reflections can allow for a deeper analysis and understanding of the meaning of the results (cf. Smith & Sparkes, 2011) and “an opportunity for ‘reflexive elaboration’ of the results rather than testing whether the researcher has ‘got it right’” (Braun & Clarke, 2013, p. 285).

Unfortunately, on contacting the coaches, we only received one willing participant but nether-the-less we feel that an adequate level of reflection was achieved on the themes generated from the previous interviews. The reflection interview lasted 1 hour 30 minutes.

The data in this study is specific to the club that it was generated at. Objectivity, reliability and validity cannot be claimed, especially where the approach of the study was qualitative in nature (Sparkes & Smith, 2014). However, generalisability can be claimed through naturalistic generalisability and transferability. According to Smith (2018) naturalistic generalisability can occur when the research resonates with reader’s personal experiences. For example, if a coach encounters this research, it may connect with their experiences in their own settings. If this is not the case, it does not mean that the research is invalid but merely that it may offer a different perspective. Therefore, coaches and other football professionals may find some degree of relatability to the responses given by the coaches in this study. Similarly, transferability relates to the degree that a reader feels the research overlaps their own situation and whether the results can be used to inform their own actions. The reader is encouraged to explore the data presented, experience the setting, contemplate what is happening and decide for themselves whether this information might be transferable or applicable to other football academy context (Adams & Carr, 2019).

Results and discussion

The results are organised into three levels of themes in line with recommendations by Braun and Clarke (2013). The overarching theme that was a common thread and a key element of all the coaches’ approach to practice was Knowing your players. Within the overarching theme, three main themes were constructed: Always one step ahead of the game, Was that a shot or a cross? The difficulty of identifying intent and Instagram perfection vs chaotic mistakes: The Importance of Failure. Within each of the three main areas, sub-themes were constructed and are shown in the thematic map (Figure 1).

Figure 1. Thematic map.

The coaches mentioned that the way they use language and interact with the players was extremely important. The type and style of the interventions used by the players (including what language they used) was often framed by the term “knowing your players”. The coaches felt they had a responsibility to connect with their players so that effective development work could take place. Sam explained the process of instigating and agreeing ways of communicating with a new group:

I do think certain players respond better to certain language for scan and this is built over time. It’s very difficult when you first get a new group you don’t know because you got to build a relationship before you can start saying those things. So, if I went up to someone, like [player name] whose quite mature and went err check your mirrors, you might think he’s quite a mature lad, why not just say scan or use something that he’s familiar with so yeah, it is about knowing your players.

It seemed that the norm was for agreed meaning to take place during one-to-one sessions, video analysis and team talks and that this would occur over time as the coach–player relationship developed. The approach to agreeing meaning and building relationships could be quite diverse. Mark described that “In warmups, I speak about scanning and then on the pitch say ‘are we happy’ so small prompts just to make them think about it rather than actually saying you need to scan now”. Here the coach is using prompts to refer to longer conversations had during practices and other situations that occurred outside of matches. Another coach (Robert) used illustrations of differing sizes of screens (iPhone, iPad, TV, cinema) that the players would be familiar with when referring to VEA “So we’re aiming for the biggest picture we possibly can because it means they’ve taken in, they’ve got more information to make a decision from”.

Despite some coaches having agreed understanding for phrases within their specific team or age group, the number of phrases used was diverse, i.e., “check your mirrors”, “check your shoulder” and “take pictures” and were similar to the simplistic and low order phases reported by Pulling et al. (2018). However, the effectiveness of the phrases was increased due to shared meaning based on the player/coach relationship. Both Mark and Robert gave examples of how they used language to connect with their players. In this academy setting it appears as though higher order questioning took place outside of physical practice where understanding is evaluated based on detailed answers from the player. Understanding and meaning is then jointly agreed and associated to key phrases which are then implemented by the coach during training or match settings as a means of quickly referring to earlier discussions.

Although connecting with individual players was seen as being important, James explained that having multiple meanings for certain aspects of the game could be counterproductive:

If we go back to the representational systems when we use a word, the first thing that comes into the person’s head is either the word on a page or a picture of what that word means. So we need to make sure that all the players to enable this collectivism I spoke about, they all need to either have the word or the picture or both for the same concept, around every word. So if I go to use the word scan, and another coach uses the word observe, we may maybe misaligning what the player understands us to mean. We need to have one common language that goes through the Academy rather than there being different meaning for all kinds of words.

Other coaches argued that the game model was the starting point that all players should be aware of, and any language use should refer back to the academy philosophy. This highlights the tendency for coaches to align with other coaches practice and the aims of the club (Partington & Cushion, 2013) rather than research (Brink et al., 2018).

Always be one step ahead of the game

At the highest levels of football, speed of thought was mentioned by a number of coaches in reference to effective decision-making. Football was viewed as an ever-changing sport where situations change quickly and dynamically. Many of the coaches mentioned that quick decisions are needed in order to keep up with the rapidly changing circumstances of the game. The difference between elite football and lower levels was highlighted by John “the higher the level, the more important it is because defences are more compact whereas against a lower opposition, you probably might have a bit more time to make those quick decisions to affect the game”. In addition to this, Craig thought that consistency in making the right decision was what sets players apart and contributed to performance at the elite level. Craig described decision-making as an attribute that was independent of physical ability since most professional players have very similar physical attributes and can perform most skills to a similar standard:

I think you have players that are playing lower down who are just as athletic and just as physical. But don’t make the right decision on the ball as often. This is why they don’t play as high as the elite players.

Robert further elaborated how consistency was seen as very important to academy coaches and informed their decision to retain or release players. Decision-making was thought of as part of an important set of cognitive skills that players should develop which culminates when a player moves from the youth academy to challenging for a place in the first team (senior team):

As you get towards the first team, you have to make the right decision more often than not, If you’re a liability or you’re risk, then coaches managers aren’t gonna take that risk if it’s going to cost them their job.

The coaches added to this by saying that when a player is required to change their decision quickly or at the last moment before receiving the ball due to opposition pressure or the weight of pass (e.g. hard, soft, high, low), then they would need to retain that consistency of decision. They felt that really good players are able to re-adjust due to unexpected changes in the game without losing any consistency. Opponent pressure has been shown to have an impact on pass success and positive body positioning so elite players may allow themselves more time to make quicker decisions by searching their environment for threats and avoiding them before making a positive impact on the game (Pokolm et al., 2022). The coaches felt that the faster a player perceives, decides and reacts directly affects, and is affected by, their opponents’ reactions and ultimately contributes to the outcome of matches. Connected to this, coaches felt that “better” decision-makers perform more successfully as the game progresses by repeating actions that are successful and prevent or avoid the opponent’s strategy staying “one step ahead” of them.

The coaches believed that players should try to find out what works (e.g. beating a player, passing forward successfully, making a certain movement) and then repeat those actions until the opponent or game situation changes, whereby they will then adjust and then find another action that brings them success. There are therefore two levels of unpredictability that players need to deal with; unpredictable external game situations and the need for the players themselves to act unpredictably towards their opponents. Daniel explained that players should be able to act beyond what the academy teaches them:

A passes to B passes to C and that’s the way we’ve always done it. You know, we don’t want players that are like that, we want good decision makers and good, good executors here. We want the same from our coaches as well. So I want to play it from A to B, and B wants to play to C, however, player D [opposition] comes along, and wants to disrupt that and knows how to do that because he plays in an academy as well and he knows that B wants to turn and play to C. I think having that prior game knowledge enables you to then readjust and change your decision making more effectively. So B can use that knowledge to find a clever way to get the ball to E, F or back to A.

When talking about speed, consistency, and unpredictability the coaches were often vague about what defined those elements and how they would measure or judge them. From their descriptions it seemed plausible that the defining factor of finding success in these areas was to simply be quicker, more consistent, and more unpredictable that the opponent in order to gain success and recognition. Therefore, the three elements were not only judged on an individual player basis but were also directly correlated to the performance of the opponent.

Was that a cross or a shot? The difficulty in identifying intent

Many of the coaches mentioned how difficult it was to identify the mechanisms behind a player’s decision during a game because they could not directly access the player’s thoughts or easily ask questions during live play. In most instances, coaches felt that a “good” decision consisted of selecting an option from a range of available actions that does not result in a negative outcome i.e. losing the ball, but instead resulted in a positive outcome i.e. scoring a goal. The definition of “good” was also sometimes framed as the result of a discussion between the coach and the player.

One of the most obvious indicators of performance, an actions outcome, was described by the coaches as being a problematic indicator of a player’s VEA and thought process. The intent behind actions that occur during a game are known only to the player (unless they communicate it to teammates and observers) and opportunities for coaches to appropriately question players during the match are very rare. This means that the primary source of information that coaches use during matches are what they can observe from the side-line. A successful or positive outcome of a player action suggests that good VEA and decision-making has taken place, but this can sometimes be misleading. Greg mentioned an outcome that he frequently observes with one of his players that was at odds with his expectations:

If he can convince me that he saw the goalie off the line or that he’s brilliant at shooting from 40 yards, rather than playing into our frontman closer to goal where we got a better chance of scoring then fine. Sometimes the outcome contaminates a decision-making process.

Recollecting about moments during a match was often cited by the coaches as being problematic due to possible conflicting accounts between player and coach and the limitations of the coach being aware of every situation during a match. To mitigate for this a number of the coaches mentioned the importance of video analysis and its value as a one-to-one developmental tool when watching previous sessions with players. One of the major positives the coaches attributed to these sessions was providing clarity between what a player and coach had perceived during matches. Sam described what a powerful tool video analysis was and how they used it to help highlight areas that the player and coach had missed or disagreed on in a previous game:

But the video feedback stuff is a really, for me, I find the most effective tool to actually get into, not missing things but to actually appreciate what it is because if you asked some of the boys they’d go “scanning is important, I do it” but I don’t think they know what doing it is effectively but when they see it or when they should have done it, then they go “ah!” and then I think that helps.

The preferred method of checking player intention and developing understanding during video analysis sessions was the use of questions. Robert mentioned that some players will give answers that they believe the coach wants to hear. When these players tried to mislead, the evidence of this was often in the detail of their answer with detailed answers indicating understanding:

I’ll ask who were you looking for, just to see if he had an idea. Sometimes they’ll quickly have a look and then pick someone and I’ll be like “oh okay” and you know full well they’ve lied. But sometimes it’ll be an honest I tried to play this with the outside of my foot but the detail of their answer will normally give you an indication of whether they are genuine.

The results highlight the importance of fostering an atmosphere where players can be open and honest during video analysis and other sessions. Feeling understood is a core part of player support (Martindale et al., 2012) especially considering that player understanding has been identified as an area of deficiency in youth academy settings (Mills et al., 2014). We recommend that an environment is developed where players feel comfortable discussing mistakes and are encouraged to hold a constructive dialogue with the coach where opinions are expressed and understood.

“Fly by, drive by coaching”, which was described as being multiple, short instances of questioning from the coach, was mentioned as the most common approach to questioning players used by coaches. The questions used by coaches during video analysis (especially with older age groups) were often reported as higher order and open ended. Probing, non-leading questions were cited as the most effective prompt for encouraging thought in the players. The resulting dialogue was often reported as being positive and was further strengthened by a positive relationship between the coach and player. Video/question sessions were also identified as being beneficial to the coaches’ development as they provided players an opportunity to surprise a coach when they providing novel answers:

And I think that’s when you’ve kind of learned most as a coach oh yeah, I’m not the finished article as a coach because you know, such and such in the under thirteen’s has just taught me something there.

Therefore, the coaches at the club described what is perhaps the clearest indicator of what a developing decision-maker is i.e. a player who can move beyond basic strategy and achieve the club’s tactical philosophy in novel, quick, unpredictable ways. In this sense, the coaches believed that encouraging players to think critically about their environment was one of the main tools in developing decision-making and subsequently for themselves in their coaching practice.

A barrier to developing VEA and decision-making was the amount of contact hours the coaches had with players and the physical environment that this took place in. Greg spoke about Building habits in a limited timeframe“ it’s trying to be smart with the limited time you have with the guys around 90 minutes two hours a day and then just reminders, reminders, reminders all the time”.

Although all the coaches agreed that they would like more time with players they disagreed on when VEA and decision-making should be introduced. Frank felt that players should be introduced to the concept of VEA from the “pre-academy as soon as they start playing the game, I think it’s a habit. The earlier they start doing it, they’re going to carry on”. While Tom felt VEA and concepts like decision-making should be introduced much later:

Those kids are coming into elite environments at seven or eight years old. I think we’re trying to make players technically excellent at the younger ages and I wouldn’t go “right they need to have be excellent decision makers” but I think if they’re technically good then those things will come because you probably don’t start judging kids decisions until they get to maybe the twelve or thirteen age group.

One coach strongly felt that regardless of when VEA was introduced, it might not be enough to guarantee development in players. John made comments that were somewhat aligned with other coaches around VEA being difficult to coach:

Some [players] will never get it, some will never get it. Well not that they’ll ever get it but we haven’t got the time to wait for them to get it. So, we can’t be like “go down to the development for a year” and develop their scanning and come back to because we don’t have that here.

Along with time constraints and views on when VEA and decision-making should be introduced, some coaches felt that their ability to reflect on their practice was a key aspect when developing players in these areas. Having a toolkit for confidence was mentioned by Daniel during the member reflecting stage:

When you get talking about decision making, and enhancing and improving a players decision making you start thinking about what you currently do and then obviously you end up having to open the toolbox and check what’s currently in there.

They described asking themselves a number of reflective questions such as “how do we use the spaces I’m working in?”, “How do I use the number of players I’m working with?”, “What challenges and tasks am I setting within the practice?” and “How do they enhance decision-making?”. However, coaches reported varying levels of confidence and linked this to an inability to evidence whether VEA and decision-making had taken place. Greg described the inherent difficulty of discussing previous actions with players:

It’s hard because you’re discussing something where I don’t know what they actually did you know, they might have discreetly turn their eyes or suddenly turn their head, and they might think they did check their shoulder. So I think ah okay if you did well you still turned into an opponent so the outcome was not the one we’re looking for was it?

Where confidence was lacking, coaches reported that it may be because of the perceived difficulty in quantifying VEA and decision-making. Daniel reported that:

So let’s just use receiving the ball as an example. So receiving and passing forwards is what we call a good decision, tick. So is it as simple as then measuring all the times people receive and play forward? And therefore that is good? Or is it I have to see how many times the session allows them to fail? How many times they’re allowed to self-correct? It feels like such a big space still, if you could work to a point whereby I know what I’m looking for, that tells me I’m improving decision making, that’s what I’m going away thinking about from this interview.

Pulling et al. (2018) found that coaches reported three main ways of evaluating player VEA: subsequent player behaviour, direct observation and assessing player understanding where subsequent player behaviour was the most reported way of evaluating VEA. Similarly, the coaches in the present study detailed subsequent player behaviour as the main indicator but struggled to clearly describe it in detail. Tom detailed this as either a positive action “if he’s probably got good decision-making, then he is calm and his weight of release the ball is good” (correct passing strength relative to distance of teammate) or a negative action “someone’s swung a leg at something” but this is highly subjective and relies heavily on the experience and interpretation of the coach.

The coaches interviewed in this study seem to indicate that subsequent player behaviour and observation alone would not be enough to identify intent. The coaches interviewed felt that the addition of video analysis, questioning and use of language gave them a more informed opinion (Harvey & Light, 2015; Price et al., 2020) of whether VEA had taken place but that further information was required. Recent studies have made attempts to quantify VEA during a live match (Aksum et al., 2021a) and early attempts at using imagery interventions to improve VEA have taken place (Pocock et al., 2019) but more research on the processes underpinning VEA is required in order to quantify VEA in a practical manner and enhance applied interventions.

Instagram perfection vs chaotic mistakes: the importance of failure

The majority of the coaches indicated that every training session would include some form of decision-making and VEA element, however they would never form the main focus of the session or be explicitly mentioned on the session plan. Instead, decision-making and VEA were seen as a by-product of most sessions and would develop naturally regardless of a player’s technical ability, although they would still be referred to during the session. Tom, was one of the coaches that thought that the development of VEA and decision-making was a common element of all session:

I’d like to think that every session you put together has some form of decision making, depending on the level of it in terms of is it hard? Is it easy? is it medium? then that I think that’s down to a coach’s craft, and then knowing your players, but if I like to think every session that coaches put together has some form of decision making in it.

The typical coaching session was described as intentionally “chaotic and messy” which was viewed as being highly beneficial for players who would learn through mistakes. The coaches did not give much detail as to why these opposed chaotic sessions were effective at developing decision making. The only detail that was offered seemed to be around the interaction between a player making a mistake or performing an action that did not have a positive outcome and the coaches asking non-leading, probing questions.

In addition, there seemed to be an alignment to the club’s tactical philosophy and the intentions of the academy manager. Gregg, who was the academy manager at the time, was able to describe these chaotic sessions in detail and emphasised the learning that took place when players experienced failure. He also highlighted how uncomfortable it could be for coaches to also experience “failure” as these sessions may not be appealing to watch:

We’re in a world of development. So our needs are to create coaching situations and match situations that are challenging for the players. I think we talk a lot about chaos and chaotic sessions and messy sessions, and I think that it takes some time for new coaches who, particularly when you’re inexperienced, prefer everything to just look nice and their lads have lots of success and they get the ball and it’s all simple stuff and generally there’s not a lot of decision-making processing or no challenge going on there. A coach’s ego will want the lads to go away saying “caw that was a great session I had loads of success there”. Post it on Instagram and feel good about themselves. Whereas to coach decision making they have to fail and know differences between success and failure.

During analysis we noticed that the coaches’ answers to questions were very much focused on their players and what happened at the club generally rather than their own personal thoughts and feelings about VEA and decision-making. It took considerable prompting to reveal personal attitudes which led us to interpret a reluctance when answering questions. We felt this revealed an underlying lack of confidence in discussing these topic areas by some coaches and/or a need to be seen as confident and competent where negative thoughts and feelings would undermine this. Therefore, there does seem to be some distinction between the approaches and descriptions of coaches depending on their coaching or educational backgrounds (Pulling et al., 2018). However, the issue mentioned above were common to all coaches and where the more experienced coaches were able to give more detail this was still communicated via terms common to the club’s coaching philosophy rather than any sport science findings (Brink et al., 2018; Partington & Cushion, 2013).

Regarding delivering opposed chaotic sessions, the preferred method was via small-sided games (usually under 6 players in a smaller area compared to 11 vs 11 standard football pitch). A major benefit to this approach is that players can experience situations from full-size games more often in a smaller area and it allows for more time in possession on the ball (Aguiar et al., 2012). Manipulating task constraints can also result in increased VEA (McGuckian et al., 2017) and small sided chaotic practices may develop decision-making more than drill-based exercises (O’Connor et al., 2017). However, some coaches felt that small pitches were harder to set objectives for and did not replicate all elements of full-size games such as limited practice for air balls, passing distances and positioning. In comparison, larger pitches were seen by some as replicating situations in competitive match day games and were therefore, more demanding on VEA and physical conditioning than small pitches. As academy players move from a nine-a-side match game format (12–13 years old) to an 11-a-side match game format (14–16 years old) in the Youth Development Phase (Price et al., 2020), it would seem appropriate that full-size area/team practice is included in sessions alongside small-sided sessions.

Despite the disagreement around the utilisation of small and large sided practice, most of the coaches felt that small-sided games provided random conditions that fit well with the clubs focus on chaotic sessions and encouraged implicit learning. However, this disagreement was a symptom of a larger misunderstanding about the club’s tactical philosophy. When reflecting on the interviews Daniel spoke at length about chaotic training sessions and issues he had observed at the club. He mentioned that around the time the initial interviews were conducted there was a misconception among many coaches at the club that the academy’s philosophy was to play out of small, tight areas. For example, this might consist of the goalkeeper passing the ball a short distance to a defender who would then, with help of teammates, pass the ball forward around or over the opposing team as they are tempted forward to try to win the ball (otherwise known as “beating the press”). However, this misunderstood philosophy led to the majority of the coaches organising small team practices that effectively encouraged players to only play in tight areas, passing the ball around with no purpose e.g. stay in small areas instead of playing into attacking areas or wider spaces. Daniel felt that players were not learning effective VEA or decision-making skills in these circumstances and the practices were not representative of game situations. This meant that players decision-making wasn’t being properly developed because they were never required to complete the last step i.e. pass the ball beyond the opponent:

So that’s where you know the coach has a responsibility to create sessions and create match moments that offer a broad collection of experiences and opportunities and decisions, which you know, I saw the word chaos and that is what you try to create in training sessions. Keep it opposed, keep it high tempo so that they have to make decisions.

As mentioned earlier, if a player could adapt, find novel solutions and become unpredictable beyond the basic A passes to B pass to C this was defined as good decision especially if this resulted in a goal following the club’s tactical philosophy. However, coaches were unable to describe exactly how their sessions achieved this goal beyond stating that every session had some element of decision making and that these sessions had a general positive affect on development. Again, there was an emphasis with aligning with the aims of the club (Partington & Cushion, 2013).

Price et al. (2020) have described the difficulty coaches face when teaching technical and tactical elements but that they still prioritised this over strategic development (e.g. player problem solving and player reflection). However, Price et al. (2020) argue that players should also be encouraged to use conditional knowledge (knowing when and why to use knowledge about something and knowledge of how to do something) in order to play adaptively. Part of using conditional knowledge is problem solving and players at the academy were encouraged to do so during chaotic sessions. It is clear, that the coaches in the present study were aware of the importance of decision-making and VEA but were unclear about how to implement them into their training sessions. We believe that coaches recognised that chaotic training sessions with intentionally unclear directions encouraged players to use conditional knowledge, but they were not confident in describing the reasons behind this. The definitions and descriptions of decision-making from coaches is varied (O’Connor et al., 2018a) and this is in part affected by a coach’s level of experience (Pulling et al., 2018). Greg, one of the most experienced coaches, was able to describe a chaotic session in detail and provide a rationale for it but that other coaches who were less experienced did not give as full as description of the challenges players would face and how this may be developmental. As a result, less experienced coaches are in danger of coaching organised sessions that are visually appealing in order to develop basic tactical and procedural knowledge. As detailed by the member reflection, the club’s intention is to develop players that can move beyond the A passes to B pass to C model, to something more adaptable and unpredictable. This adaptability also extends to the coaches who should be seeking continuous improvement. Therefore, we recommend that senior coaches in an academy setting work with less experienced coaches to help create challenging training sessions that will develop players conditional knowledge and subsequently deepen their decision-making ability or that this skill is integrated into coaching qualifications or continuing professional development (CPD).

Alongside opposed chaotic sessions the coaches also mentioned the need to have a checklist of behaviours or routine before receiving the ball (the player is imminently going to receive the ball from a teammate or intercept it from an opponent). When coaching players on how to perform VEA or how to check your shoulders, coaches would encourage the use of checklists and routines in order to help players describe their thought process and actions. Tom talked about impressing a skeleton structure on the players that they can then adapt to their own needs based on individual factors such as position, phase of play and other game related circumstances “Once they’re done the scan what’s the next thing? Okay, what’s my body shape like? Where’s the pressure coming from?”

Coaches felt that central midfield was the most challenging position for VEA and where checklists were most required. Although central midfielders do perform VEA the most, there is evidence that central defenders display a high VEA frequency as well when compared to side defenders, wingers and forwards (Aksum et al., 2021b; Jordet et al., 2020). VEA frequency is not only dependent on position but also phase of play and action occurring on the pitch. Jordet et al. (2020) found that VEA occurred more frequently when players passed the ball compared to when they shot or dribbled with it. McGuckian et al. (2020) also found that players performed VEA more frequently in possession of the ball but they noted that this may be due to their participants being youth players who may not yet be exhibiting the VEA behaviours of elite players. In comparison, the optimal time to perform VEA for elite players was determined as just before receiving the ball (Jordet et al., 2013; McGuckian et al., 2018a). Therefore, the coaches’ approach to developing elite decision-makers by encouraging the use of checklists before receiving the ball, seems supported by previous research. Having a checklist was thought to promote independent thought and reflection in players around what they were trying to achieve. Checklists and questioning a player’s thought processes were additional tools used to move beyond the basic academy tactics and encourage quicker thinking alongside adaptable, unpredictable actions that aligns with elite performance.

Conclusion

The present study aimed to investigate how coaches develop, integrate and view the importance of VEA and decision-making in their coaching. Semi-structured interviews were revealing and offered an enriched level of data. Future research could compliment single interviews by incorporating a shared experience such as focus groups or observations of coaching sessions (Braun & Clarke, 2013). An approach that aims to incorporate a shared experience would be especially salient where the sample of participants come from one club environment. Introducing recommendations from current research could also facilitate discussion in a group setting and reveal coach alignment to personal experience, club guidance/influence and highlight any epistemological disconnect between theory and practice (Williams & Hodges, 2005).

The results showed that coaches thought decision-making was a key element of elite football and that decisions needed to be made quicker, more consistently and more unpredictably than a player’s opponents. This vague measure of success was largely due to the coaches’ inability to define what good VEA and decision-making were as well as disagreement over when these concepts should be introduced, the limited timeframe or contact hours coaches had with players and with the difficulty in quantifying whether VEA and effective decision-making had taken place. Future research could attempt to quantify or codify VEA and decision-making behaviours. The disconnect between practice and theory could be addressed by providing insight into developing eye tracking technologies and attempts at measuring VEA (Aksum et al., 2021a, Aksum et al., 2021b; McGuckian et al., 2018c). To facilitate this transfer of knowledge Brink et al. (2018) recommend face-to-face interaction with sport scientists and that this is the manner in which most coaches prefer to gain scientific knowledge (Reid et al., 2004).

Coaches were keen on the use of opposed chaotic training sessions and were somewhat aware these led to implicit learning in players through exposure to failure and encouraged the use of conditional knowledge to develop players who were able to perform actions beyond the basic tactics the academy taught them. Coaches were also aware that they needed to be critical of themselves and their coaching practice to aid in player development. A few areas for retrospection were the use of language, video feedback sessions and giving players “checklists” of behaviours to build upon. Perhaps one of the most valuable tools cited by coaches were video feedback sessions as coaches could not only clear up misunderstandings or misaligned recollection of incidents in games but also build relationships with players. It was this coach-player relationship that was thought to underpin the whole success of coaching VEA and decision-making. It sought to build an understanding with players and make them feel understood. Only in this environment, could the successful coaching of quick, consistent and unpredictable decision makers take place.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. This paper will use the term VEA rather than scanning except when providing example interview questions and responses from participants.