Restrictions give football soul
According to a very quick and not-very-reliable Google search, Pep Guardiola has spent over €1.5 billion on new players since he joined Manchester City nine years ago.
Guess how much money I've spent on new players in the same time? It's not a difficult answer. Let me spell it out to you in a GIF.
Coaching an amateur football team is inherently restrictive. It's 'I wish we could use the full pitch instead of half a pitch'. It's 'I wish we could train on Tuesdays and Thursdays, instead of Mondays and Fridays'. It's 'I wish we could have more time so we could practice set pieces'. It's 'I wish more than two of our starting back four turned up at training today'.
But your wishes will go unfulfilled. Your idealism will never be realised. Restrictions in football breed creativity and force teams to have different personalities. It gives the game soul.
The faster you accept your restrictions and work with them, the happier you will be. Accept your reality. What's more, turn your restrictions into an identity.
In the past decade I can count the times I had access to a full pitch for training on one hand. We always have half a pitch, with regular numbers of 24+ at training.
So how does this influence our style of play?
Both defensively and offensively, I make things tight. I play multiple small games, in small groups, in close quarters, and encourage us to master this. When we defend, we defend in a blanket. When we attack, we attack through crowded areas. Pass and move, be brave, and take on the tight spaces. Lose the ball, win it back. Try nutmegging your opponent. It is fast, it is fun, it is playful.
Many players in tight spaces makes things noisy and chaotic. But the physical proximity also helped build closeness and connection. You can't ruffle someone's hair or high-five them from 15 metres away. You can when they're right there.
Last season we implemented the blanket wonderfully and made attacking through the tight central areas part of our core game idea. It was a style quite different to our opponents and presented unique problems for them to solve. Most of the time, they couldn't handle it. We won the league.
Every disadvantage is an advantage. How can you use yours?
