Hello and welcome to On the Grass with me Dan Wright. The big idea this week is 1v1s and developing the individual. Because in my role as the player developer, as the third coach around the team, I have a lot of freedom to give those individuals feedbacks and to serve individuals for training. This week we're joined by Jonas Monkball from Valeranga in Norway.
Jonas is going to talk through how he looks to develop the individual through training and games. Hope you enjoy the show. Hello and welcome to the On the Grass podcast with me Dan Wright and I'm delighted to be joined by Jonas Monkball. Jonas how are you?
I'm good, thank you. How are you? I'm very well thank you. So 60 seconds challenge, can you tell us kind of who you are and what you do?
I'm a UAV holder from Osvone, Norway. Last year I graduated with the first football studies at Southampton Solids where I wrote my dissertation on the effects of early specialization in football. I work with men and women's first teams in the subdivisions of the region of football. Also coached the university team during my last year in Solids.
In the last year I've created 2v books, the 1v1 model and the player model, which will download around 70 times, 700 times. Currently working at Valeranga, which is one of the top academies in the country as a player developer. So you've been a few places and seen a few things. You and I kind of bumped into each other on a secret event with Paul McGinnis where he was talking about 1v1 tactics and the arrogance of timing and he's kind of a brilliant journey all that stuff.
What I'd like to talk to you today, that's possible, is kind of your 1v1 model and your one of your ebooks and that 1v1 approach. So this is quite an interesting thing. You and I have in common that we're both kind of interested in 1v1's what they look like, how they might be different in different positions. So where did this kind of passion for 1v1's come from?
It started a bit unexpectedly. I saw a webinar with Tim Lee from Inspire Coach Education and it was really good. I made me realise that there's a lot I don't know about this. I've sort of underestimated how important the 1v1's are and it made me realise how important it is to have players who are good on their zone.
Because previously I was important to have an air-cooling of superiority and these are very cultural tactical moments. But in order to have that, you also need players who are good on v1, you need players who are capable of outplaying on their zone. That's how that began. So how do you kind of see the models?
I know you've got 1v1 Arab which is an e-book but how would you kind of explain to people who can only use their rays? How would that 1v1 kind of model look in your mind? We start with a lot of emphasis on unopposed wall mastery and we probably would have that as a part of the session until they're quite good. Just because we move on in the Arab, we move on in the sage, we would go back to the wall mastery moves.
There we just work quite basic. This is how you use the different areas of the foot. This is how you take a ball with you and turn quickly or this is how you can fade. And we let them experience with a lot of repetitions on this.
And then we always go back to the game. We always have the game in all points of the arrow. Even though the main area where we teach this is unopposed early on in the arrow, we always go back to... Okay, now you do it in the game.
Now we play a game. See how it works. See what you can do. See what you can do.
And how do you move through that arrow? So the starting point is me and my eyeball and unopposed in the master in the ball. And the end point is using that 1v1 in a full game like situation. What kind of steps through that process and how are you looking training sessions?
Where I work now is with the 13s and 14s. And this is a very important age to sort of build this belief and ability to do the 1v1s and to try to go past that to create an advantage of it. And so there we would go... We would often work in smaller groups where we have a lot of focus on the role specific 1v1s.
They're already at a high level. So now we just try to put them in the different situations, difficult situations. So it's not just the classic to those facing each other than dribble past. But we practice with receiving a lot of the past with pressure from behind, pressure from the side and you have to look which way the pressure is coming from.
And we try to make it specific to the player and his position. Yeah, I think one of the kind of misconceptions when you immediately start talking about 1v1s is people are thinking about a practice where it's two players face to face. I pass the ball to you and you've got a dribble person here. And I think probably when I started coaching that's what 1v1s practices look like and I thought I thought I'd want to play that.
That's what I thought about. Yeah, classic Ronaldo step over 1v1s. When in reality, like you said, when you think about it, 1v1s are all over the picture and part of the beauty of the model that you've presented is that those 1v1s are kind of position specific. So all of the players are in 1v1s, but those 1v1s might look slightly different if I'm a number 4 and number 6, depending on where you're at in the world.
If you're a 7 or 11 or if you're at a center back and all those 1v1s are different. And then I think within that you've got the kind of the identity of the player. So that if I've got certain and attributes or talents my 1v1 skills might be different to your 1v1 skills. Is that something you talk to the players about?
Is that kind of how you understand 1v1s to be? So we don't like most of the time we play with mini goals so that in order to succeed you don't have to dribble, but you have to create that little bit of space that you need to play fast. Or you can dribble depending on what's your position and what's your playing personality. Because 1v1s are not just going past the nearest opponent, but it can be just getting that advantage and now I can play the pass.
Now I can play the pass. And also we always play with transitions. So when the attack loses the ball it's still a 1v1 as well. And often the trick we use there is that when you win the ball you just try to pass the ball to the next person in the line.
Okay, nice. So how would you convey those messages to younger players? I'm guessing when players reach the more serious end of that player development they're quite aware of what their individual personality or identity is. If you were working with younger players who said 1314 which is a super interesting age group, but even ones that are younger than that, how do you help them find their playing identity?
Because I think the other challenges you tell players you'll get this and your 1v1s look like that. So they can be kind of pitfalls with that approach as well, can't they? Of course, when I work with younger players I do that a lot because I'm also head of development center at the club from 6 to 12. So I have up to 5 sessions a week with them.
Especially when I there have the youngest group, so the 6 to 8. We tend to play small-sided games and say, okay, now if you do this dribble and then the team 4, the team gets 5 was. And often then we will choose a very playful dribble, not just a step over, but maybe the rainbow. They do a rainbow flicking score and the team gets 5 was.
What really helps there is when the coach joins in as well and adopts this playful attitude. I did it with a few players group that was a bit too young probably the last time. So I was the only one there who all most managed to do a rainbow flicking. That's what they only want.
My team won. And then as you move in the 2013-14 through these years I think players will start to find their identity and like you said, the practices are representative of what the game looks like. And so it has transition and success is playing forward to have you do that. How would players kind of, once they found that identity or found what they believe that would be good, how would they start to master that 1v1 or that positional kind of personality to get success in the 11 game?
I think role models are extremely important. A lot of, or some of our players when I've asked them, so what do you do outside of trainings? Some of them say I go on YouTube and try to learn from this player and this player and this player. And I've sort of tried to go more in depth.
So what do you look at? I just look at the dribbles. I've tried to sort of, well, try to look at what it was to do before the dribble. Okay, in what sort of situations is it the he dribbles?
Why do you think he dribbles then and not just all the time? And try to make, try to start some sort of more critical analysis going. So let me see see more from what they see. Yeah, it's the videos are very powerful tool.
Listen, I've worked with the player this year who's a very good dribbler. And what we did was manage to share him videos of Messi. So if you there's some softwares online like Wyskout where you can get all the touches of a player during a game and I would do that for Messi and just put it, share it with him because he wanted to dribble every time he got the ball. And then when I showed him that Messi sometimes plays one time sometimes.
And then sometimes plays with 18 and you have to pick the right moment. So that kind of ties into the next part of the conversation. So you've in the model, you talk about C positioning and bodily shape. Do you want to just explain to people what that process is and why you use it?
The concept was a belong to a friend of mine who works in a different than a region club. We did the FMA beat, licensed together and then he started talking about it. I know where I can use this. That was really good.
So basically it's about getting in a position to where you have enough information, where you can get an advantage in what we want. So it's basically just about preparing to be prepared. You need as much information as possible. That's why you need to scan.
And when you scan you realize that, oh, I should go there next. So you have to open your body and be prepared. And if young players do this, they will quite immediately realize that they get a bigger advantage later on. I think when young players start and same with young coaches, you tend to coach a lot when the ball is at your feet or just as the balls arriving to you.
Whereas a lot of football stuff happens before the ball even comes to your feet. So if you talk about some of the best 1b1 players in the world like a Lionel Messi, a lot of the good stuff that he does is before the ball is even arrived. So constantly searching for that space. I think in a coaching language, you're probably talking about perception and action and working out where that space is and how I get into the space and how I export the space.
But that's a quite a nice easy model for young players that see position and body shape. And then that would tie nicely with that 1b1. So is that language that you would use with the players' institutions? It's more that we build our recessions to sort of incorporate this to facilitate for that.
Okay, if you don't scan, you will lose the ball. So one small group session that we do quite a lot is the player receiving the ball and then pressure comes from the start behind. But Stupress has to run around either a minigule and that side or a minigule and that side. So that before the player receives, he has to look, okay, where is the pressure coming from?
Okay, is the pressure coming from there? I need to open my body like this so I can take it away from the pressure. And I think again to tie the sort of theory to practical that is a constrained approach. You're constraining how the player receives the ball and constraining how the pressure comes to the player.
And that hopefully should produce that kind of adaptive behaviour for the receiver to scan and check and then to play forwards. And then I suppose the skill of the coach is how you move it. So that's why a simplistic practice where it might need two or three moving parts and then you would increase the variability, you'd increase the complexity of the practice. So then can that play a direction in an operational position?
I guess it's the next step. Is that how you see it? Yeah, you can do that within the session as well. If I have, if I do this session with our number 10, sort of in the first part after the warm up, then I will sort of stay with him also in the game.
I'll be okay, remember what we practiced before you receive the ball there's the pressure coming from. Okay, open so you can take it the other way. Because in my role as the player developer, as the third coach around the team, I have a lot of freedom to give those individual feedbacks and to stay with certain individuals for training. So just explain a little bit more about that because that's probably something that is unusual for many grassroots coaches.
It's still kind of unusual in the UK maybe, but how would that work? Like if you're working with an individual kind of taking you from the beginning of training all the way through or game day, like what would that look like in real life? So in training, the players meet 30 minutes before training. If the coaching staff has decided, okay, today I stay with the number 10.
That's my main player. I'm going to sit down with him before, just in the changing room, very informal. And I'll say they're okay, what's important for you today? And he won't know.
So I'll say okay, well the session plan is there. Go and have a look. The session plan is on the wall. Look on the topic.
What's important for you? They will come back after reading. Okay, well, if it's, for instance, defending high press, you can say, okay, it's important that I do this and this. And then either I can say that, okay, later, you have a session with me and a few other players.
This is what you need to focus on. This is what is really important for you. And then when we play the big game later in training, I'll stay with you. And I'll be really annoying.
And then I'll just stay with him for the full training. And how's that received by the players? I imagine some of them love that and some of them find it quite challenging. Like is there a mixed response from some of the players?
Definitely. Very, very different personalities, all of them. Some of them really appreciate the attention and they take the feedback and try to do as best as they can. Whereas others are more not unwilling, but it's a bit more difficult to get the message across.
But then I just need to decide better practices. And what age would we start with it? 13s and 14s. In Norway, it's very different in children's football.
Up until 13, it's very different. Because you're not really allowed to have academy teams. So our youngest academy team now is 12. But that's only one of the few clubs in the country who can have as well.
And then we have another 14s team, which is 13 and 14 and the 16 and then the 19. And then staying on the same team, what would that look like on game days? That's something you've followed through into actually competitive matches, where you'd watch one player or a couple of players and guide them and have them through the game. Most of the time I will be will discuss in the coaching staff before the game, who have we given attention to in the last week to follow up on any of those or maybe who will live follow up the next week.
Okay, can I start by looking at them today? And then I sit down, watch, take some notes, write down some times of the video that we can go through together. And I talk with them at half time, talk with them a bit after the game. But more much live coaching there.
Okay, so it's all kind of safe for the weekdays and then maybe go back through the video and how would that work on a cycle? How many times are a season would that individual kind of receive that attention? It depends. It depends a little because we're not very systematical.
But then again, I'm not convinced that it should be a set like you get this many times because each player is so different. Some of them needed more than the others. Some of them get a lot of attention from the head coach and the assistant coach. Maybe they don't need me to follow them as well.
Yeah, and those conversations that you're having with your coaching team are probably super important. Like you said, you might have somebody that needs to support, you might have somebody that got the message really quickly and wants to see some might be fine. Or you might have somebody who's doing really, really well and might be able to stretch them more and more. So I think it's that's a good point for coaches to take away because quite often I think coaches like Excel spreadsheets and time table and sometimes it's just kind of knowing what the player needs and that and you only get that by having a go and experience.
Just to rewind back into your 1v1 model. You talk to a lot about ball mastery and then kind of what I would call kind of representative designs or practices that look like a game and then morphing into a game. Where do you kind of stand on that argument of the unopposed versus opposed is constantly battling around on Twitter and it's useful, it's useless and obviously you sit somewhere in between them and you find time in your practice to use both parts. So what's going to get your message to coaches on that ever?
Ever lasting argument that seems to go on and on and on. I think you just have to know what you want. Like if you if when I do ball mastery on a post it's because I want to introduce them to the certain techniques, the certain movements when I do the young players it's just to introduce okay when the ball is in the air you can juggle it with your thigh or the foot and as they get older it's just to challenge them to challenge them to do it the best they can even though they probably think it's worried. Challenge them to do something that's difficult as well.
Yeah and I think the skill is also to tie that into what it looks like in a game. So like I said teaching a new technique or a new turn is opportunity to practice with loads and loads of reps without much consequence and then throughout your arrow or throughout your kind of mental model you're getting more stress and more consequences. Is that kind of how you sit? Yeah and then I think with other skills, other abilities it would be the other way.
I think for instance with the passing exercises and the post passing exercises I think they have more value as the players are more experienced and more able whether they have little value in the players and obviously they can't they can't relate it to the game but when they're older and they when they actually know how a pass looks like in the game they can understand that okay this passing exercise helps me do better at this situation again and therefore they learn more and they teach you to transfer learning to the game. Yeah it's such a fine balance isn't it because you need to be able to master the ball and deal with the ball and control the ball to be able to play the game and then like he said as players become more capable they are able to imagine and see things that perhaps a seven-eight-year-old hasn't experienced yet so you can't ask him to do certain practices because he'll be like a foreign language that's how I can understand it. So I think with the youngest players we play a lot of different games. We start off with ball mastery almost every session.
Some trainings we would have break it down to one-one studio two the most most trainings we go into some form of a game because we have a few topics that we work on and it's when the goalkeeper has the ball is one topic on the opposition goalkeeper has the ball and the topics are more situations like that. That's the skill itself so in order to work on the topic and understand the topic you need to play again. Yeah it's interesting the different approaches at different age groups and a lot of that is through experience and working out what the players need and whether you gave them the support that they need it. So as soon as what you're talking about the 1v1 model it's the same as a unit and as a team am I giving them the the same level of support they need it's a fascinating subject.
I'm going to leave a song some time but the 1v1 set I think we could go on and on. Play a development project is a community designed to help you coach with confidence by sharing ideas and informal learning on-demand. If you're enjoying this podcast why not head over to playadevelopmentproject.com and check out our library of coaching content click on the about membership page and find out more about what we offer for members and select the best option to help you in your coaching. So I've got my question cube so 20 questions in here hopefully get some hard ones and some easy ones.
Let's go that's a blank one there's no question there. Here we go. If you had one hour a week with your players what would your sessions look like? Hello, hello, hello, hello.
I had a similar case last year with the university team because we had 90 minutes training week but on one third of the day. Okay good good challenge yet. It was a challenge it was a really bad challenge last year it sounds like but I learned a lot from it so it's good. What we did then was we selected a group into quite small role groups and we tried to implement the playing style to interview each of the just put together the behaviors that are in the playing style and then on the Wednesday just hope that they would work in the level versus 11.
How would that answer change if your players were 10, 9 or 10 years old would you give a different answer? Yeah, we would play seven versus seven or five or five. Good one. Okay question number two let me get in there a bit.
All of this is quite quite deep. What is coaching in your opinion? What's this coaching? It's helping players develop often on the pitch.
Nice. So he's talking about kind of the whole person as well as the technical title. Nice concise answer. That one's very similar so I've got a different one.
Here we go. What are the considerations when you plan a session? Which day is in the week? Which day is in the month?
How much load have they had? How much load are we expecting in the next few weeks? Have we been to any tournaments? That sort of stuff and then it comes to what degree?
What do we plan for them to learn? What's the topic of the session? Because we always decide that when we do two months evaluation we also decide this is what we will work on in the next few months and then probably dialing into the individual detail you've already spoken about before. So it's kind of the physical stuff and the technical stuff and then the individuals.
Individuals we just choose week to week. Nice. Question number four is quite easy one so far. How do you review and reflect on your sessions?
I'm really lucky because I work with two other coaches who also work a lot and to work almost full time at the club. So after each training we will go back to the stadium and sit in the office and evaluate for sometimes 30 minutes, sometimes a lot more. So that's good. I have them to evaluate with and then on my smaller group practices I tend to make some notes for myself so that the next time I do that practice it will be better or the next time I work with that player.
I know what works on him and what doesn't work on him. Okay and those conversations with your kind of colleagues are they quite brutally honest? Are you guys open and comfortable enough to kind of give critical but meaningful feedback? Yes we are.
We worked at the start of the season but it's becoming more in that direction. It's a nice place to be when people feel comfortable to take the feedback. It's not always easy to receive it but once you get a triangle like that where you're taking it in turns critiquing and keeping in mind they're all trying to help each other and get better at the square. It's a nice place to be.
Yeah our club's developed at the club head of coaching and it helped us a lot to become honest with each other and to be able to sort of take that feedback. When he had like one of the sessions we had with him he gave us a piece of paper and said okay write down two things, no three things that the two other cultures are good at and two things you think they need to work on. Okay and then we discussed it was a really good session for us. Very kind of open and transparent environment.
That is a nice place to get to. Okay question number five. Okay what piece of equipment do you use regularly and why? Minigolds.
Minigolds there's just so much you can use them for they can just design like they if you think about it in the planning stage where you place the minigolds will impact the tactical behavior and technical behavior so much that you can you can work on almost anything. And you can use them to replace or represent a pass or an area to get into or a transition like it's and players are always going to prefer or in my opinion players are always going to prefer passing the ball into a goal rather than into a zone or into a target player like it always is the most exciting and I think people who are working maybe in maybe less structured environments is rare you get two or three goalkeepers you're lucky sometimes they get one so it's a way to keep people motivated and engaged whilst the sessions still running. Okay so you got through quite nice and easy there no no stumbles no problems with the questions. Before we wrap up what's kind of next for you what are you going to be focusing on in the next 12 months you've got any projects in the club or anything that you're focusing on as an individual to to get better anything new in the kind of on the horizon?
No new book projects as far as I know now but I'm hoping something comes up that I think I'll write the book about. I've been in Volerangan now since I was five years old and sort of Miss England so with the opportunity to write it after there's this and there you know. I would be interested to see maybe not a book but a writing or a blog or a publication about how that individual coach that he talks about how that works or training in games I think that would be useful and also insightful for maybe coaches over here because it's something that we probably play at it's very very common in other sports but unusual in football so in cricket it's not unusual to have a bowling coach a batting coach a fielding coach a head coach whereas in football there isn't many teams that say I'm just going to look after these these two players apart from probably goalie coaches so yeah that would be something that I would be interested in seeing. Before we wrap up we have two people find you so people intrigued about the 1v1 model or what if I'm more about you where would they go to get hold of you?
I'm probably most active on Twitter my coach Mongols I think is my username there as you can find me there. Fantastic okay well Jones thank you very much for your time today. Thank you very much Jimmy. I really enjoyed it thanks.
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