In­struc­tions are a fun­da­men­tal tool of com­mu­ni­ca­tion in sports, for ex­am­ple, for coach­es and phys­i­cal ed­u­ca­tion teach­ers. Tra­di­tion­al­ly, sport-psy­chol­o­gy in­struc­tions have been writ­ten for ex­perts and novices. Think back to when you were a child and was learn­ing how to play a sport such as foot­ball, crick­et, bas­ket­ball or sim­ply learn­ing how to ride a bi­cy­cle for the first time. Most times you may have been re­quired to at­tend prac­tice, and dur­ing that prac­tice, the coach put you through the drills, bat in the nets, prac­tice how to shoot or head the ball. Dur­ing the ac­tu­al games, your coach was there on the side­lines watch­ing, pro­vid­ing en­cour­age­ment and in­struct­ing you along the way, or per­haps shout­ing at you from the top of his lungs.

Cur­rent­ly, the T&T Men’s Un­der-20 Team is par­tic­i­pat­ing at the CON­CA­CAF U-20 Cham­pi­onship and World Cup qual­i­fiers at IMG Acad­e­my in Braden­ton, Flori­da, USA. The team worked its way from two goals down to steal a last minute 3-2 vic­to­ry over St Vin­cent and the Grenadines on Thurs­day in its open­ing game. It was their first match since late Ju­ly and af­ter just about five train­ing ses­sions to­geth­er be­fore the match, in­di­vid­ual tal­ent and prop­er coach­ing and game plan was al­ways go­ing to be es­sen­tial to get­ting a pos­i­tive re­sult. What stood out in the post-match in­ter­views was the play­ers all say­ing that fol­low­ing the in­struc­tions of head coach Rus­sell Lat­apy is what helped them pull off the late come­back. Team cap­tain John Paul Rochford, goalscor­ers Mark Ramdeen, Ju­dah Gar­cia and Jay­don Prow­ell all spoke about tak­ing in Lat­apy’s in­struc­tions.

“He (Lat­apy) just told us that we need­ed to fight a lit­tle more. We need­ed to stick to the plan, we need­ed to lis­ten and fol­low the in­struc­tions and once we did that every­thing would fall in­to place. We fol­lowed the in­struc­tions for the first goal, we did what he ad­vised and it worked. We saw that as a tes­ti­mo­ny so we re­alised that once we fol­lowed the in­struc­tions we would get the de­sired re­sult,” Rochford said.

While the op­por­tu­ni­ties to give in­struc­tions vary in dif­fer­ent sports, the FI­FA law states that a “coach may con­vey tac­ti­cal in­struc­tions to his play­ers dur­ing the match and must re­turn to his po­si­tion im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter giv­ing these in­struc­tions. The coach and the oth­er of­fi­cials must re­main with­in the con­fines of the tech­ni­cal area, where such an area is pro­vid­ed, and they must be­have in a re­spon­si­ble man­ner”.

The spir­it of the FI­FA law is that coach­es con­vey on­ly oc­ca­sion­al in­struc­tions to play­ers and these are lim­it­ed to “tac­ti­cal”, that is “off the ball” in­struc­tions. The ex­pec­ta­tion is that coach­es use the game to ob­serve their play­ers in ac­tion and use what they see as feed­back in­to the prac­tice sit­u­a­tion.

A com­mon re­ac­tion is for the coach to be­come a “shouter”. In the ex­treme, this takes the form of a con­tin­u­ous bar­rage of shout­ed ver­bal in­struc­tions to the play­ers, which is es­sen­tial­ly an at­tempt by the coach to “con­trol” the game. At any game with a noisy crowd, this doesn’t work, of course, al­though some coach­es de­vel­op re­mark­ably loud voic­es try­ing.

The essence of the foot­ball cul­ture is that it’s “play­er’s game”. What this means is that, once the game is un­der­way, the play­ers are ex­pect­ed to make their own de­ci­sions as to the right thing to do in any sit­u­a­tion, with­out in­ter­fer­ence from coach­es or spec­ta­tors. Of course, in a pro­fes­sion­al game, there are plen­ty of spec­ta­tors with an opin­ion but their in­put is thank­ful­ly lost in the noise of the crowd. In T&T though, the lack of large crowds re­sults in loud­ly-voiced opin­ions and “sug­ges­tions” be­ing all too eas­i­ly heard. Once the whis­tle blows there are no prac­ti­cal mech­a­nisms pro­vid­ed by the laws of the game for a coach to in­flu­ence the out­come. The play­ers make in­di­vid­ual de­ci­sions, good or bad, and col­lec­tive­ly have to re­act as a team to the strat­e­gy and tac­tics of their op­po­nent.

Fol­low­ing the coach­ing in­struc­tions are key. Ask any of the top coach­es or the ones who con­sis­tent­ly get their team to play the way they want them to.

As Aris­to­tle once said, “We are what we re­peat­ed­ly do. Ex­cel­lence, then, is not an act but a habit.” In much the same way, there is no short­cut to the de­vel­op­ment of tac­ti­cal skills. Rather, ath­letes de­vel­op those skills by re­peat­ed­ly en­coun­ter­ing tac­ti­cal sit­u­a­tions and do­ing the things that give them the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to achieve suc­cess.

There are times though when it comes to tac­ti­cal de­ci­sions, the on­ly thing ath­letes have con­trol over is the choic­es they make at any giv­en time. How­ev­er, if their de­ci­sions are based on a clear un­der­stand­ing of the rules of the sport, a knowl­edge of team strat­e­gy, an aware­ness of their re­spec­tive roles and ca­pa­bil­i­ties as well as the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of their op­po­nents, and an ap­pre­ci­a­tion of mis­cel­la­neous vari­able fac­tors, they are more like­ly to make the right de­ci­sions.

Ed­i­tor's Note:

Shaun Fuentes is a for­mer FI­FA Me­dia Of­fi­cer at the 2010 FI­FA World Cup in South Africa. He is al­so cur­rent­ly a CON­CA­CAF Com­pe­ti­tions Me­dia Of­fi­cer and has trav­elled ex­ten­sive­ly be­cause of sport and me­dia over the past eigh­teen years. He is al­so a cer­ti­fied me­dia train­er for ath­letes.