Illustration: Giske Defending.
There is an accurate and time-honoured expression that can be easy to forget in situations that have many possibilities:
“You’re good at what you practice!”
When you practice as part of a bigger team that has many different interests and opinions, you may find it challenging to stay focused on what’s important at any given time.
Matches, match situations, and match requirements are critical to putting your skills into practice and testing how you perform under pressure.
Match situations are critical to putting your skills into practice and testing how you perform under pressure.
Match training can take many different forms. These are as follows:
Internal matches
Internal matches are a good form of exercise that effectively stimulate a competitive environment and motivate players. During internal training matches, the players’ focus is typically on development and learning, and execution often occurs in several shorter parts, such as short 3 x 20 minute games. In these games, the coach can set conditions and scenarios to sharpen the player’s tactical and strategic skills in given areas such as dead-ball games, for example.
Internal matches are a good form of exercise that effectively stimulate a competitive environment and motivate players.
Friendly matches
Friendly matches are primarily played in the pre-season. The objectives that underpin these matches will vary according to each respective team’s priorities, current status, and significance of the next match. These matches are very useful because they act as a test for both the team and the individual players. However, while these matches are usually competitive, and teams have a strong desire to beat their opponents, they don’t quite have as much riding on them as competition games and, for this reason, they do not quite place the players and the team under the same amount of pressure.
Friendly matches are very useful because they act as a test for both the team and the individual players.
Competition matches
Competition matches are what the players who work as part of a team train for. They naturally provide the best conditions in which to practice your skills under pressure and test whether you have the skills and techniques it takes to perform when it really matters. During competition matches, you will often undergo a learning process that is quite unlike anything else you have practiced in the past.
During competition matches, you will often undergo a learning process that is quite unlike anything else you have practiced in the past.
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