Day 7: The Tanzanians Head for Home and Equipment Distribution

Originally posted on January 3, 2020 on playbeautifulsoccer.net

After breakfast, we headed to the fields to train a couple of Davis’ teams. We invited the Tanzanians out to the session in order to give them one last practice session. In the session, I modeled attacking in the middle third using blind sports and countermovements. Due to the language barrier, I would set up the activity and had the Tanzanians translate and provide coaching cues and guided questions throughout. After the warm-up phase of progressions in the technique and subtleties of find space as a #6, #8, and #10, we moved into the problem (orientation) and solution (learning phases) using a couple of the mini-goals that we constructed for the 3v3 tournament the day before. In the problem phase, we taught the non-focus group how to organize defensive responsibilities to keep central players marked after recognizing certain focus group midfield players were left free until they received the ball, although the original plan was to deliver a get compact, stay compact, and move together orientation. In the solution phase (once all players were defensively accounted for), we taught the wingers (#7 and #11) to maximize their width offensively in order to open up space centrally for the midfielders as defensive players spread out to accomodate the expanded offensive shape.

Directly following the session, we handed the Tanzanians their coaching certificates and bid them farewell on their long journey back home.