He never really looked like a footballer.
The squat little Argentinian magician, infamous for a certain handball but globally famous for his dribbling skills. Diego Armando Maradona’s greatness came not just because he was a great goalscorer, or a scorer of great goals, but because he was a wonderful creator of goals too.
At the 1990 World Cup Maradona collects the ball a few yards inside his own half. As he accelerates forward two Brazilian players are drawn towards him, like asteroids drawn to Jupiter. He skips away from them. A third, recovering defender attempts to chop Maradona’s legs from under him but he rides the challenge, stays on his feet and drives towards the Brazil penalty area. Each stride pulls defenders closer to him, like an inescapable black hole, there is no escaping his pull. Three defenders have been drawn to him, leaving Claudio Caniggia free. Maradona releases the pass, leaving Caniggia one versus one with the goalkeeper to score.
(SEE ASSIST SEVEN)
Maradona used his dominant dribbling skills to create space for others, understanding that with each touch he took, as he loomed ever closer to the penalty area, his magnetic pull on defenders would provide opportunities for team mates.
The great dribblers are like magnets.
By the early part of the 21st century a great deal of effort has gone into researching coaching and coaching methods. The work has given us a rich bounty of terminology and approaches, using the significant pedagogical frameworks of didactic style, constraints led approaches, teaching games for understanding, plus many less recognised and less championed methods.
Games based approaches are de rigueur, under an ecological dynamics umbrella. This umbrellas has grasped at nature, biology, chemistry and physics in order to explain the behaviours that we see on the training ground and football pitch, hoping to reveal how we as coaches might subtly yet decisively influence the development of players.
I am not seeking to endorse or lambast any particular method, what I am keen to tap into is the language ecological dynamics gifts to us. A language of perception action coupling, a landscape of affordance in which to act and most importantly here, attractors.
Attractors are to be taken quite literally. A squirrel jumping from tree to tree might be attracted to a branch as it is highly relevant to the squirrel’s objective. In football players are attracted in the main to two things, the ball and the goal, making these the key objects to manipulate in practice design. Whether a team is in or out of possession may make space more or less attractive. Similarly the status of the ball may make opponents more or less attractive or indeed repulsive.
When describing Maradona’s dribble I touched upon the language and concept of gravity. Newtonian physics leading into Einstein’s gravitational fields are also an adept description of the influence of a dribbler on the behaviours of opponents. Indeed it is tempting to suggest that the greater the dribbling ability the more powerful the gravity, with Messi or Maradona having the pull of super massive black hole.
Conceptually this works but as a practical explanation for young children the physics of space time might be too much for them to grasp. Ecological dynamics helped find the childish way. The power of attraction. The power of magnets, something that most five year olds can grasp.
Thus it was that I described each dribbler as a powerful magnet attracting defenders to them, creating space for others. After some initial giggles at the idea that they were a magnet the players got the idea. The build up of touches attracted player after player, the more players they attracted the more space their team mates had. The team mates had not had to move, by moving with the ball they had moved the opposition. Having attracted all their iron opponents how could they utilise this? What opportunity did they now have?
It was time to release.
Their powerful dribbling skills had drawn everyone in, now was the perfect moment to switch off the electro magnet and release the ball into the wide open spaces for their team mates.
Research and theory have described the relationship between the ball carrier as one of a dyad. The defender is seeking to maintain the distance between attacker and defender while the attacker is seeking to break and increase the distance. Defenders marking attackers will experience a similar dyad. As the dribbler breaks one dyad another will be created, thus creating a chain reaction of broken dyads, changing the spaces and relationships across the space, creating cause for reorganisation. In short, defensive chaos.
Dribbling (ball carrying) is a phenomenally powerful weapon in invasion games. It becomes even more powerful when those who are masters of the dribble are also masters of exploiting all that comes with the power.
Attract.
And release.