Communication in football is of the highest order, so how important is the language that we use?

Throughout our everyday lives, our brain filters through millions of stimuli that are received through different means of communication. This then enforces some kind of decision and then, execution can be made.
In football, there are lots of external stimuli that could effect a players decision. These include the weather, the referee, opponents and the pitch for example. All of these things aren’t within our control, but still have an effect on what we may do or how, in a certain situation.

One thing all of us do have an element of control over, is our voice. Sometimes we are provoked into a response, or even deliver information when requested to a respective recipient. Ultimately, we chose what we say and how we say it.

Now, within a football context, verbal information can be delivered from many departments, but today we’ll look at the relationship a coach could have with their players.

During a game, the coach will at some point give some verbal communication to his/her players. Whether this vocabulary is useful is another conversation, but the language this coach uses, could determine how the respective player understands the situation and then acts. So, the question is, what type of language should be used?

Language is a tool to express yourself in a certain situation. Whether you say what someone wants to hear (confirmation) or disagree (falsification), it is a very powerful method of communication, especially when instructing.

When you use verbal language, you are communicating and providing a stimuli for others. This stimuli is then interpreted by the receiver and they can then decide, on what response they give and how they do it.
This all sounds extremely simple, but by now, you should understand that it isn’t….

If a coach uses language that isn’t related to the game itself, we can call this non-contextual. Some examples of this could be, ‘sharpness’, ‘confidence’ or ‘work rate’. As you can see from these words, it doesn’t actually describe anything within a football context and could lead to confusion. If we zoom in further, ‘sharpness’, really doesn’t describe what is really meant.
“Our no.9 lacked sharpness today”…If you were told this comment, what would you think? The comment itself is too vague and will create areas of uncertainty. We can call these grey areas, where it could mean 1 thing, but could also mean something else.

To give this comment clarification, we could say; “Our no.9 wasn’t explosive, with his runs off of the ball today”. This now gives the receiver a much better idea of what the coach is describing, just by using different language.

A few small lessons we can learn here, are;

The clearer the language you use, the less uncertainty you create
By using ‘action’ language, the receiver can visualise what is being said
Using non-contextual words will create uncertainty
Say exactly, what you see

What you can now understand from this blog post, is that language can be the root cause of many problems, but can also be a tool to give you a higher chance of success. Look at other professions such as medical, military or aviation…how important is language to these professionals? We should be following suit in football and raising the bar with our communication.

To finish, reflect on what language you use and how effective it is?