When you step on to the field to lead a training session or game, it’s important to consider all of the external factors regarding the occasion. The factors will influence the environment and possibly the outcome, so it could some what hinder the process of the team.

While taking all the external factors of the game into consideration, it’s important not to come away from the objectivity and your team values (intentions – that you have set out). We may, on occasion have to adapt, but it’s important to keep our intentions in place and clear, in order to contribute to the overall objective.

The communication from the lead coach/manager is vitally important, as guiding the team will be his/her responsibility. Guiding a process and getting the players to execute this, is what the person in charge needs the players to do, so if they don’t understand what’s needed for the challenge, it could be a symptom of future failure for the team.

Some of the external factors that will need to be taken into consideration, could be;

The fans – Are they supportive of something, or negative?
The facilities – Do you have world class access, or nothing available for your team to use?
The weather – Is it hot or cold, or possibly windy or raining?
The press – Are they trying to apply additional pressure?
The occasion – Is it a fixture that has a lot resting on the result?
The referee – Is he or she making decisions, that you deem correct or possibly wrong?

While the list isn’t exclusive to all coaches, for every occasion, these factors should always be taken into consideration. Having poor weather for example, could influence the playing surface, which could then in turn, effect the style of play that you may wish to execute.

Upon experiencing an external factor, the coach will have a decision to make. This will be based on their own opinion (subjective) of what they may possibly propose and how they will deal with it.

Alongside this subjective application, we have the universal references of football. As we know, the game has a set format (independent of the age group) and a set of rules outlined by the football association. These don’t change and will always been in place, to allow all players to execute football actions, within a controlled environment.

Your role now, as the coach or manager during the planning process, is a key one. What do you take as your starting point? The external factors surrounding you, or the objective facts of the game?

We should always take the game as a starting point, as this is universal and can’t be effected in any circumstance. If the weather is poor, the rules will stay the same, thus meaning, the ‘how’ in which things are executed, needs to be adapted.

Being adaptable while coaching, is part of the profession and will no doubt be experienced very early on in your career. This subjective application that you use, can help you make correct decisions and allow you to experience other outcomes, that may enable you to learn further.

The problem with taking subjective application as a starting point, is that you may fall into the ‘flavour of the month’, or only get so far. If it’s only your opinion and other staff and players know this, then surely their opinion is also equal? This could create very grey areas and allow players to put responsibility, completely outside of themselves.

Taking the game as the starting point will help you and allow for objectivity to shine through. The game (objective), in addition to your application (subjective), will give you the, ‘art of coaching’.