What Are The 4 Pillars?

Physical 

You cannot be an elite football player without understanding the physical levels your body needs to achieve to be able to compete. It is important to be assessed for aerobic capacity, strength/power and speed and then be able to develop to the required levels through supported coaching. It is important to have modern programs designed and developed by top sports scientists that include interval training to develop aerobic capacity, weight training to develop strength and agility to develop speed. All of these need to be backed up with the right nutrition and rest and recovery. 

Psychological

Often the most neglected of the 4 pillars. There has been a wealth of studies undertaken by sports science in the last 5 years attempting to understand how we can develop footballer’s psychological state of mind to improve performance. Those studies have shown it is not uncommon for athletes to improve their performance by over 30% when they are in their optimum psychological state. There are proven methods and strategies players use today to ensure they are in the “optimum psychological state” when they go into matches and how that can change during matches and what players needs to do to react to that change. 

Technical

Often the area that coaches concentrate on the most. It may be as simple as passing, shooting or receiving a pass or more complex areas such as learning difficult dribbling skills. These are very traditional skills and they are the foundation of football but there are so many new techniques that are essential for elite footballers to learn for example taking the ball on the back foot, taking your first touch away from pressure, open your hips to the field or looking forward to see if you can break the lines. The elite footballer has to understand all of these and be able to execute them as second nature particularly under pressure. Young players need to be taught these and learn to execute them as second nature during matches if they are to become top performers. 

Tactical

There are both team tactics and individual position tactics in this pillar. Team tactics are generally taken care of by the head coach but individual positional tactics need to be learned by each player. This is an area that has been coached very successfully overseas for a number of years and now in the UK we have realized the importance of this for our elite players. To have technical ability to play is one thing but if you cannot apply those techniques at the right time and in the right areas of the pitch involving your team mates then your technical ability is significantly diminished. Some examples of these individual tactical skills are, where to run to be able to receive a pass and know where the next pass is going before you receive it sometimes called penetrating the lines, when to tackle and when to wait or collective defending and pressing, looking at other teams formations and understanding where you need to go when you have the ball and when you don’t and how to penetrate and defend against teams that play with depth and width.  

At Future Ballers Football Academy we know it is essential we teach our players all of these areas. Without them it is extremely difficult to become an elite footballer. It is how our children really learn the game and differentiate them from other young ambitious footballers.