Achanak

It has been almost one month since I arrived in Delhi, to coach in IYSA.I have spent the first few weeks, watching and trying to understand the way they work here. I can now give my first impressions on what I have observed from my time on the pitch. Most of the time, I coachthe U11 and U15 teams, two teams with completely different needs.

With the younger group I chose to work on the technical aspects of the game like skills, passing and decision making. With the older players, I try to make them more aware of what is going on around them during the game. What do they do without the ball ? More tactical.

They train two hours with technical exercises split by large breaks and then they play matches. After observing a couple of training sessions, with their full time coach, I wondered if I had to adapt my style of coaching or keep working with my philosophy.

I normally suggest shorter sessions and quick breaks to keep the intensity. Finally, I opted for the second choice. Im here for only 3 months and Im convinced that by sharing our different opinions we have a lot to learn from each other.

One point which I was really impressed with, was their ability to learn and to understand the topic we are working on during the session. At the beginning I worked on skills with the U11 team by asking them to be sudden and surprising (Achanak in Hindi) with the ball at their feet. Their level is already very good and they know different skills names which highlights that they have been exposed to a similar kind of training. I can really say that they have a strong desire to improve and they do !

"Achanak" was the key word of the first couple of weeks and they displayed their enthusiasm towards the topic by shouting it at me as I arrived on the pitch. I can’t wait to work on the next topics !