Strange and Unusual Football Coaching Techniques

In football, the best teams always try to find ways of gaining and edge over their competition and, usually this can happen in many ways.

However, arguably one of the most influential and effective ways of doing this is via their coach and the techniques that are applied.

Certainly over the last couple of decades, football coaching has advanced considerably, embracing innovation to enable coaching staff to squeeze as much potential as possible out of players, with sports science becoming more and more relied on.

As such, there are now many novel and interesting coaching practices that some of the best clubs in the world have started to apply to their ethos as a way to try and gain an advantage over their rivals. Keep reading to find out what these might be!

Bubble Football

Introduced briefly by Barcelona in a pre-season training session at St George’s Park in 2016, the Blaugrana introduced ‘bubble football’ as a way to try and improve one of the most technically gifted football teams in the world, with players like Andres Iniesta and Lionel Messi to make them even better on the ball, but with a major handicap.

🤣🤣 O treino mais engraçado dos últimos anos. Relembre!

🏡 #EuFicoEmCasa 💙❤️ pic.twitter.com/inhRUEsTZv

— FC Barcelona (@fcbarcelona_br) April 5, 2020

It was at a time, when bubble football had just been introduced and there was somewhat of a craze about it. The idea was to help improve the Barcelona player’s awareness even more, but with them knowing that they could get almost catapulted off the ball at any time. Perhaps surprisingly, this method didn’t last but produced some entertaining moments.

Subliminal Sleep Cognition

A study that was published in ‘Nature Neuroscience’ in 2019 revealed that there could be a plausible link between football clubs asking their players to listen to tactics while they sleep to improve recall and performance.

Sleep has become a major factor for many coaching departments in world football – indeed, many clubs have sleeping facilities at training grounds to allow players to get an important amount of rest between training sessions, therefore enhancing peak performance. As a result, all beds in these facilities have been carefully selected to give players the best possible chance of recovery and comfort and as a result, they generally choose wisely from top retailers such as Simba for example.

While, there is no actual confirmation of whether sleep audio techniques are used by coaching staff, when looking at some of the best clubs in the world and how they get marginal gains, this certainly could be something that is used, though currently still under wraps.

Handball

Incorporating other sports into football training sessions has proved to be effective and this is something that a lot of clubs do. Handball for example, is one activity that has been utilised and, as a result, it helps to improve a player’s spatial awareness – especially for clubs that rely on interchanging and overlapping/underlapping runs.

This is also a great way to improve communication between players, due to the faster nature of the activity.

Survival Camping

Literally zero football was involved, though when in charge of Huddersfield Town, David Wagner took his players to Sweden for a few days in what was supposed to be an effective team-building exercise.

Wagner revealed not long after: “We went to Sweden for four days and three nights and we didn’t bring a ball. We were really in the wild, no electricity, no toilet, no bed, no mobile phone or internet. If you are hungry, take your rod and get a fish. If you are thirsty, go to the lake and put your bottle in. If you are cold, make a fire.

“We had three guides with us to help, but if you are always together, in a two-man tent or eight hours a day in a two-man canoe – and we always rotated the pairings – then you have to speak to each other. I am convinced that the better you know your mate off the pitch, the more you are able to work for him on it in uncomfortable situations.

“They changed their borderlines over those three days. I can say now, three months later, that it was 100% success, and that is the feedback from the players, too.”

Foot Golf

More as part of a team building exercise, but also to improve technique, some football clubs (especially in pre-season) were quick to jump on the ‘foot golf’ craze that swept through the UK.

This innovative idea combines both football and golf with the idea being that you play on a golf course that has been adapted to cater for football. As a result, participants are required to use a football to try and eventually kick the ball into a bigger hole.

Scoring is done the same as in golf, but this was seen as a great way to help improve player’s accuracy, while still being an enjoyable activity – a lot of football players enjoy a game of golf in their downtime anyway.