Developing Intelligent Football Players & People

Standardized drills can teach technique, but they don't build game intelligence. We explain why players who only do repetitive drills may struggle to make effective decisions under the pressure of a real match.

How do we train players to think for themselves? We create chaos. By introducing unpredictable elements into our drills, we force kids to make more multi-dimensional decisions per minute, rapidly improving their instincts and adaptability.

Decision making is a muscle. The more decisions a child makes under pressure, the better they get at it and the faster they learn to distinguish between good, bad, and great choices on the field.

What makes a good player great? The ability to make the right decision in a split second. This skill is the foundation of our entire football training program at FAB.

We recently held a session on the power of focus, a critical tool for any young athlete. This is a look into how we teach kids to channel their attention and enhance their natural abilities.

This is how focus works. We believe that whatever a player focuses on, they enhance. By teaching them to focus on the right things, we help them unlock their natural footballing talent and play at their best.

We explain how fear can impact performance. A player who is scared of the ball will instinctively focus on the potential pain, which only enhances their fear. We saw this with a new 7-year-old goalkeeper.

The solution is to shift the focus. We taught our goalkeeper a technique to focus on his end objective: keeping his eyes on the ball to help his team. This instantly evolved his game.

By shifting his attention away from fear and towards his desire to help the team, he became unafraid of the ball as a byproduct. This is the power of teaching mental skills alongside physical ones.