Love Wins: the SEA games champion Thai football team

Love Wins: Congratulations to the SEA games champion Thai football team!

A few days ago, I read a fabulous book, "Soccer Speed" by By Richard Bate and Ian Jeffreys. They amazed me with their focus on teamwork.

According to them, teamwork is essential both in defence and attack. Their statistics shows that on average, a player cannot hold the ball more than 2 seconds!

Say, in defence, my player No 4 (M4) presses their player No 9 (T9).
So, T9 passes the ball to his teammate T6.
M5 presses T6, which forces T6 to pass to T11 and so on.

T9  --> T6 --> T11 --> T10
M4      M5       M3         ?

If there is no M player to challenge T10, the effort of players M4,M5,M3 go to waste. It would be better for them to have slept or taken a break at that time instead of pressing T players. If they had rested, they would have more energy now. Now they are tired and the ball has passed through their defence line.

The same holds true for attack. No player alone can do magic. Even star strikers like Messi, Neymar need support all around them.

When Myanmar strikers come forward, do they get enough support? More precisely, do they support each other?

When Singapore strikers come forward, do they get enough support? More precisely, do they support each other?

When Thai strikers come forward, do they get enough support? More precisely, do they support each other?

"Glory players," players who play for their own personal glory do not win matches. Nor in-fighting generals win wars: read about German invasion of Soviet Union in World War II.

So, at EssayKKNkn we teach love. We run our website out of love for the kids, the parents, the nations, and of course, out of love for ourselves.

Laziness Wins: the SEA games champion Thai football team

Laziness Wins: the SEA games champion Thai football team

When a team loses possession of the ball, they need to get it back. But they cannot press the opponent team all over the field as it would tire them out way before the opponent team lose the ball or get tired.

Therefore, they have to let the other team come to them. When the ball is far away from their goal, they let the other team work on the ball at a leisurely pace. Only when the ball gets into the striking range towards their goal, they become serious about dispossessing the other team.

Previously when I noticed such behaviour, I always thought of such teams as lazy. Even when the Thai team won the final of SEA games football this way, I still regarded them a bit "lazy" or conservative.

But a few days later, I read a fabulous book, "Soccer Speed" by By Richard Bate and Ian Jeffreys. They sanction such deep defending as a good way to conserve energy.

This is reminiscent of Sun Tzu, Chapter 6:

17. For should the enemy strengthen his van, he will weaken his rear; should he strengthen his rear, he will weaken his van; should he strengthen his left, he will weaken his right; should he strengthen his right, he will weaken his left. If he sends reinforcements everywhere, he will everywhere be weak.

Therefore, at essaykkn we take special care not teach everything to our students. First, we kill 1 or 2 fatal mistakes. Then we pounce on areas where rewards are highest per effort.

Soccer Speed, Essay Speed at EssayKKN

Here is the summary of this fabulous book, "Soccer Speed" by By Richard Bate and Ian Jeffreys.

1. Unless the opponent is unskillful or undisciplined, it will be too exhausting to defend everywhere.Thus you defend only your key areas. This implies that you allow the opponent to attack or to build up attack in certain areas.
   
   
2. Unless the opponent is unaware, unskillful or undisciplined, you cannot expect to attack freely. They are likely to defend deep, defend as a bloc and defend in congested areas.
   
   
3. Such congested defence entails that an attacking side can succeed only with
   
   • Variety in techniques, approaches, styles, tempos
   • Deception, disguise, misleading, subtlety
   • speed, "speed of change of speed"
   • teamwork
   • initiative at individual as well as team level

Doesn't this remind you of Sun Tzu, von Moltke, Clausewitz, Boyd (of OODA fame)?

Doesn't this remind you of Jack Welch, Jack Trout, Gigerenzer?

Chapter titles such as "Chapter 11 Strategy and Tactics," "Chapter 12 Developing Soccer Intelligence ", and sub-headings such as "Inventive Passing," "Deceptive Passing," "Importance of Decision Making," "Factors in Decision Making" make us wonder if we are reading a decision-science book.

Our fundamental stand at EssayKKN has been that all good jobs in future involve the same skills involved in essay-writing: getting ideas, organizing and expressing them tastefully. Now we wonder whether these skills underpin good soccer, beautiful soccer too!