Improve your awareness

We’ve all been there, you receive a ball, take a touch on the half turn and before you can look up to spray a Hollywood 50-yard pass you’re clattered by the opposition who was standing right behind you all the time.

You gesticulate to your team-mates, ‘where was the man-on shout?’ and run off after the ball in the knowledge that it wasn’t your fault in giving away possession. But was it?

A study by Dr Geir Jordet, who is a Norwegian professor of psychology, looks into an important part of the game which is often unspoken and untrained and that is the role of vision, perception and anticipation. In basic terms your ability to interpret what is happening on the pitch and act accordingly.

As players we build a picture in our brain of positions of team mates & opposition through amongst other things vision & communication. For most players though vision is limited to what is directly in front of them.

Jordet breaks down the research into three key segments:

  • Visual perception – the ability to take in and interpret information
  • Visual exploratory behavior – the ability to scan and collect information
  • Anticipation – the ability to understand what is about to happen

It is the Visual exploratory behavior (VEB) which we will be focusing on in this blog post. In his research Jordet looked at elite footballers and their actions before they received the ball and found that many would scan the pitch multiple times when the ball was elsewhere on the pitch. It is this behavior which gives players a better mental image of the positioning of other players and potential moves once the ball is received.

A now famous example of this is Frank Lampard who, during the study, scanned an average of 0.62 times per second before receiving the ball. During the study Lampard had the highest rate of ‘Visual Exploratory Frequency’ (VEF) in the Premier League, with Gerrard a very close second.

If you search ‘Lampard awareness’ on Youtube you will see a 15 second clip of Lampard continuously looking over his shoulder and back to the ball, building a mental picture of the pitch making it easier for him to make a more informed decision once he receives the ball.

Another successful player with a high level of VEF is the pass master Xavi who scanned an average of 0.82 times per second before receiving the ball. It is clear in the way Xavi plays that if he receives the ball before he has had enough time to scan the pitch he plays the safest pass available which is normally back to where the ball came and then off he goes to find space, scanning the pitch for his next pass.

The stats

In Jordets study he broke down the players into low / medium / high frequency of scanning and then recorded the players pass success rates. The % of passes completed was much higher for those who had a higher VEF but perhaps the most interesting category Jordet looked into was the pass success rate of forward passes in the opposition half, when the pressure is highest on the player on the ball.

As the table shows players with a high visual exploratory frequency performed much better with 77% of successful passes compared to the low frequency’s 44% who would have gathered much less information before receiving the ball than the other players in the test.

How can this be taught?

The habit to scan around the pitch isn’t a trait which occurs naturally. Lampard’s youth coach Tony Carr credited Lampard’s father for this development as he used to shout at him from the stand, ‘pictures….pictures!’ meaning to trigger the young Lampard to look around, take pictures and build up a mental image of everything on the pitch.

In developing this skill it’s not just about the taking of the pictures but also developing the information to understand. To start with it is about awareness that a player should be regularly looking around to scan the pitch but this should then develop into questions such as ‘what are they looking around for?’ and to stop an exercise and drill and ask the player on the ball ‘what did they see?’.

If you’re not being coached and want to improve this aspect of your game on your own try to remind yourself of making a point to scan the pitch before a game. Copy Xavi in giving the ball back to the player you received it from if you don’t feel like you have enough information on your next pass before you received the ball.

This will not only keep your team in possession of the ball but it will also act as a reminder that you should have scanned before getting yourself in a position to receive. When looking around start with the three questions below:

  • Where is the space so I can receive the ball?
  • Where are my options to pass the ball to next?
  • Where are the opponents who are going to press me when I receive the ball?

And finally, circumstances change in football in a split second, so when looking for options don’t just pick one. Pick several and then when you receive the ball and options are closed down you don’t have to rescan the pitch and increase the risk of losing the ball or making a rushed choice.