Understanding your team's principles, managing the opposition and developing players who can influence the game.
What does it actually mean to control a game of football?
For some coaches, the answer might be dominating possession. For others, it could mean defending with organisation, limiting the opposition's opportunities or consistently creating chances to score.
But is controlling the game simply about having the ball? And how do you decide what control should look like for your team?
In this MiMentor EXPLORE guide, coach mentor Matthew Joseph challenges us to think more deeply about these questions.
Starting with the basic premise of football — two teams, one ball and two goals — Matthew explores the different elements coaches can influence, the importance of aligning their principles with their players, and how to develop those principles over time.
The challenge is not simply to decide how you want your team to play. It's to understand what your players need, how they can influence different moments in the game, and how you can help them become increasingly capable of managing those moments themselves.
As you work through this guide, consider one central question:
What does controlling the game mean for my team, and how am I helping my players achieve it?
Football is a simple: two teams, two goals, one ball.
The objective is to score more goals than the opposition while preventing them from scoring. But within that simple premise are several different elements that influence how a team can control a game.
Let's consider these four elements...
How do you want your team to play?
Do you want to play fast, flowing football? Are you looking to build attacks through the pitch? Do you want your team to be resilient, organised and difficult to break down?
These are different approaches, but the important consideration is that your principles should reflect what you want your team to achieve.
Controlling the game also means considering what happens when the opposition has influence.
What do you want your team to do when the opposition has the ball? How will your players respond when the opposition begins to dictate the tempo or create opportunities?
There are many possibilities, such as becoming more organised, increasing the tempo or remaining resilient when the opposition is controlling the game.
What does your team want to achieve when it has possession?
Equally, what happens when it doesn't?
A team might want to dominate possession and create opportunities through its use of the ball. Another might be comfortable defending with organisation and structure, accepting periods without possession while looking to limit the opposition's opportunities.
Neither approach automatically defines success. The important question is how your chosen approach helps your team influence the game.
Football is ultimately decided by goals, so coaches must consider how their team creates opportunities to score and prevents the opposition from doing the same.
This involves thinking about how your team enters threatening areas, how it develops goal-scoring ability and how it protects its own goal.
Consider how these different elements combine to influence the way you want your team to control the game.
Put It Into Practice
Take a moment to consider your current team.
What does controlling the game mean to you?
Which of the four elements — your team, the opposition, the ball or the goals — most strongly influences your coaching decisions?
Are there elements you spend less time thinking about?
Does your team have a clear approach to managing the game both in and out of possession?
Reflection: If someone watched your team play without knowing your coaching philosophy, what would they identify as your priorities?
One of the most useful points to consider is the distinction between controlling a game and simply having possession.
Possession can be an important part of a team's approach. Keeping the ball can help a team influence the game and create opportunities to score.
But coaches also need to think about what happens when their team doesn't have the ball.
Think about a team that is determined, resilient and organised defensively. Through structure and clear communication, that team seeks to reduce the opposition's opportunities to score.
This presents an important coaching question:
Are you measuring control by how much of the ball your team has, or by how effectively your players influence the game?
For one team, control might involve building attacks, maintaining possession and creating opportunities through the pitch.
For another, it might involve protecting its own goal, staying organised, limiting space and choosing the right moments to attack.
The aim is not to abandon possession as a measure. It's to think more broadly about what your team is trying to achieve and whether its behaviour reflects those intentions.
Put It Into Practice
Think about a recent match when your team had less possession than the opposition.
Did your team remain organised?
Did the players understand how they wanted to defend?
Could they recognise when to regain possession and when to protect space?
Were they able to create opportunities despite having less of the ball?
Now consider the opposite situation.
When your team had possession, did it use the ball to influence the game, or did it simply retain possession without creating meaningful opportunities?
Reflection: What would you look for to decide whether your team was controlling the game, regardless of possession statistics?
A coach might have a clear vision of how they want their team to play. But having a vision is only the starting point.
Consider the connection between controlling the game and player development and think about how you might answer these questions...
Who have you got? What do they need? How can you help them?
If players don't yet have the cognitive or tactical capabilities required to play in the way the coach intends, the approach may need to change. The principles should align with the players rather than the players being expected to execute an approach they aren't ready for.
This doesn't mean abandoning your philosophy.
It means understanding how to develop it in a way that supports the players you have today while helping them become more capable in the future.
Consider The Development Journey
Imagine you want your team to build through the thirds, make good decisions under pressure and recognise when to progress or retain possession.
Your players might not yet have the technical, tactical or decision-making ability to do this consistently.
You have a choice.
You could continue demanding the same outcomes, even when the players struggle to achieve them.
Or you could identify what they need to learn, adapt your approach and build the capabilities that will allow them to progress.
Think about whether the work you do with players today is helping them achieve more in the future.
This is particularly important as players move through different formats of the game, encounter new demands and develop their understanding.
Put It Into Practice
Choose one principle you want your team to demonstrate.
For example:
We want to progress the ball through the pitch when opportunities are available.
Now ask yourself:
What do my players need to understand to achieve this?
What technical abilities do they need?
What information must they recognise before making a decision?
What can they currently achieve, and what remains difficult?
How could I adapt my coaching to help them take the next step?
Reflection: Are you coaching the players you have, or the players you hope they will become?
Once you understand what controlling the game means for your team, the next challenge is deciding how to put that understanding into practice.
Here are several areas that coaches can consider when developing their principles:
How they want their team to play.
How they want to manage the opposition.
How they want to control the game when in and out of possession.
How they want to influence access to their own goal and the opposition's goal.
The principles themselves are for the coach to define, but they should align with the players available.
The following framework can help you begin applying these ideas.
Area | Questions to consider | Your team's principles |
|---|---|---|
Our team | What identity and style of play are we trying to develop? | What do we want our team to be known for? |
The opposition | How do we respond when the opposition begins to influence the game? | What do we want our players to recognise and do? |
In possession | How do we want to use the ball to influence the game? | What should guide our decisions with the ball? |
Out of possession | How do we protect our goal and manage the opposition's opportunities? | What are our priorities when defending? |
Player development | What do our players need to become more effective at executing these principles? | What are we helping them learn next? |
Use the framework to establish a starting point, rather than attempting to define every detail of your team's playing philosophy at once.
The important thing is to establish principles that are clear enough to guide your coaching decisions and meaningful enough to influence player development.
Put It Into Practice
Choose one area from the framework.
Write down:
The principle you want your team to demonstrate.
What you would expect to see your players doing.
What they currently find difficult.
What you could do in training to help them improve.
How you will recognise progress.
This turns an abstract idea into something you can observe, coach and revisit.
Defining your principles is only part of the process. You also need to consider whether your players are becoming more capable of applying them.
Towards the end of his video, we pose a series of questions about how coaches train players to manage different moments, how they regain control after losing it, and how they measure development and improvement.
These questions are useful because they move the discussion beyond what a coach wants to see towards what is actually happening.
For example, if your principle is to remain organised when defending, how would you recognise that your team is improving?
You might consider whether players:
Recognise potential threats earlier.
Make better decisions about when to press or protect space.
Communicate more effectively.
Respond more consistently when the opposition changes its approach.
These are illustrative ways to explore the principle, rather than a checklist.
The important point is to establish what improvement would look like for your team, then look for evidence of it over time.
A single successful action doesn't necessarily demonstrate consistent understanding. Equally, a mistake doesn't automatically mean a player has failed to learn.
Consider what happens across different situations, how often players demonstrate the desired behaviour and whether they are becoming increasingly capable of making decisions themselves.
Put It Into Practice
Return to the principle you selected in the previous section.
Ask yourself:
What would improvement look like?
Can I recognise it during a match or training session?
Am I looking at the decision-making process as well as the outcome?
Are all my players developing, or are only some demonstrating the principle consistently?
What evidence would help me decide what we need to work on next?
Reflection: If you wanted to demonstrate that your team was becoming better at controlling the game, what evidence would you use?
Use the following questions to turn your learning into an action you can take into your next session.
1. Define control
In one or two sentences, what does controlling the game mean for your team?
2. Identify your priority
Which element needs the most attention: your team's approach, managing the opposition, in-possession play, out-of-possession play, or influencing access to goals?
3. Consider your players
What can your players currently achieve, and what do they need to develop?
4. Plan your intervention
What is one thing you could change in your next training session to help your players improve?
5. Measure progress
What would you look for to determine whether your intervention is working?
6. Reflect and adapt
What will you do if your players struggle to achieve the intended outcome?
Controlling the game is not a question with one universal answer.
Your approach will depend on your principles, your players and the demands of the game. Discussing these differences with other coaches can help you question your assumptions, explore alternative approaches and develop a clearer understanding of your own coaching.
Join the discussion in the MiMentor EXPLORE Coaching Community MiGroup, here.
Share what controlling the game means to you, explain how you approach it with your players, and learn from the experiences of other coaches.