Stop Romanticizing Rectangles: Why Euclid (and I) Would Object to the ‘Gamelike’ Obsession

As many coaches that hail from the United States, I’m currently involved in the process of procuring USSF licensure. The football governing body has, in recent years, made a concerted effort to educate a wider population of prospective soccer leaders on a methodology curated by the Americans themselves; a purported roadmap that can begin to remedy the US’ uncultured-football-knowledge image across the world, starting from the ground up. It’s a noble stamp of approval process that provides some structure to the coaching role, introduces you to others intrigued by the field, and encourages discussion amongst participants.

At my current stage, though frequent in number, those conversations are often frustratingly limited. Despite the joy I derive from writing for TT, there are plenty of questions I’ve posed and pinned to my digital cork board, that haven’t found their way to publication–not because I haven’t gotten around to writing yet, but rather because I haven’t been able find a solution. These thoughts stir around in my head as I wait for inspiration, often a notion or idea in another field that cutely parallels and suggests a resolution, but they occasionally don’t appear. In search of an adequate or elegant answer, I’ll sometimes bring them up in my virtual classroom’s general discourse, for new perspective. After all, 30 heads must certainly be better than just one.

But the ensuing response is rarely illuminating. Questions like “how do you manage an egotistical player?” have always seemed deceptively elusive, for me, for instance. The problem statement itself doesn’t look too thorny, yet I’ve dealt with the scenario several times in real life, and with limited success.

As a weakness I’ve noted within my own skillset, I’ve posed it to several of my D License instructors, each of which have regarded it with a superficial “oh that’s a tough one!”, followed by the hollow semblance of an answer. Perhaps my expectations for these conversations, or the course material in general, are too high, but I’ve admittedly been discouraged from asking things I truly am interested in, foregoing those curiosities for the study of this highly structured (to the point of fault) system for coaching youth.

It is entirely possible, if not entirely likely, that these environments simply aren’t the place for such ambiguous dialogue. Curriculum exists for a reason, and the instructors must lay out an arranged sequence of lessons for the students in a finite timeframe. As you may have noted from the extensive length of some TT articles, it can sometimes be truly hard to frame some of these sweeping questions cursorily. That necessary depth, and the consideration of multiple competing ideas, may be simply unaffordable in a classroom session.

By the same token, the lessons are paid for, and as a form of value proposition, must provide some illusion of concrete answers to basic questions. The instructors indoctrinate the pupils by proclaiming that discussed solutions are objective in nature–which, when provided with them, can feel awfully comforting for a wide-eyed U6 coach–but this emboldens the assertion of immovable ideas that are simply not that easy to define. Nearly every conversation involves “relating our ideas to the framework”, and discounts those that lie outside of it. It’s a constant magnetism towards rigidity. Again, for budding coaches, this notion of thinking inside the box may be beneficial, but for people like myself, it’s torpefying.

As Annie Duke puts it in Thinking in Bets, there is also this profound warning against “truth seeking”–the act of truly getting to the bottom of interesting conversations. Duke argues that in many discussions, the intentions are largely superficial, and this often superiority-complex-driven series of pokes and prods can unnerve and unsettle the others involved in those circles. She frames the concept in Poker terms: when someone loses a round and is frustratedly complaining about their bad luck to a stranger, they may not be interested in dissecting the mistakes they made when playing their hand. They might simply want someone to listen, humor them, and so forth; someone who truth seeks will invariably be met with a scoff or annoyance, even if they knock with good intentions. It is clear that this same act, when performed in these base-level USSF courses, is likely regarded with similar scorn. You must ground yourself in the desires of the invested parties, and fine tune what you bring to the discussion based on what the others are hoping to get out of it. Asking questions like these to put instructors on the spot, or play Devil’s Advocate may serve no one but myself–and I’ve become increasingly aware of that notion.

But, in any case, I bring this all up because a recent conversation with a fellow USSF classmate struck me. An exercise revolving around the design of a drill demanded that our group create a more challenging and less challenging version of the core activity. It’s common practice to prepare these adaptations to keep things running smoothly during training, in the case that the group displays surprising proficiency or confusion with the game being played. And so, as we brainstormed, the standard concepts were introduced–give the focus team numbers-up to make attacking easier, increase the size of the field to create more space, add more small-sided goals to increase scoring targets–but the proposition I made was countered with surprising vitriol:

“Let’s change the shape of the field”.

The call went silent. “Change its shape?”, one dubious coach asked, “we already mentioned making it bigger or smaller”.

To which I responded something to the effect of, “No. I mean like, let’s alter the geometry a bit. Give them a new problem to solve. Our drill is focused on possession, so maybe if it’s too easy to hold the ball in this square, let’s see how they space themselves out with different proportions. Maybe instead, we use a skinny rectangle, or if we’re really feeling ambitious, a triangle, or maybe even a hexagon.”

Flooding in, came a deluge of defensive arguments, most to the tone of, “Are you serious?”, “Soccer isn’t played in those shapes so why would you practice that?”, and “How does changing the sport make it more difficult? It just makes it irrelevant.” My eyebrows were curiously raised.

The suggestion was promptly discarded as a function of being too unpopular in our smaller ideation process, so, of course, I made a point of bringing it up outside of our (what I felt was) narrow-minded breakout room, and in the presence of all the coaches and instructors. Mind you, I hadn’t been exposed to Duke’s admonishment of truth seeking until a few weeks ago, so you’ll have to forgive my misguidedness. To my amusement, the idea of altering geometry was once again confronted with similar disdain. Here, arose the most nightmarish of domineering knee jerks, the disgusted,

“That isn’t gamelike”.

And so, as the disagreements came rolling in, I smiled, listened, and jotted down that I simply had to write an article about this. After all, while truth seeking may not be at home in these classrooms, it is the sole purpose of my musings here at Touchline Theory. At its core, this was a question pertaining to the ostensible value of changing pitch shapes, and an accompanying dive into the coaching world’s obsession with training things “precisely as they appear in the true game”.

In a field that, unlike mathematics, for instance, contains nearly zero definitive answers, I’d become a little appalled by this false dichotomy: the idea that things can be so easily classified as “gamelike” or not, subsequently defining their value, and determining whether or not they deserve a place in our training regimens. It’s a perverse proposition that abstraction is detraction, and yet, it’s spreading like wildfire through the mouths of these coaching education systems.

So after a week or two of stirring around in search of a solution, here’s what I’m thinking:

What Matters is Inside the Coordinates

Sport is defined by shapes. Lines connecting players propagate across the grassy landscape in various forms, with dimensions and connections in constant flux–each of which, in football, are fleeting. No arrangement is quite like those before it, and none will be like those to come.

The football community appears enamored with this idea: the lovely notion that the game is highly amorphous, free-flowing, and available for individual interpretation. Yet, there exists a rampant, and bitingly counterintuitive, effort to constrain it with rigid boundaries. In this particular scenario, it’s a blatant product of the USSF’s unbending peddled system, a world in which values like “gamelike” are worshipped unwaveringly without ever questioning their true significance. Even worse, these highly amorphous and ambiguous concepts are treated empirically–a total misuse of their power.

Yes, our field is pinned by four flags, each of which make right angles with one another, but this quartet of field coordinates ought not constrict our imaginations. Inside this larger canvas, hundreds of intricate, spatial-temporal diagrams unfold each minute, microcosmical environments that our players must decipher and conquer to win. The perception and interpretation of these sub-problems is, arguably, the great challenge of sport, and what makes it so entertaining. To take information we all see on a television screen, and to digest it, finding patterns and inefficiencies, and exploiting them in real time, is precisely how players of a game shine. The athletes that are able to collect that highly democratized data, use it, and execute their creative ideas with optimal technique and timing, are the ones that pull off things we’d never even dream of.

Naturally, these sub-moments are of great complexity, but critically, are fought in smaller land patches. In order to solve any problem, we must break it down into smaller parts.

In Order to See

To help visualize this, think of a broadcast network’s camera, and its field of vision as play transpires. It is rare to find a channel showcasing a static image, with everyone moving within the picture’s frame. Instead, these cameras have operators, people whose job it is to crop the overall image into something easier to digest and enjoy. Players, in fact, are constantly doing the very same thing.

Let’s go down to ground-level and consider another analogy, this time through human eyes: think of when your grandpa returns to his book after peering out the window. At first, he takes in the tranquility of his well-manicured hedges, or the bird perched on his seedy feeder, but soon, he must adjust in order to “return” his eyes to the inside of the house, and the bound pages waiting his lap. He lifts his reading glasses from the end of his nose to the bony top, and resumes his literary adventure. The same perspective that enabled a glare at a mischievous rabbit nibbling carrots in grandpa’s garden was biologically unsuitable to read his horticultural textbook. In order to see, we must first, unsee.

By precisely the same token, the involved players in any given micro-situation must utilize these same “reading glasses” to refocus from the edges of the “true field”, to some visualized boundaries within it.

With the help of these imaginary lenses, the shapes they now perceive will define the problem at hand, allow players to assess the space, count the involved variables, and execute a solution. That smaller field of focus tunes out the noise and enables the appreciation of finer detail, of stories that they’d otherwise miss if externalities were left unblurred in full color. They ignore the painted lines for ones they paint themselves, and the resulting canvases are what propel our “artists” into the limelight.

This curious notion speaks to a critical distinction: that between the two types of “vision”. No player is ever hailed for having better optical vision than any other; it is comically unlikely that we’d find a BEIN Sports commentator with “20/20” on her player notes, so let’s not mistake grandpa’s deteriorating eyes as the takeaway here. Rather, it is this highly theoretical notion of field vision that determines who “sees things” on the field, and who doesn’t. Field vision speaks to athletes that are rapidly and skillfully able to switch lenses throughout the flow of a match. They see the garden, then the book–then perhaps the kitchen, their wife, an airplane above, and the very glasses themselves. But it is the things they miss, in entirely deliberate fashion, that enable this holistic consumption of their environment. When they see the garden, they can’t see the page’s words. When they read, the airplane is horribly out of focus. When they’re sneering at rabbits, grandma might struggle to regain their attention. When they recalibrate indoors to greet grandma, they lose sight of the pesky animal. In any particular moment, it is the dismissal of periphery that lets us visualize what matters most.

So now let’s bring this idea back to the field, this time analyzing the opposite perspective: trying to see without unseeing, first.

Imagine if we were to feed a full-field data stream into a striker on a blistering 2v1 counterattack (information on each of the 22 players’ positions, velocities, accelerations, etc.) Their mental chip would likely burst into flames. Data overload inherently detracts from processing ability–and subconsciously, we’re all aware of that fact. When our phones are running unusually slow, we x out of our idle apps.

So instead of ludicrously backpedaling on the break, in order to maximize his field of vision, our speedy striker blocks out the extraneous 1s and 0s, sharply checking over his shoulder only once for a contextual snapshot. He then narrows in on the task, assesses the edges of the formed triangle and its mercurial vertices, and scores.

If the average spectator were to stumble across a static broadcast, they’d likely clamor for the picture to “zoom in!” so they could see. Why else are the rafters filled with binocular-peering fans? Players, like fans, can only take in so much at once–and if they overwhelm themselves, they’ll succumb to paralysis by analysis.

So from what I can tell, it’s plain and simple: we’re constantly ignoring the pitch’s boundaries. The match exists and persists, “gamelike” in every sense of the word, but the game we’re playing in that single effervescent frame does not include all the extraneous components we’d otherwise rope in. It’s got fewer players, a highly specific region on the field, and undoubtedly, an entirely unique geometry. It’s almost as if our “game” changes every second we play it.

So what the hell does “gamelike” even mean? How can we possibly say that football is played in rectangles when it rarely ever truly is? When already thinking inside the box, how can we be so ignorant so as to ignore the milieu held within it?

Altered Geometry

If we fall into the trap of teaching players that the only shapes worth recognizing are the most banal, rudimentary ones–those literally painted onto the grass itself–we’re crippling their field vision more than we might realize. They’re leaving their lenses on the sidelines with their water bottles. By introducing environments that start with irregularity, i.e. training possession inside a triangle, attacking a trapezoid instead of the standard 18-yard box, practicing ball progression on a diagonal strip, or defending in an hourglass, we can “uncondition” our players into visualizing the array of complex geometries within our base rectangular one. It’s an invaluable skill.

Cleverly, this method uses the fixation on painted lines against itself. At times, it can be hard for players to decompose, visualize, and appreciate the individual patches in our quilt, as an abstraction of the tapestry at large. They’re farsighted, and trying to enjoy a book without the right lenses. Therefore, we can find ourselves interrupting the flow of games to point out shapes and connections, a la “see this diamond here? you have to recognize this diamond!”–often gesticulating wildly like a conductor before an orchestra of ghosts–but it is arguably more empathetic to demonstrate things in a manner that is more blatantly obvious.

Rather than lamenting our players’ inability to see these shadowed conformations, we can strategically alter the area inside which exercises and drills are performed, and suddenly, the group takes immediate stock of that new, uncomfortable environment.

How do we know this? Because they complain. They ask “coach, why are we doing this?” and insist that the cones be changed to suit their comfort levels. And this, this right here, is precisely why we do it. Why practice something if it’s already comfortable?

Soon enough, and after sufficient training, they begin to visualize shapes with greater ease. Drill after unique-geometry drill, they cease to argue and express their disdain, instead learning to observe their environment more closely. They’re exposed to a new exercise, examine the boundaries, and begin to conjure up clever ways in which they can decipher it.

We condition the players to see so that they can unsee their prior, primitive notions of what a “field” really looks like.

If we smoothly transition this abstraction back onto the field of play, the group will now take fewer things for granted. Instead of the field’s rectangular shape being defined as an assumption, they might begin to look around with a more cultured eye. As they examine the pitch, sudden constellations of opponents and teammates might trigger memories of playing inside those very conformations. From our instruction, they’re now equipped with reading glasses around their necks, the budding knowledge of how to recognize these more nuanced stories, and then how to behave when the circumstances more subtly arise. The result is a team of players with heightened perceptive abilities, one of the most intangible, yet differentiating qualities of any player collection.

The “Gamelike” Incongruity Rages On

Departing from the more focused, geometric argument, let’s return to this “gamelike” stumbling block, for it is ultimately the troubling foundation of this truth-seeking article.

The most damning of arguments against this controversial term can be found if we trace back the purpose of practice as an entity. The “game” is incredibly complex, and so, since the beginning of time, tackling it all at once has been largely discouraged. We design training in smaller fields, with fewer players, and the other classic reductions of our original environment, to make it easier to focus in on specific ideas or skills. We are, therefore, constantly creating these ostensibly sacrilegious abstractions and learning how to operate and interact within them. We’re creating new derivations. And this, I’d claim, is entirely against this counterintuitive notion of making training “gamelike”.

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If we insist that this “gamelike” principle means something to us, the only true option left is to simply play. Thinking in extremes often allows us to more clearly see flaws in any given solution. Even if we keep all proportional ratios the same, while reducing the field to half size (a practice lauded by the very same USSF instructors and participants), this is inherently not what we’ll do in this weekend’s tournament. With the same hoity-toity confidence, every single practice scheme we might conjure up, ought to be torn out of our notebooks. If we must train in “gamelike” scenarios, well, let’s just blow the whistle and do just that. Why do we bother designing instructional lessons and environments for our players to learn from, if they aren’t purely football?

Recognizing this argument’s absurdity, we can take a step back. We’d all likely recognize and agree that “gamelike” certainly has to include a smaller-sided training exercise, for example. If there are two goals, an attacking and defending team, along with the other usual suspects that define the sport, it appears to comfortably meet these hidden requirements, despite inherently not replicating the game.

As I’m sure some old adage goes, “all roads lead back to semantics”. The fact of the matter is, these “gamelike”-determining checkboxes were chosen by one undefined group of people. Someone, somewhere, as they pondered the definition of this newfangled adjective, said that the “gamelike” resemblance between a training activity and the true game needed to be based on criteria they, themselves, came up with. But who really defines that? Is there anything more subjective? Who’s to say whether or not something imitates football, when we all agree that we’ve got different interpretations of what the game means? It simply doesn’t add up.

The currently accepted list of comparisons, including “is the incentive for each team to score goals, in a literal sense” or “is the field a rectangle”, are based on one specific perception of football. If these are the things that define a soccer match, then so be it–but I think the sport is much more fluid than that. If an activity involves a combination of players using their hands to pass the ball, rugby tackling, and the wielding of baseball bats, sure, perhaps this isn’t terribly reflective of the skills they’ll use on matchday–and worthy of the “un-gamelike” trash toss–but everything in between is justifiably grey-area. We can’t be so ignorant so as to turn our backs on that hub of creativity. There are countless drills in which I could totally understand why a coach might not incentivize a team by making them go to goal, or why unorthodox shapes might be instructive for the players.

Unless we’re comfortable supervising scrimmages for the rest of our coaching careers, we must admit that every other training exercise isn’t “gamelike”, in the truest sense of the word, and therefore, the term quickly loses all of its meaning. It’s a pointless rabbit hole. To say that something is like another is to express a similarity through an individually evaluated lens. To discredit that is to defeat the purpose of comparison, and to suggest that “likedness” is binary–when it simply isn’t. Beauty, or in this case, similarity, is in the eye of the beholder. “Gamelikedness” is fragile, and thus, crumbles when we feebly attempt to use it.

And yet, surely enough, without anyone challenging it, this idea became an unquestioned staple of the US soccer coaching education. It’s a nice and easy metric that validates or refutes an activity based on arbitrary principles–making it incredibly challenging to justify.

Introspection for Dessert

So what do we make of all this?

The difficulty in pushing back on rigid coaching concepts is that operating in ambiguity is a skill. If someone asks how tall something is, we may stutter before surmising a reasonable attempt. When handed a ruler, we find comfort in knowing that the writing is on the wood–that there’s no choice involved, and that by simply using the tool, the answers will come. Soccer is overwhelmingly complex, and so when prospective leaders are given metrics to work with, rules to be guided by, and a gamelike bible atop which they’ll swear oath, it grants a warm feeling of possible success by removing our purportedly error-prone agency. You enter a maze with some simple criteria, ways of “always picking the best path”, and don’t have to worry about deciding which fork to walk–you just look at your map and do what it says.

But skilled maze-solvers will always have trouble respecting those that must resort to rigid, outside influences to solve the puzzle. They’re admirers of the creative process, believe that there are multiple solutions to everything, and can appreciate varying deconstructions of the merits of each split road. It’s a love of the game that drives this, a passion for its artistry, and enjoyment of the challenge–rather than the pressing need to escape.

My phrasing here runs the risk of being sanctimonious, but we mustn’t disrespect something so free and so beautiful by constraining it. In order to create art, we must first admit that the rules are ours to break. Pushing falsely-dichotomous ideas like “gamelikedness” make it easier for novices to create activities, and give them something precious to defend, but eliminate the joy in designing clever, unique, nuanced, engaging, and targeted sessions.

But critically, and as a reflection of Duke’s cautions against truth-seeking, many coaches simply aren’t in this to create art. Most are selfish and involved to realize the dreams they never achieved as players themselves; I’d be remiss to exclude myself from that category, at least to some degree. These motivations are largely rooted in the hopes of winning a trophy or two, and hoisting it ourselves. Others are more detached; they’re involved to spread the game, provide youth with an athletic outlet, build community, and more–all of which are undoubtedly noble causes.

At the end of the day, there are roles for everyone in the coaching world, ranging from those that widen the talent funnel at its base, and those that sharpen the players at its very zenith.

While it’s a shame to narrow the world-view of those just starting along their careers, perhaps it’s a necessary step in order to simply begin somewhere. Perhaps the USSF has thought it all out, after all, and the D license’s rigidity is an example of a unique geometry inside which we must learn to solve challenges as they come. Soccer coaching is, itself, an incredibly complex canvas full of potential paintings. We can’t tackle it all at once. Targeted exercises, perhaps in the form of entire licensure courses, blur out externalities and train us in highly specific situations. The more experience we build, the more funky and unusual environments we’ll be constrained by, and the better we’ll eventually become. Our coaching vision will polish. What if this argumentative prose, in and of itself, reflects the same unwavering disdain as those rebuffing the merits of unique geometries? What if the “gamelike” stipulation is teaching us to see, such that eventually, we’ll be able to unsee? Maybe it’s just one of many lenses we’ll pick up over the course of our journey. And maybe, our truth-seeking has gone so far as to forget how self-implicating our own argument truly is.

Oh, what a lovely thought that would be.

Till next time.