A journey

[Bergmann]

I always dreamt that I am gonna be a manager.

Now as I graduate from university at my home town and found out that I don’t want to work in businness, the perfect moment came to step into the managerial carrier. I learnt Business Administration and Management in Pécs, Hungary, in English. In my spare time I took the National C coaching licence, and worked as an assistant for a friend of mine in Grassroots level.

This was fun, and I really enjoyed every minute and I learned so much about football and about the teams.

As I graduated, I counted my saved money, and found out that It could be enough to survive for a few months in any country.
It was Monday, 21st of May eating my oatmeal for breakfast. And the moment came when I decided to make action and seeking a job in full time or part-time, but the full-time one is preferred of course.

Footy is an universal language so I guessed that I would apply to any opportunities regardless of country or language spoken. English will help me out, and I can learn a new language or two quite easily.

I made my registration to LinkedIn hoping to find opportunities. There were some advertisements from all over the world, mainly from Poland, and Denmark. Three of them were interesting to me, but I only applied to GKS Katowice and Tarup-Paarup Idrætsforening. The first one was a level above me I knew but i wanted to give it a try. The other one is an amateur/ semi-pro club so basically a good start to my carrier. Limited sources and limited players, but I can acquire enough experience to step above later.

As I expected GKS Katowice rejected me, but the Danish Club accepted my application. The only constraint in the situation that they cannot pay me enough to work full-time. I have to start to look for a part-time job. Later I can quit it if TPI offers me a full-time contract or I can move onward to a bigger club.

 

This is enough for an introduction, next time I would like to speak about my philosophy and ideas that I would like to implement at the club, and throughout my carrier.

[Bergmann]

I am highly inspired in my coaching and tactical philosophy by Pep Guardiola mainly, but I have to mention other historic coaches also, such as Sacchi, Valeriy Lobanovskyi. I like Jörgen Klopp's pressing idea so I would like to implement it later in my carrier when I will have the proper players for it. 

At the beginning I have to deal with limited sources and limited abilities. My only hope is that they will be open to new and progressive ideas I would like to work with. And don't forget my opponents are limited too in our own level, so I try to be optimistic. 

This post is not a linear one as I would like to introduce my philosophy in a more detailed way, because this is going to be permanent in my carrier, with small changes related to my players' capabilities and the actual situations.

First and foremost, I would like to play with the ball, as long as we don't have the ball we cannot play with it. In my opininon we can simplify football into two phases: ball-possession and recovering the ball-possession. I know about the transitions and they are important aspects of the game but they are only applicable in the relation of the former two. This means my defending is going to be about recovering the ball as soon as possible and as close as possible to the opponent's goal. Of course I will have to make some compromises because of the level of the players, but I will try to implement my philosophy as deeply as I can.

My preffered formations are: 4-2-3-1/4-3-3 and the variations of these. I would like to find the best roles and duties for my players, but the main guidelines are going to be the same.

I don't have enough experience in the adult football so I have to prepare for interacting with the players in a proper manner, and I have a lot to improve in terms of coaching methodology, but I have the motivation to do so.

In the first matches of the season I found out that my players are not capable of pulling out any higher level tactics, so I tried to reduce the instructions given, helping them to simplify the game. 

After a few weeks passed I found some success with a 4-2-3-1, with a shorter passing tactic and counterpressing. I mean I gave them nearly these two instructions. Interesting for me, that I gave them the countering instruction in transition, this altered their play that they are trying to play the ball in a more diagonal way instead of a more horizontal approach. We became a bit more direct but our posession percentages are the same, so I am satisfied with this.

I am working with two inside forwards one with a more attacking intent, the forward instructed to get further forward, trying to open spaces by pushing the defensive line deeper. My central midfield partnership is quite conservative, each of them is instructed to be more defending, this gives me a solid presence in the middle of the pitch. 

As you see this is a very basic approach, but any attempts with a more complex approach failed. I hope I can progress to a more specific and higher level tactical approach later in my carrier.

In my next post I will introduce the club where I'm beginning my carrier, and I will show some results.