Football Philosophy

The Football Club Roanoke, is beholden to ideals that will serve as the underpinning for how players are developed in their youth, trained in their teenage years, and guided as they reach the senior team. Players will be developed technically and tactically together with synergy.  While some clubs hold to individual technical development as the primary pillar for early youth, we have found driving technical development within a team frame work is more conducive to developing players who are technically and tactically astute.  Senior players will work within a frame work that is tactically flexible within the principles of play.

The fundamental principles of play are rooted in mastering time and space.  Mastering time is technically driven while mastering space is tactically driven.

Time: technical development is an individual journey of each player that is correlated with their love for the game.  It is a factor each player can  control within reason.  A wall and a ball done right can  go a long way.  Free-unstructured play can go along way in aiding the development of youth players.  For senior players, time is the product of exhibiting technical mastery developed over a long playing career and fine tuned with the help of coaches and trainers. 

Space: Mastering space is grounded in the tactical understanding of each player and the decisions they make.  This includes shoulder checking to observe where the space is to attack or defend; when and where space is available to create overloads in the attack; as well as when to pressure the ball on defense, provide cover, and or provide balance. Tactical understanding relative to age and playing level should be apparent in how players approach receiving  and manipulating the ball when in their possession.  To quote Johan Cryuff , "Playing football is very simple, but playing simple football is the hardest thing there is "

Principles: Attacking is possession and decision based; building through the thirds, utilizing positional play at times and/or creating numerical overloads with the intent to attack specific space to create high quality scoring chances. Defending is rooted in pressing and counter pressing with the tactical understanding of holding a mid block and a low block within game management.  Principles can be taught and instilled in any player at any level  at any age.

Some principles of play can be seen in the following videos  by teams coached by Coach Larry (videos from U13 ) ( additional context the same team spent the previous year and a half learning the principles of play starting when most were 11 years old and behind for their age.  What is depicted in the videos is their first successful season after learning many hard lessons.):