Coach's Library · Tactical Analysis

ElJdP: Reading the Game the Way the Best Coaches See It

A positional-play library that trains your eye, not just your notebook.

Cam Jolley

Co-Founder & Academy Coach, Coach Central

For me, ElJdP is one of the best places to slow the game down and actually see the positional relationships underneath it — but only if you turn what you read into something your players get to experience.

Why I keep it open

El Juego de Posición — the positional game — is the whole point of the account. Honestly, what I like is that it does not just show you a nice pattern and move on; it tries to explain the relationships that make the pattern work. Where the free player is, how you attract pressure to open the space next to it, why one body position lets a player receive and see the whole field. That is the layer under the pattern, and it is the layer I actually want my players to understand.

The trap I try to avoid

Here is the thing I have to be honest about with myself. It is really easy to read something like this, feel smart, and then go run the exact same session I was always going to run. Reading is not developing. My players do not gain anything from me knowing what a third-man combination is — they gain when they get put in a game where a third-man combination is the answer, and they have to find it themselves. So for me the question after every article is the same: what did the players get out of this, not what did I get out of it.

How I read it as a coach

I do not read this to copy a shape. I read it to sharpen what I am looking for on my own field. If ElJdP breaks down how a team frees a midfielder between the lines, I do not go install that team's rotation with a group of thirteen-year-olds. I ask a smaller question — do my players even recognize when a teammate is free between the lines, and do they have the decision to use them? Then I design a game where that decision keeps showing up. The analysis tells me what to see. The training is where the players learn to solve it.

How I'd use it this week

Pick one relationship from an ElJdP piece — say, freeing a player between the lines. Do not explain it. Build a small-sided game where that pass is the best available answer, then watch whether your players find it on their own before you say a word.

Takeaways

Use it to train your eye for positional relationships, not to copy a professional team's shape onto kids.
Reading tactics is not the same as developing players — convert every idea into a decision your players have to make.
The best question after any analysis piece is 'what would my players actually gain from this?'

Read the original

El Juego de Posición (ElJdP). Positional-play analysis and tactical writing. eljdp.medium.com/

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