Progressão

#212 Tigers don't live in chaos: reading the leaves, the sounds, the wind

Football has chaotic moments. Watching them, a coach might think the training needs more chaos too. Fair enough. But what is chaos. The word has slipped into coaching conversations. It is a technical term. However, it does not mean what we think it means. Tuomas Iisalo once said the game is a jungle and a zoo. The training too often is the zoo. The game is the jungle. But a jungle is not chaos. The tiger reads the leaves, the sounds, the wind. A tiger that lived in chaos would not last a week. Fifteen minutes on a small misunderstanding. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#211 DISCUSSÃO MUNDO: Daud Sihombing – the writer who watches from afar

From Jakarta, Daud Sihombing watches football. He writes about it, edits it, publishes it. Halftime Speech is a football magazine that comes out of Indonesia, not out of London or Madrid or São Paulo. Petrikor Books is his publishing house, built around the idea that the questions matter more than the answers. In 2025 he published On Publishing Practice, nearly a decade of essays about what it means to make things for people. The book does not conclude. It thinks. He is an AS Roma fan who has never been to Italy. Never seen them play in person. He watches one of Europe's most storied clubs from the other side of the world, from a country that European football barely notices. From that distance, he sees things that insiders cannot. That is what this conversation is about. Skill, and what it means in Indonesia. What the game looks like from the outside of the mainstream. What Southeast Asian football carries and what it is still searching for. And why the non-mainstream view can be very interesting and fresh. Welcome to Discussão Mundo. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão The Progressão book is on its way in English, more on that soon.

#210 Enskilment: how coaches become skilful

Last week we reopened the word education through its Latin root educere, to lead out. This week we go one step further, into enskilment. Enskilment comes from the anthropologist Tim Ingold, and it names something most of us already know but rarely have language for: the process by which a person becomes deeply skilful not through instruction, but through long, embodied immersion in a real landscape, alongside people who are already skilled in it. A child in a fishing village who absorbs the whole culture of fishing without ever being formally taught. A blacksmith's apprentice who moves, over years, from the edge of the work toward the centre. Today we look at enskilment through a 2025 paper by Selimi and Woods, which proposes a completely different model of coach education in Australian football. In this episode: why the transmissive model of coach education — lectures, curricula, classrooms — produces coaches who can pass an exam but struggle to coach. The three interwoven dimensions of a situated model: real-world exposure, legitimate peripheral participation, and mentorship. Jean Lave and Étienne Wenger's communities of practice, and why the apprenticeship structure most modern education abandoned is still how humans actually become skilful. What Australian coaches themselves said they wanted from coach education — and why the blockage is in the structure, not the coaches. And what a next-generation coach education pathway could look like. Coaches grow in landscapes. That is where the learning has to happen. Further reading * Selimi, E. & Woods, C.T. (2025). Enskilment into the coaching landscape: towards a situated approach to coach education in Australian football [https://doi.org/10.1080/13573322.2024.2318396]. Sport, Education and Society, 30(4), 413–426. * Lascu, A., Wood, M., Moulds, K. & Davids, K. (2024). Coach education as 'leading out with an experienced other' [https://doi.org/10.1080/21640629.2024.2343571]. Sports Coaching Review, 13(2), 277–292. The Progressão book is on its way in English — more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#209 Leading out: coach education as an ecological phenomenon

The word education comes from the Latin educere — to lead out. Not to fill in or to pour into. To lead out. Today's episode is the first of two on a subject that is one of the most under-examined corners of the football world: how coaches learn to coach. We walk through a 2024 paper by Lascu, Wood, Moulds and Davids that reframes coach education as an ecological phenomenon — and in doing so, turns the same argument we have been making about player development directly onto ourselves. In this episode: why the transmission model of coach education — curriculum, content blocks, workshops, licences — contradicts the very pedagogy we are increasingly asking coaches to use with players. Two concepts worth carrying into conversations about coach development: guidance without specification, and attentive dwelling. The idea of an evolving correspondence between mentor and mentee, and why it is the heart of what leading out actually means. The difference between knowledge about coaching and knowledge of coaching — and why our current model is wildly tilted toward the wrong one. Not more workshops. Long walks. Further reading * Lascu, A., Wood, M., Moulds, K. & Davids, K. (2024). Coach education as 'leading out with an experienced other' [https://doi.org/10.1080/21640629.2024.2343571]. Sports Coaching Review, 13(2), 277–292. The Progressão book is on its way in English — more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#208 Not every rep at the red line: a case for varying training intensity

Last week we split the word intensity in two. Good intensity, effort as the natural consequence of a clear read. Bad intensity, effort as decoration. This week we take that split into the training session. Because something strange has happened in football over the last decade. The word intensity, having conquered how we talk about matches, has now conquered how we talk about sessions. Every rep at match pace or above. If you are not in the red zone, you are not really working. There is truth in some of this, but there is also a serious mistake buried in it. In this episode: why nobody has ever proved that constant high intensity is the optimal design for learning football over the long arc from age five to twenty-five. What javelin throwers, cross-country skiers and judokas have known for decades that football has somehow forgotten. The wood-chopping image returns — why slow is often where the real learning happens. What a rep actually is in an ecological design, and why counting touches misses most of what is happening. Why the active playing time metric, taken as the measure of session quality, quietly drifts sessions toward bad intensity. And what deliberately varied training intensity looks like on a football pitch. The Progressão book is on its way in English — more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#207 The intensity illusion: why "more intensity" is football's most misused instruction

Everyone in football uses the word intensity. Federations put it first in their principles. Coaches demand it. Analysts measure it. But what does it mean? Today's episode is about splitting the word in two. Because intensity is doing at least two very different jobs in football — and confusing them is the source of a lot of confused coaching. In this episode: why "more intensity" is often just "fight harder" wearing a nicer coat. The wood-chopping test, meaning why intensity without skill is flailing. What good intensity is: not effort as decoration, but effort as the natural consequence of a clear read. Insights from Joni Ruuskanen, physical performance specialist at the Football Association of Finland, on what actually separates top players in high-intensity moments, and why Julián Álvarez and Pernille Harder win duels their physique alone shouldn't win. Why sprint metrics tell us what is different between levels, but not why. And what it would mean to change what the word intensity means inside your sessions. Good, skillful intensity is knowing where to look and when to move. That is what we should coach. The Progressão book is on its way in English, more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#206 DISCUSSÃO MUNDO: Mike Keeney – American soccer, skill, and what thirty years across continents teaches you

Thirty years in football across five continents. The US, Finland, Slovakia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, including a stint in the UEFA Europa League. Mike Keeney has seen the game from enough angles to have well-informed opinions about what actually develops a player. He now leads the MLS NEXT program at Hoover-Vestavia Soccer in Birmingham, Alabama, and shapes the next generation of American coaches as an instructor on the US Soccer A Licence course. He holds a UEFA Pro Licence. In this conversation: what moving between football cultures teaches you about skill, and what gets left behind when you come home. The honest state of American soccer after a World Cup on home soil. Whether the cultural tendency toward athleticism over improvisation is really changing, or just being discussed. What an elite development environment looks like in Birmingham, Alabama in 2026. And, the pay-to-play model and how much potential the system isn't seeing. The Progressão book is on its way in English — more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#205 Emotion is not noise: affective learning design in football

A training session can be tactically representative with right distances, pressure, opponent behaviours, and still be missing something important. The feeling in the stomach before a decisive pass. The exhaustion of a fifth game in two weeks. The awareness that this moment might decide qualification. That ingredient has a name in the ecological dynamics literature: affect. And the conceptual framework related to it is called Affective Learning Design. Today we walk through the 2015 paper by Headrick, Renshaw, Davids, Pinder, and Araújo that framed this idea, and what it means for how we build sessions. In this episode: the difference between cold cognition and hot cognition, and why removing emotion from training doesn't clean it up but thins it out. Why emotion sharpens perception and strengthens memory, and what that means for which skills players carry into the game. The two principles of Affective Learning Design, and how to use them. Practical moves: vignettes, stakes, scrutiny, individualisation. Studies from dart throwing, police handgun training, basketball free throws, gymnastics and football, all pointing the same direction. Emotion is not noise. It is a constraint that shapes what a player perceives, decides and does. Time to design for it. Further reading * Headrick, J., Renshaw, I., Davids, K., Pinder, R.A. & Araújo, D. (2015). The dynamics of expertise acquisition in sport: The role of affective learning design [https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2014.08.006]. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 16(1), 83–90. The Progressão book is on its way in English — more on that soon. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#204 Manage the madness: three futsal principles football should steal

Futsal is football's close cousin. Similar game logic, smaller space, less forgiveness. A bad angle shows up immediately, a lazy arrival is a shot on your own net. That density has forced futsal coaches to develop sharper language for certain moments than football coaches need to. Today we are going on a raid, walking into the futsal world to borrow three principles, the language and intentions that carry them, and bring them back to the football pitch. In this episode: why "manage the madness" is a great instruction and intention for a duel. What it actually means to "arrive with the ball", and why getting that timing right is a perceptual skill we often don't train. And "be electric" — the defender who keeps moving in small deceptive ways at set pieces, giving the deliverer conflicting information rather than being the statue the attacker is hoping for. All of the principles describe a way of being in the moment: alive, reading, adjusting. Steal them. 🌍 More at progressao.fi  📷 Instagram @progressaofi  👥 LinkedIn @Project Progressão

#203 In the storm and the silence: Turner, Pärt, and football as art

Two artists. One tied himself to the mast of a ship in a real storm because painting storms from the shore was no longer enough. The other went silent for years — already recognised, already capable — because the music he was making was not yet the music that was truly his. One found the storm from the inside. The other found the silence, and from it, a new form the whole world now listens to. Today's episode is a slower one. We are sitting with J.M.W. Turner, the English painter, and Arvo Pärt, the Estonian composer, and thinking about what they might have to say to football. How they felt the world, and what we could learn from them. In this episode: what Turner's storm paintings — before and after he sailed into a real storm — tell us about the difference between observing the game and being inside it. Why the other Turner lesson is knowing when to put the brush down. Pärt's tintinnabuli, two voices that become one sound, and what it means for a small football nation to stop copying the big ones and find its own two notes. And why the crisis, the silence, the emptiness before new form arrives, is not something to escape but something to trust. The storm. The silence.