Culture, in the language of the Aboriginal researcher Tyson Yunkaporta's people, has no direct word. Instead, they use a phrase that roughly translates as "being like our place." That is the idea this episode sits with: not culture as the backdrop to coaching, but culture as the methodology itself.

This episode grew out of a conversation with two football experts, namely Adin Osmanbašić, Assistant Manager at FC Schalke 04, and Mario Hansi, Technical Director at the Estonian Football Association, who has spent years working at the intersection of culture, identity and football development. Something Adin said in that conversation, that culture isn't the context for the methodology but the methodology itself, set off everything that follows.

In this episode: why ginga in Brazil and the quiet, individualised habits of Finnish football both come from worlds that shaped the people in them, not from training programmes. Why you can copy a club's sessions but not its culture, and why Barcelona's training plans don't produce Barcelona players. And, most importantly, why the culture is the methodology itself.

This one also connects directly to the Progressão book which is currently being translated into English — more on that soon.

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Data scouting. One of the most intriguing and fast-developing corners of professional football. Most people have seen a heat map. Very few know what a Lead Data Scout actually does on a Tuesday afternoon, or what the method can genuinely explain about a player, and where it hits a wall.

Rodrigo Picchioni built analytics department at Atlético Mineiro and now works at AS Monaco. In this conversation he crosses two worlds that rarely talk to each other directly: the rigour of data analysis and the deeper question of what we can do with data, and what not.

In this episode: what data scouting actually is, how the Monaco model differs from what Rodrigo built in Brazil, and what the hardest things to quantify reveal about the limits of the field. The Moneyball promise — has analytics democratised football, or have rich clubs simply bought both the data and the best players? A provocation from @ThePurist on the felt connection between players and audience that precedes analysis.

The most interesting version of this conversation is not data versus the eye. It is what it means to understand a footballer at all, and whether we are getting closer.

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Game models in football are discussed constantly. Most coaches have strong opinions about them, but fewer can describe their own model with depth — or stop to ask where the underlying thinking is actually leading them.

In this episode: a new paper by Jones, Kubayi, Stone and Davids that reframes what a Game Model is and what it should do. The core argument is that when a Game Model becomes a script, meaning telling players what to do in advance, it reduces their exposure to the informational complexity of the real game. The player who has learned what to do stands waiting for the right moment to execute a pattern, instead of reading what the game is actually offering. Along the way: affordances and why they appear and disappear in seconds, the difference between skill acquisition and skill adaptation, constraints-led approach, coach feedback reframed as questions that direct attention rather than prescribe solutions, and a new way of visualising the Game Model itself as a continuous infinity loop with a Transition Nexus at its centre. A Sam Allardyce anecdote about the West Ham way, too, which lands well for this context.

The thread underneath: if you're coaching from a traditional Game Model, you're trying to build a team that executes your system. If you're coaching from an ecological dynamics perspective, you're trying to build a team that reads the game and adapts.

Further reading

• Jones, G., Kubayi, A., Stone, J.A. & Davids, K. (2026). Game Models in Football Coaching: An Ecological Dynamics Perspective. International Journal of Performance Analysis in Sport.

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Representative practice is one of those ideas that sounds simple until a match shows you exactly where your training stopped being representative. France U21 against Estonia U21. Final score six to one, but the number that stayed was a specific moment that kept repeating: a lateral penetration, a final acceleration to the edge of the box, and a ball into the danger area at a pace nothing in camp had produced.

Estonia had trained for exactly this situation. Sessions with coaches crossing on the byline, three distinct end actions, defenders sliding and reading. And still the game arrived at a tempo they had never once seen in training. That is not a player problem. That is a design problem.

In this episode: representativeness and the difference between general intensity and specific intensity — and why confusing the two is one of the most common, most invisible failures in practice design. Why the problem is almost always in the design, not the player. And why "we trained that" and "we trained the version of that which actually shows up at this level" are two completely different comments.

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Metaphor is the lens through which we actually see the game. Call a player a computer and you start looking for software to upgrade. Call a team a puzzle and you start developing pieces to assemble. The metaphor decides, quietly, what counts as a problem and what counts as a solution.

In this episode: George Lakoff and Mark Johnson's foundational argument that metaphors shape how we think, not just how we speak, and what happens when you apply that to football. The reductionist family of metaphors that built modern coaching: the clock, the computer, the house, the pyramid, the toolbox, the puzzle. And the newer family challenging them: the radio, Tim Ingold's lines and meshworks, Bruce Lee's water, Rob Gray's Matrix. A study by Thibodeau and Boroditsky showing how a single metaphor change — beast versus virus — shifts what solutions people reach for. And what it actually means for coaching if skill is a relation rather than a possession.

The thread underneath: the metaphors we inherit are not neutral. They highlight some things and hide others. And the ones football has lived by for decades may be leaking the most important parts of the game away.

Further reading

• Lakoff, G. & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors We Live By. University of Chicago Press.
• Thibodeau, P. & Boroditsky, L. (2011). Metaphors We Think With: The Role of Metaphor in Reasoning. PLOS ONE.
• Ingold, T. (2015). The Life of Lines. Routledge.
• Brette, R. (2022). Brains as Computers: Metaphor, Analogy, Theory or Fact?. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution.
• Sontag, S. (1966). Against Interpretation. Farrar, Straus and Giroux.

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Resonance starts as a simple idea from physics. Pluck a guitar string and the body of the instrument starts to vibrate with it. Two systems, coupled, moving together.

James Gibson used the word as a synonym for attunement, to describe something much bigger: the way a perceiving organism tunes itself to the information in its environment. A great defender doesn't compute the game from inside his head. He resonates with it.

In this episode, the first in the new monologue format, the conversation moves from Gibson's original intuition to the work of Vicente Raja, who has spent the last decade turning resonance from a metaphor into a testable scientific framework. Along the way: Anderson's neural reuse, tau-coupling, a study showing ecological resonance in human brain activity, Rúben Dias as a worked example, and what all of this means for how we design training environments. A small detour through Tim Ingold's "lines" too, because they turn out to describe the same phenomenon from a different angle.

The thread underneath all of it: the player and the game are not two things interacting. They are one coupled system, and the coach's job is to build the conditions in which that coupling can develop.

Vicente Raja's research

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Welcome to the Progressão podcast.

As Progressão now continues in English, we are revisiting some of our earlier Discussão conversations — episodes that have stayed with us and still feel highly relevant today.

In this episode, we are joined by Dr. Vicente Raja, a researcher working at the intersection of ecological psychology, neuroscience, and philosophy. His work explores the relationship between brain, behaviour, and environment through ideas such as radical embodiment and resonance.

In this conversation, we dive into these concepts and reflect on what they might mean for understanding skill, learning, and coaching. A thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion that connects science, philosophy, and practice.

Vicente Raja on ResearchGate

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Welcome to the Progressão podcast.

In this episode, we continue our journey from drills and games, through situations, and now into one of the key concepts of ecological dynamics: representative design.

In football, training often looks organised, structured, and even very “game-like”. But does it truly represent the demands players face in matches?  In this episode, we explore how learning depends on the relationship between the player and the environment, especially on the information available, how it is perceived, and how action emerges from it. We discuss key ideas such as perception–action coupling and action fidelity, and why even small differences in timing, spacing, or pressure can completely change player behaviour.

Through practical examples, from finishing and pressing to rondos and positional games, we reflect on why some exercises transfer to the game, while others only appear to. Representative design is about identifying the essential elements of football situations and bringing those into training in a meaningful way.

Articles mentioned in the episode:

Pinder, R. A., Davids, K., Renshaw, I., & Araújo, D. (2011). Representative learning design and functionality of research and practice in sport. Journal of Sport and Exercise Psychology, 33(1), 146–155.
Full article

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. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 16(Part 1), 83–90.
Full article

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Welcome to the Progressão podcast.

In our previous episode, we questioned the common debate around drills versus games and explored whether this is the right way to understand training in football. This week, we take the discussion further and focus on small-sided games and situation-based exercises.

Small-sided games are widely used in modern coaching and are often seen as an ideal way to train the game. But are they always representative of what actually happens in matches? In this episode, we explore some of the limitations of small-sided games, from differences in distances and timing to how pressure is experienced in real situations. From there, we introduce another approach that may complement small-sided games: situation-based exercises.

Football is not just a continuous flow, it is made up of recurring situations. Build up under pressure, press releases, lateral penetration, defending crosses. These moments appear again and again, and becoming skilful means learning to act effectively within them.

Through concrete examples, we discuss how training can be designed to reflect these situations more closely, connecting players to meaningful information in the game environment.

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Welcome to the Progressão podcast.

In this episode, we take on one of the most common debates in football coaching:

drills versus games.

Should players first learn technique through repetition, and then apply it in the game? Or should learning take place directly through game-like situations?

These questions are often discussed as if they represent two separate methods. But in this episode, we suggest that this might be the wrong way to look at training altogether.

Building on our earlier discussions around ecological dynamics and skill, we explore how different theoretical perspectives — especially information-processing and ecological approaches — shape the way coaches design training.

We discuss why the distinction between drills and games can be misleading, how the same exercise can be understood in very different ways, and why learning in football may be better understood as a holistic, relational process rather than a collection of isolated parts.

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