Enrich sorts training tasks into five types, running from least to most specific: transfers (non-hockey games), skills work, drills, micro small sided games and macro ones. Skills work only pays off individually or in very small groups, and cone-based drills he calls a waste of time with a poor return in growth, performance and motivation. The two small sided categories are where he wants practice time to go. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
Gaudi’s cathedral stands for the coach who plans everything and hands players instructions to obey. Enrich prefers the termite nest beside it: no individual holds the finished design, yet a shared set of rules produces a flexible, intelligent structure. Coach through principles rather than pre-designed patterns of movement, he argues, or you build a team that depends on you and cannot self-organise mid-game. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
Two learning theories sit behind Enrich’s method. The classical model runs perception, decision, then action, comparing what you see with stored mental representations; Gibson’s ecological approach says players perceive a field of possibilities, affordances, and act on them directly, because game speed leaves no time to recall representations. He keeps both: meetings and video for the cognitive side, small sided games for the ecological one. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
How do you build a small sided game around the high full press? Enrich keeps the design simple: award a point every time a team wins the ball back in the opposition 25. Players start hunting the ball high and early, mistakes pile up, and those mistakes become the raw material for coaching questions about pressing better. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
How much of a session with 10 to 12 year olds would Enrich hand to small sided games? The whole thing, from beginning to end, most of the time. It matches his wider view of early formation: let young players play, ideally more than one sport, with as few instructions as possible, rather than treating them as robots to be shaped step by step. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
Contrary to instinct, Enrich keeps the complexity of the game itself constant across ages; what grows is the complexity of the tactical principles. Young players cannot cope with much information, so he starts with a few inclusive core principles that make everything else possible later: facing the play, the left foot, and stick to stick for understanding passing lines. The game stays complex always. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
You can go all the way down to 1v1, Enrich confirms, and he shares a favourite: three simultaneous 1v1 duels where the defender ends each one by winning the ball, finished pairs joining duels still alive to form 2v2s and beyond. Time stops when the defenders regain the final ball, then the roles switch. Building the same game with threes and fours raises the complexity further. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
Six coaching habits undermine a small sided game, Enrich warns: excess pressure that kills flow, a diffuse focus spread over too many principles, designs that never produce the behaviour you wanted to see, punishing players who find new solutions, joystick coaching from the bench, and negative feedback. Pressure should sit at a level he describes as slightly annoying for the player, no more. Watch the full masterclass: Small Sided Games.
Ireland’s junior phases came with guidance on how much time to spend playing games and how much on physical work, after finding players were being rushed past things they had not yet got right. Physiologist Aidan McGuinness then measured heart rates and speeds across different game formats. An 8v8 on a full pitch met every fitness criterion, holding players above 85 per cent of their match maximum. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.
Hooked for Life set out what each phase of a player’s development needs. The youngest play four a side with two goals, which pushed the play sideways and meant almost everyone scored in a round robin, while older juniors play 8v8 across half a pitch each, giving 32 players and four circles instead of 22 and two. Stepping Stones courses gave parent coaches three hours on their age group. Watch the full masterclass: Changing & developing a culture.