Progressão

You are eleven years old. You love football. This game is yours. Then a piece of paper somewhere, a meeting you were never in, and a word gets attached to your name. Or doesn't. That word is talent. We have used it for decades like a flashlight, searching young bodies for something hidden inside them, something we could find if we looked hard enough, early enough. Find it, take it, water it....

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 Osmanb...

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 conversatio...

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 scrip...

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 h...

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, no...

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 h...

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 betwe...

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 depend...

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 t...

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 sug...

Welcome to the Progressão podcast. In Episode 187, we opened the discussion around game intelligence by revisiting the more traditional definitions of the concept — a view where game intelligence is often treated as a separate cognitive component involving perception, anticipation, and decision-making.  This week, we take the discussion further. Or perhaps more accurately, we take it back to natur...

Welcome to the Progressão podcast. This week, we open a discussion around one of the most used, and perhaps least clearly understood, concepts in football: game intelligence. What do we actually mean when we say that a player has great game intelligence? Is it the ability to see passes others do not see? To position intelligently? To make the right decision at the right time? In football, terms su...

Welcome to Discussão , our monthly episode where we explore skill, learning, and human performance with leading voices from sport, science, and beyond. In this episode, we are joined by Jarkko Tuomisto , a top goalkeeper coach whose journey from Finland has taken him across continents, leagues, and football cultures, from Aspire Academy and Ajax Amsterdam to Independiente del Valle and İstanbul Ba...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our exploration of learning environments by turning to something simple, yet powerful: pelada . Pelada is informal football that is played in streets, beaches, backyards, wherever space allows. The word itself means “naked”, and that captures something essential. These are environments without structure, without coaches, without predefined sys...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our discussion on enskilment. This time we focus on the role of environment and culture in becoming skilful. What kind of environments do players grow in? And how do those environments shape the way they perceive and act? We explore skill as something that develops within a human–environment system , where surroundings, people, history, and cu...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our exploration of enskilment and turn our focus toward what this perspective means for teaching and learning . In the previous episode, we introduced enskilment as a way of understanding how skills develop through active engagement with the environment. Drawing from the work of anthropologist Tim Ingold and the ecological psychology of James...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we begin a new series on becoming skilful in football and in human life. We explore the concept of enskilment , developed especially by anthropologist Tim Ingold and rooted in James Gibson’s ecological psychology. Enskilment invites us to see skill as something that grows through participation in a living world. We explore how becoming skilful is a proces...

Welcome to Progressão. As Progressão now continues fully in English, we are revisiting some of our earlier Discussão Mundo conversations — episodes that were especially meaningful, widely listened to, and that still feel highly relevant today. This episode is one of those. Here, we speak with Professor Duarte Araújo, Director of the Laboratory of Expertise in Sport at the University of Lisbon and...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our exploration of football as a complex phenomenon , focusing on sub-groups and local coordination . Beyond the game and team levels, football performance also emerges within smaller units: defensive lines, midfield triangles, or players operating on one side of the pitch. At this scale, what matters is how players coordinate their movements...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our exploration of football as a complex phenomenon , focusing on the internal logic of the game and how this logic shapes team-level dynamics . Football is often described through phases of play or isolated tactical actions. From a complex systems perspective, however, the game can be understood as a continuous interaction between two teams,...

Welcome to the Progressão podcast. Today’s episode starts our discussion on football as a complex phenomenon. This time, we focus especially on the different levels, or scales, of the game . Football is often analysed by breaking it into parts: phases of play, technical actions, tactical structures, or physical demands. While these perspectives can be useful, they can also fragment our understandi...

Discussão Mundo Revisited Before we begin, a short note on why we’re sharing this episode again. As Progressão now continues fully in English, we also want to revisit and republish some of our earlier Discussão Mundo episodes — conversations that were listened to the most and that still feel highly relevant today. This episode is one of those. Here, we speak with Niklas Moisander , former captain...

What happens when players become highly technical, but less effective in the game? In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we introduce generic forcing , a concept we developed to describe behaviour where players try to impose rehearsed technical solutions onto the game, instead of adapting their behaviour to what the situation actually offers. We explore how generic forcing emerges when techni...

In this episode of the Progressão podcast, we continue our discussion on skill in football . While skill is often understood as an individual quality — something that belongs to a single player — this episode explores skill from a wider perspective: as a phenomenon that also emerges at the level of groups and teams . We ask why it is important to talk about group-level skill. When skill is underst...