E11S01 Mark O'Sullivan AIK Stockholm Youth Coach

Functional Football Podcast

In Episode 11, we speak to Mark O’Sullivan (@markstkhlm), youth coach at AIK Stockholm in Sweden. Mark is a coach educator, a consultant, completing a PhD and founder of the footblogball blog. Mark chats about designing learning spaces from an ecological dynamics perspective, where tasks are representative of the game, where perception and action is coupled, using repetition without repetition and promoting an external focus of attention. Mark discusses designing sessions where players search discover and exploit gaps and space using football interactions. Sessions that move away from theme based sessions and give more autonomy to the decision making of young players. Mark also outlines the importance of the relationship between player and the learning and the interactions within the learning space.