Michael Paule-Carres - Head of F7 Methodology at RCD Espanyol

In this conversation, Alf Gracombe speaks with Michael Paule-Carres, head of F7 methodology at RCD Espanyol, about his journey from the U.S. to coaching in Spain. They discuss the importance of values-based player development, the application of Montessori methods in coaching, and the significance of understanding player development stages. Michael emphasizes the role of methodology in coaching, the cultural values at Espanyol, and the benefits of mixed-age training. They explore constraints-based learning, adapting coaching to individual needs, and the transition from 7-a-side to 11-a-side football. The conversation concludes with insights on coaching philosophy, continuous learning, and recommended resources for coaches.

On YouTube at https://youtu.be/MofZbFgRLPM

For more information about CoachCraft, visit https://coachcraft.info.

Chapters

• 0:00 Introduction
• 2:12 From Virginia to Barcelona: A Unique Path
• 7:50 The Allure of Spanish Football
• 10:51 Understanding Coaching Methodology at RCD Espanyol
• 13:49 The Role of Values in Player Development
• 16:56 Cultural Identity and Club Values
• 20:17 Montessori Methods in Coaching
• 23:23 Adapting Coaching to Player Development
• 26:20 The Complexity of Football Learning
• 29:14 Creating Effective Learning Environments
• 32:16 Future Directions
• 39:38 Understanding Unity in Team Play
• 42:02 Visual Learning and Game Film in Youth Training
• 45:02 Positional Play: Balancing Structure and Freedom
• 49:20 Transitioning from 7-a-side to 11-a-side
• 55:13 Navigating Coaching Resources and Knowledge
• 1:00:33 Embracing Complexity in Coaching
• 1:11:03 Episode Summary

Transcript

Michael Paule-Carres 
The whole idea of exercise design is that the construction of the spaces, how you're organizing players in space and then how you're creating certain conditions upon the play are going to inherently upregulate certain behaviors, that you want your players to be repeating over and over again so that they're able to get as much trial and error about what works, what doesn't work, what tension of pass works, what direction the pass works, what decision is for when to pass versus when to dribble works. It's not me telling them what to do and when to do it. It's much more that the environment itself is making it more favorable for them to get their own experience with this process.

Alf Gracombe 
Welcome to CoachCraft a podcast that delves into the craft of coaching youth athletes. Through in-depth conversations with coaches at every level, from grassroots to professional, we uncover not only the philosophies and methods that shape how they develop young players, but also what the journey of coaching means to them personally. Join us as we go beyond coaching cliches and conventional wisdom to reveal the specific practices and insights that make great coaches truly exceptional at their craft.

Today I'm excited to welcome Michael Paule-Carres head of F7 methodology at La Liga Club RCD Espanyol de Barcelona. Michael brings a unique perspective as an American who has successfully established himself in Spanish professional football. At Espanyol, he's responsible for developing the methodology for their seven-a-side academy teams, where he's implementing innovative approaches that blend educational principles with football development.

What I find fascinating about his work, and I think you will too, is how he's applying pedagogical concepts from Montessori education and motor learning science to create autodidactic environments where young players can develop through guided discovery rather than direct instruction. His approach to youth development bridges pedagogical theory with practical football training in ways that could benefit coaches at all levels. I hope you enjoy this conversation with Michael Paule-Carres

Alf Gracombe 
Michael Paul-Carres, welcome to the CoachCraft podcast. Great to have you on the show.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Thank

Perfect, Alf. Thanks for having me.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah. And, ⁓ good afternoon to you. Good morning to me. I'm in Boston. you're in Barcelona and, I want to start actually for our listeners to get a quick, understanding of how you came to be, in Barcelona and what you do. One of the things, ⁓ that I've. Find really interesting about you is that you're American born grew up in America and now you coach, ⁓ in Spain at, RCD Espanyol

the club in Barcelona and I will say also like as an American and as a coach like there's a certain pride I have in seeing an American one of our own you know now working at one of the elite academies in Europe so interesting story there but I'd love for you to tell it a little bit just where you started and how you got there.

Michael Paule-Carres 
of course. So I was born in rural Virginia. ⁓ What happens? My parents are from Chicago. ⁓ didn't play the game, but they had some sort of connection to it just from the 70s when Beckenbauer, Pelé were there in the NASL. So through that, I had a brother who's 10 years older than me. I still have a brother. ⁓ And he always played because my dad enjoyed the game. And that was it.

So I always was surrounded by it, even though, let's say, in my surrounding, you have your typical sports culture in the United States. Everybody plays multi-sports. If you're going to play soccer, then you're going to play in the spring, in our case in Virginia. Whatever, it was mine. It was what I loved. Exposure to the game was really difficult to come by, but when you had it, it was gold. So that was more or less my childhood, trying to play it as much as can in the backyard. had exchange students coming with us for a year. That was my...

That was my, let's say how I learned. That was how I learned everything. ⁓ Ended up playing through to university. I went to a small division three school in Michigan, Kalamazoo College. ⁓ Loved playing, but didn't see a career. I never really had my eyes open to going into coaching as a career, going into scouting as a career, anything like that. So I finished my degree in chemistry, went and worked in that for two years and hated it.

and got to an inflection point in my life where I was gonna say, all right, am I gonna go in and do a master's degree or whatever it would be in hard sciences, or am I gonna switch tack and go into something that's more of interest to me? I talked to my father about it, who has a PhD, and he said, look, if you're gonna go into academia or that type of route, you need to make sure that you love it, because that's going to be more or less your life. And I had this sense that that was going to mean

me giving up, watching however many games a week, ⁓ reading about the game, all of that. ⁓ So I quickly switched tack. I came to Spain in 2016. ⁓ I did an MBA in sports management at that point through Real Madrid ⁓ Started coaching because I had the idea that I was going to be in Spain for one or two years, get a little bit of experience, get a little bit of...

bit of exposure and connections with people in the game to then come back to the United States and build something there. ⁓ What happens is that after you do it for one or two years, you start to see number one, I like doing it, and number two, I have the capabilities to do it in Spain. So that was that. Started coaching, I was coaching at an amateur team, but within let's say the Spanish pyramid for the first couple of years. ⁓

after COVID came and hit and kind of put a lot of things on pause, that became sort of an accelerator for me. So I had a bunch of free time and nothing else to do but watch old matches and read as many books as I can and try to start to write down my thoughts a lot more. ⁓ And so after that kind of eased off, went and did a Masters through La Liga, through some of my work and writings in that, ⁓ I got picked up at Espanyol So the director of the master was the assistant sporting director at that time.

⁓ Brought me in on an internship basis and then in 2023-24 I joined on a full-time basis. I'm still here to this day.

Alf Gracombe 
Amazing. So you and I have something in common. We were both born in Virginia. ⁓ I grew up in Northern Virginia, which was actually a pretty big hotbed of soccer at the time. I'm older than you, Fairfax County. ⁓ And so, you know, I remember the

Michael Paule-Carres 
I know a way.

Where in Northern Virginia? Okay, give me that.

Alf Gracombe 
You mentioned the NASL, right? The Diplomats were the Dips, you know, were the team in DC. And so, Johan Cruyff, you know, played there for a couple of seasons. So I saw him play. ⁓ I'm old enough to have seen Cruyff play, actually saw Pelé play for the Cosmos as well at the very end of his career. ⁓ so I was in a pretty rich soccer environment relative to U.S. standards for sure. But it sounds like you were, you said rural Virginia, where, were you born and grew up exactly?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm.

No, it-

I was from Winchester. this is

the thing, is that my brother and I, I mean, did we have a high school that was strong for its context? Yes. But normally if you were a player that wanted to compete and wanted to go to the next level, then yeah, you had to get in your car and drive an hour and a half. I was driving into Alexandria when I was 17, 18 years old to go and play. Why? Because that's where the players were, that's where the clubs were, and that's how you were able to compete in the Division I, at that point, league.

Alf Gracombe 
Yep.

Michael Paule-Carres 
That was before you had ECNL or MLS Next or anything that was going to be more regional based. I mean, yeah, like if you're from Fairfax, you understand that was and still is a hotbed. The accessibility was a big issue because not everyone wants to drive an hour and half to go to train three times a week, four times a week, and then have two matches on a weekend.

Alf Gracombe 
All right.

Absolutely, yeah.

Right. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, we had some of the biggest, you know, youth tournaments were hosted right there in Northern Virginia, Richmond, also another area that had a lot of youth football. ⁓ So, yeah, anyway, interesting. So you after college, you made this decision to go to Spain. So why Spain? What what drew you to that?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Hehe.

Number one, I had done a study abroad experience in Spain. I was here for three months, enjoyed it. Felt like I had, I don't want to say unfinished business, but you're only there for three months, you just start to get your feet wet a little bit. So I wanted to have a little bit more time here to really get a sense of, okay, what it is to live here, especially being 26 instead of 21. It's whole different experience. The licensing, a little I know that there was

licensing headaches here just as they're everywhere else. But just the idea that you can start at what would be equivalent to a B license in your first year and pay, what is it, 1,000 euros to do it is a lot more attractive than having to go through a whole grassroots schedule. And then at that point, you had the E license, D license, C license, and then get accepted into a B license. So it's mostly that. then just the understanding that here, you're learning from a culture.

that has proved to have excellence, ⁓ not just in terms of winning a World Cup, although that's a massive thing, but in terms of the percentage of domestic players that are in La Liga, ⁓ which is going to show a certain pedigree of player development processes that exist here. Not just here, but then also players that are going abroad. Things that if you look at the number of professional players that are developed, Spain's, I want to say third, behind Brazil and France, which has its own

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Context that you have to respect which is predominance of street football in both of those countries still So when you're in Spain, which is a country that really prides itself on producing players that are tactically very intelligent Then that's where you probably gonna want to do your education So

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah. Well, you

don't have to convince me of that. a, I love Spanish football. I'm always arguing with my friends who are big Premier League advocates, which I love. I watch the Premier League all the time, but you know, if the running joke is that the best league in the world is La Liga. And I think, you know, you could argue they do produce great players in Spain.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Well,

what's interesting about, let's say, Spanish coaches, yeah, they're now dominating the Premier League. Most of your best coaches in the Premier League are of the ⁓ Spanish background. But then also, because everyone always is going to think that it's all about positional play, it's all about dominating possession, this and that, but they have a real tactical adaptability. And that's why you get so many coaches that are going to China, that are going to go to Africa.

to coach better national teams there. And that comes from not just understanding one style of play with one certain set of tactical principles, but as much as possible the totality of this game. And what it means to play well with a team that only has the ability to go very direct. What does it mean to play well with a team that's going to have the ability to accumulate passes in your own half to create spaces at the line of the defense?

to then take your moment and accelerate play. I think that this is a thing that I don't want to say gets misunderstood, because maybe it is my own misunderstanding when I came here. But not everything here is trying to accumulate 65 % of possession every match. No, it's understanding the game, understanding your players, and then understanding how you can work together to maximize, let's say, the strong points.

Alf Gracombe 
Right.

Michael Paule-Carres 
of the team that you have at your disposal.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, and I think, you know, it's easy for people to say they look at like an Arteta and they say, well, you know, he's just, you know, a disciple of Guardiola and they play the same, but no, they don't. They're...

teams don't play the same. look at, I mean, don't know how many Spanish managers there are in the Premier League, but there's Emery, there's Areola, Guardiola, Arteta, three of them are Basque actually. That's even, I think an interesting thing as well. There's a preponderance of Basque managers. But all these teams play differently. You can see perhaps some, of course, similarities, but yeah, I do think we tend to...

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm. Mm. ⁓

Alf Gracombe 
easily categorize these things. this is how Spanish players play, this is how Spanish coaches coach. And I don't think that's the case at all.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm, sure.

Alf Gracombe 
So you are at Espanyol now. Explain if you can. Of course you can. But what is your job exactly? What do you do at the club?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Perfect. So right now I have a dual role. Okay, so my one job is as I say in quotes, the head of methodology for stage one. So that's going to be from under eights to under 12s. Okay, so it's our seven-a-side teams. What is the head of methodology doing? It's basically facilitating the coaching process for all the coaches that are in that stage. so number one, ⁓ providing some sense of structure as to what the individual sessions should look like, what the micro cycle should look like.

And then how are we dosing out contents to make sure that the players are getting age-appropriate material that is going to help them get a more deeper understanding of the game within their own contexts? And then especially at a more simplified level, how to make proper decisions when they're in certain situations. We do a lot of small-sided situation work, two versus one, two versus two on a horizontal axis, three versus two, whatever it may be. Why?

because this is going to simplify the context a little bit more so that it becomes a little more black and white what the decisions are for the players. Because this is shown, this has been studied by, I think, Rokka from 2020, there's a study that shows that the ability for elite players to make solid, or good level decisions, creative decisions, is their ability to have a wider attention breadth, okay, to be able to identify faster the free men.

Okay, so these are things that we need to be really de-hammering at a younger age so that then they're able to apply it in more complex context, which is going to be the 11 aside. Okay. This kind of meandering a little bit, but that's okay. ⁓ Part of this though is yeah, providing some structure to what the training sessions and what the training week should look like without giving the coaches the direct exercises. We're saying it has to be this, it has to be this, it has to be this. Why? Because then if I do that, then

I'm kind of cutting the wings of the coach to experiment with their own team, to experiment with ⁓ their own exercise design. And I always say, look, if I'm overseeing five teams, then it's impossible that I'm going to be able to understand their teams as well as the coach will, because I'm only going to see them 20 % of the time. ⁓ So if I'm going to say this is the collection of behaviors that we're expecting in our game model and every team has to play identically, it's not realistic.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
at the end of the day, or it could be realistic, but it's very coercive in how it's being done. ⁓ So I like to say that I'm much more of a facilitator of processes and helping things to be aligned as much as possible toward the end goal of producing players for the first team many years down the road. So that's part one. Part two.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Can I just ask real quickly, sorry

to cut you off, but so are you, how much of your time is on the field with players and coaches versus, okay, you are on the field every day.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Every day, every day, because I didn't mention, but ⁓

I would also consider that, a lot of times when you're coaching a team, what are you focused on? The team, okay? So what's gonna happen is that maybe there's one or two players that need some special attention in a certain moment, either to potentially think that they're already doing well, or to, let's say, smooth over some major difficulties that they're having that are preventing them from reaching.

what their potential could be. They're constrained in their behaviors basically because of a coordinated deficit or whatever it is or a misunderstanding of a certain situation. Go on and on, okay? So I like to be on the pitch every single day. ⁓ I didn't bring my boots as much this year as I have in the past because I've had lots of things to do. But then also whenever I see something that could be enhanced.

could be corrected either with the player or with the design of a session, jumping in with complete freedom to help out a little bit. So yeah, we do every day is on the pitch. That's why I have, I I don't know if you can see it, but an amazing watch stand. It happens.

Alf Gracombe 
Great.

And the watch stand to prove it. Yeah. Okay. So sorry I interrupted you.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah.

No, it's fine. It's fine. What I saying is that the second part of my job, which is taking more and more and more of my attention these days, ⁓ is we have what's called a values project. And that basically makes me someone that's responsible for, let's say, the culture and standards of the club. What are values? Their principles that guide human behavior. And the idea is that if we as a club

Alf Gracombe 
Stage two, yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
or trying to transmit a certain message, or trying to align certain behaviors toward a common goal. How do we make sure that that's being implemented? Whether it's actions off of the pitch, that are gonna show respect, that are gonna show humility, that are gonna show commitment, or on the pitch as well, where it's part of their training process. Are players taking full advantage of all the opportunities that they have at their disposal? We have an individual development department. Are the players fully interacting with that? We have an amazing strength and conditioning department.

that has a lot of ability to ⁓ personalize players, let's say, strength and conditioning programs based off their own pitch needs. Are they taking advantage of that? We have an amazing psychology department. Are they taking advantage of that? Are they acting in ways that are coherent with what the ethos of the club is supposed to represent? Okay, so that's sort of my job right now is to oversee that process and to give attention to certain behaviors

that are things that we want to enhance or to try to redirect certain behaviors that may be causing a problem to the common interests of the team long term.

Alf Gracombe 
Every, not every club, most clubs and certainly most clubs with academies, where they talk about the culture of their club and these, these values. So this is the space in which you're now working very actively at Espanyol, but, ⁓ I'm sure every club would say, yes, we have a culture. have a way of playing. have a way of thinking, and it's going to show up on the pitch, ⁓ in certain ways.

You're there in Barcelona, the city of Barcelona. know, one of the biggest clubs in the world is your neighbor rival. ⁓ Great. ⁓ derby match just, just last night between Espanyol and Barcelona.

But, what is, how would you describe the value system of Espanyol? It's a smaller club. ⁓ I, know, they're trying to bring players up through their homegrown Academy system and ultimately into the first team. ⁓ that's think a stated goal safe to say, but what is, what, talk about Espanyol just for a moment and what are these values and then how do you try to bring them into the club, into the Academy and, and continue with that, the tradition of that, of that club.

Michael Paule-Carres 
⁓ I think that there's going to be a whole lot of different ways that you can answer what this is. My interpretation of it, what I've with or what I've lived and what I connect the most with is not that it affiliates with a certain political ideology or a certain religion or anything like that. It's much more enjoying being in the counterculture, enjoying going against the current a little bit. And that very, for me,

is the real ethos, so the real personality of what the club is. What else is the context of the club is that by, and this is general rule, you're not gonna have the funds to be able to say go and buy amazing players, or I mean, we do have amazing players, but you know what I'm saying, players that are competing at the Champions League level. So how do we have success? How do we...

let's say unite to achieve something that's greater than the sum of our parts. That's by being completely aligned in what we're doing, okay, number one. Number two, very humble in who we are and how we work, aware of our limitations, but also aware of our strengths, okay, and taking full advantage of this as much as possible. I think that in a nutshell, that's it, because then that manifests in how we're going to play, how we're expecting our behaviors to act.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah. ⁓

Michael Paule-Carres 
If someone shows up in a Ferrari after they sign their first contract, that's an issue. These are things that you had to look out for. Another thing that I would be remiss not to state is that, FC Barcelona was founded in 1899 by Hans Gunther, which was explicitly for foreign players. You have Espanyol that was founded in 1900 explicitly for Catalan players. So this is a real connection with

Alf Gracombe 
Right.

Michael Paule-Carres 
the local community too, trying to get something that's as authentic as can be connected to, let's say, the strengths of this area. And I think more and more we're going toward a model that's really trying to not respect, ⁓ yeah, give a place for the Catalan player to shine and to make a true connection with this community.

Alf Gracombe 
and body.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah. I mean, I will tune into a Barcelona Espanyol game, you know, every season they're great because, know, obviously Barcelona has the higher profile players, the better players, frankly, you know, a Leo Messi or a Lamine Yamal is just not going to play at Espanyol. I think Espanyol would probably accept that.

Michael Paule-Carres 
I wasn't here, but my understanding was that he was very close to being brought into the Espanyol Academy and then Barca swooped up in the last minute and took him away. So, that happens.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah.

Is that right? Yeah. But, right.

mean, that's Spaniel could have won that game last night, right? It took one moment of, you know, genius from Lamine Yamal ⁓ to create that one zero score line. But you watch that game, Espanyol had chances. They could have taken them. It could have been a two one game, you know, just as well, just as well. so ⁓ well, that's great. So ⁓

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm.

Course. Course.

Alf Gracombe 
You know, interesting club and I've just learned a little bit more about them and their academy just in following some of your work. ⁓ and so one of the things that has really drawn me to what you've been doing and I've tuned into some of your signals is you are very much kind of looking at player development, ⁓ in the context of course, in this club, but you've got some things that you've brought, ⁓ into your thinking and have shared with the broader coaching community. And I appreciate you being here today to do more of that.

⁓ But some of this kind pedagogy around developing players and you've taken some concepts from ⁓ education, I you mentioned your father and maybe both your parents are academics. it seems you're predisposed. Okay, so you're kind of predisposed a bit.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Just my father. My mom

is very smart, but didn't do her PhD or anything.

Alf Gracombe 
Not a,

yeah, so my wife is an English professor, an academic as well. It's not the path that I've been on, but I do think that, you of course informs how you think and see the world. So I'd love to hear a little bit, you you've mentioned in previous conversation, just Montessori methods and how some of that shows up in.

your thinking around player development. ⁓ So for kind of the uninitiated folks who might not know a lot what Montessori is, can you talk about that, the kind of fundamentals and the kind of what undergirds the Montessori methods, but then also how you look at that in a football context.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Sure, so I'll start it. Then my connection to let's say a Montessori method of learning was from my own experience. I went to a Montessori school until I was seven years old, eight years old, something around there. And I don't think it's for me, I don't think it's a coincidence that I went from loving school to hating school ⁓ upon that transition from a Montessori school to a traditional school. ⁓ The idea or in a nutshell,

The idea of what a Montessori education pushes itself forward on is the idea of the teacher, number one, being an experimenter. It's trying to, let's say, take the educational process and make it much more of a scientific method, grounded in some sense of objectivity, in some sense of not trying to corrupt the learning process of the child or of the human being in general.

Why? Because how do we learn, let's say, certain motor skills? It's just through our own trial and error and our own, let's say, autonomous feedback ⁓ from our experiences. That's how people learn how to walk. That's how people learn how to speak. That's how we learn how to do more or less everything. It's through our own personal experiences rather than it being a top-down passage of knowledge. So these are some of the main things that are going to underpin the whole Montessori experience.

⁓ Number one, that the way that people are learning is through autodidactic materials. So Montessori uses a lot of ⁓ haptic type of information where, let's say, the larger thing is going to be heavier than the other. So it's going to give you a sense of intrinsic feedback of what is more, what is less. It's going to put, let's say, puzzles that are going to fit into certain grooves to help you learn spaces, colors, whatever it's going to be. These are ideas.

that for me align perfectly with the whole idea of ecological dynamics and a constraints-based approach to exercise design. For anyone that's not so familiar with this idea is that we have to understand that football as a game is inherently complex. Why? Because you have 11 moving parts ⁓ all at the same time. You have a pitch, which is going to be

dynamic in its dimensions. What I mean by that is that if you have an off-sideline that goes up, the pitch gets bigger or the pitch gets smaller. If goes down, the pitch gets larger. So you have that changing variable. Yet the fact that you're using a foot to control the ball, not your hands, which were generally not so coordinated using our feet compared to with our hands. So that's another thing that's going to introduce uncertainty ⁓ into the mix. So you have these billions and billions of potential outcomes which could exist. The whole idea of constraints is that

you're creating something either by a rule or by the environment that's going to start to eliminate these possibilities or what they like to call affordances. So let's say, for example, I have one player here, one player here, one player here. The ball's on my right foot. It's faster to get the ball over to this player with my left foot. I don't feel so comfortable using my left foot.

that's going to be a constraint that's going to eliminate that affordance because it's just not something that my body is going to permit me to do or the environment is going permit me to do, whatever it is. Long story short, the whole idea of exercise design is that the construction of the spaces, how you're organizing players in space and then how you're creating certain conditions upon the play are going to inherently upregulate certain behaviors.

that you want your players to be repeating over and over again so that they're able to get as much trial and error about what works, what doesn't work, what tension of pass works, what direction the pass works, what decision is for when to pass versus when to dribble works. It's not me telling them what to do and when to do it. It's much more that the environment itself is making it more favorable for them to get their own experience with this process. So that's number one. So I continue our...

Alf Gracombe 
Can I pause, can I,

one, one sec on just to pause on that for a second. So is it fair to say with this approach to learning and developing minds and bodies, whether it's in the classroom or, on the football pitch.

Is this more about ⁓ asking them to solve specific problems than it is about ⁓ creating conditions to help them recognize different patterns in identifying problems and then bringing their own solutions to it?

Michael Paule-Carres 
It's

a little bit of both. Is that okay, you're creating a certain context that has a certain problem to solve, and then you can layer in certain potential solutions, but the player or the human being still has the autonomy to perceive their surroundings and make the decision that they see fit to resolve the situation, given the conditions that they're playing within, so on and so forth. And then, all right, you may have...

one player that in theory makes the wrong decision because the right outcome. right. How are you as a coach then able to be attuned to that and make it such that, that left is the outcome gets a, let's say a response, isn't going to be as favorable. What do mean by that? Let's imagine you have a big center forward that doesn't recognize when to hold up the ball versus when to turn and run. Why? Because he has a massive advantage against his opponent. Okay.

And let's say he is five foot 10 and you're playing against kids that are five foot three. Don't put him against a kid that's five foot three. Put a coach on him. Someone that's gonna be a full grown person that can put a forearm into him and make him realize that, this response that's giving me success now isn't going to work later on. So it's a little bit of adaptation of the environment ⁓ to make a certain response more favorable. But making sure that it's a player that understands

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
that this response is unfavorable. Not that it's the coach telling him that it's bad and then hoping that the player picks up on it. It doesn't be something visceral. has to be something, ⁓ yeah, that's my own. My own experience, my own decision. In a nutshell. Well, not really in a nutshell, because I rambled on about it, but it's okay. ⁓ So yeah, it's more or less it. And then the idea is, like I said, you have two or three solutions.

Alf Gracombe 
Tactile, yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
⁓ that maybe you would like to upregulate. Why? Because you, as someone that has, let's say, an expert understanding of this game through more experience, through a deeper understanding, through, let's say, more time experimenting with the game, ⁓ can help guide the process. Okay, but not saying it has to be this direction, it has to be this way, nowhere else. Okay? I like saying two or three because if you leave it up to five, six, or seven, it becomes very vague.

Okay, then you're not really targeting any sort of, what's the word I'm looking for? ⁓ Decisional pathway, let's just put it that way. If you have five decisions and you're left with an indecision, if you have two or three, it's much easier to go down one path or the other. Does that make sense?

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah,

yeah. And so you're not with this approach, you're not just, you know, throwing kids out into the metaphorical pasture to

you know, make their way through it. You're still putting in place, I don't want to say guardrails, constraints, like something to, you're still, you know, trying to give them an experience that's gonna require that they make decisions and that they understand what was a good decision, what was a bad decision in this situation. But it's not entirely open-ended. You're still, there's a role for a coach, there's a role for a teacher here.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Correct.

Correct. Is there

a truth that the game is a teacher? Yes, but I think that I think it's the right question that we need to be asking is what type of game are we playing? Okay, is it just 11 versus 11 or seven versus seven free throw and expecting that a learning process is going to come to light through that? It's a big risk. It's a big risk. I mean, this is what happened in the street football. So you could say that it produces a certain amount of success. ⁓ But maybe there are inefficiencies to the street football learning process that a well structured

educational process can overcome. And one of these would be a lack of specificity about what type of decision we're trying to make based off of what type of context we're operating in.

Alf Gracombe 
Right, right. So let's bring it back to kind of okay, the specific, like I'm on the field with players and, ⁓ you know, age appropriateness around, you know, how you structure training, how you...

Understand players to be at different stages and ages are sort of an easy shorthand in some ways because of course players don't develop in a linear fashion You know something an eight-year-old may be doing There's still a ten-year-old who's maybe struggling with that particular concept So how do you kind of look at what you're doing on the pitch with young players? ⁓ And kind of meeting them where they are whether it's again age or even you know size wise kids start developing at different rates How does the Montessori method or kind of this auto?

didactic ⁓ ecosystem that you're trying to create as a coach, how do you manage those different dynamics within that environment?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Sure, so

I'm going to introduce say another framework that isn't necessarily a Montessori framework, but it has a lot more to do with motor skill learning and motor skill development, football actions are motor skills. So you have to get an understanding of how we learn to be able to apply it to a certain context. Basically, we three stages. Number one would be movement coordination, and that can be with the ball, without the ball.

Okay, a lot of people think that okay, isolated technical training is training technique. No, it's training your ability to coordinate your responses with a foreign object, which is the ball in this case. So that's where you're see things like ball mastery. That's where you're gonna see a certain amount of okay, one versus zero or one versus one type of work. Okay, this we don't go so much into within our Academy age. Why? Because this is a stage that if players are quite advanced, they're going to enter, you know, they're gonna.

be ready to move on to the next step at around seven years old, generally speaking. This is in our context. In another context, where players are not as naturally gifted, they're not as naturally coordinated in their movements, they may need a little bit more refinement, hopefully at home. Why? Because you have how many hours of training a week to work on an infinite number of things. Whereas when you have, let's say, a ball on the child,

then they have hours at home, then they can be doing a lot of that work they need, a lot of that repetition in different context. Okay, so that would be the first stage. Okay, the next stage would be what we call skill adaptability. This is all I think, ⁓ it's a study published by Fabian Otte who is Liverpool's first team goalkeeper coach right now, if I'm not mistaken. Skill adaptability, you're gonna be looking at your decision making. Okay, so when you're working at, okay,

Alf Gracombe 
I'll put that in the show notes for sure. yeah, thanks.

Michael Paule-Carres 
eight years old, nine years old, 10 years old, 11 years old, understanding that cognitively they do have the ability to understand one, two, three, four different points, one, two, three, four different people around me. But the idea of understanding a collective as an abstract thought is still a little bit complicated for them. It's still a little bit beyond, in most terms, their cognitive capabilities of abstraction and so on.

So this is where you're going to be looking at a lot more decisional type processes. When's the right moment to pass versus when's the right moment to dribble? In which direction so on and then on a tactical level because we're not trying to abstract everything from the game I still strongly believe that the game is the teacher like I said. What are more generalizations that are normally going to be true of just about anything that's going to be playing? Okay, say.

The idea is of making sure you have optimal width and optimal depth to be able to create, let's say, good amounts of space to be able to make good decisions, for example. The idea that you want to penetrate. We're not here to maintain the ball for 250 passes. That's not the point of the game. The point of the game is to score goals. So if you already have an invasion game in its nature, that needs to be something that's going to guide, as a principle, the behaviors of the players that we're looking at.

How do you create certain situations to make sure that happens by maybe having the ability to be a player one-on-one, of course, but then also the ability to have a supporting player to recycle and move all to another space is going to be a little bit more beneficial to us. So supports can be another principle, so on and so forth. The idea moving forward as a unit to make sure that ⁓ the whole team is connected as one as much as possible. That's in the attacking phase of defensive phase, you general principles. These are things that

make sense to be applying when you're looking with kids that have the cognitive abilities around eight years old, nine years old, like I said.

Alf Gracombe 
So can I ask just sorry to interrupt again, but so you have a vocabulary as an adult, as a coach, as know, the head of methodology at an elite club, but as a child, as an eight year old, as a nine year old, let's say, like even, you know, you, have words to describe these concepts. So like move forward as a unit, right? Your team.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm.

Alf Gracombe 
As a player as a child, what do you understand their? Comprehension of that concept to be is this something that has words or is it something that they just begin to start to intuit from? Being in that environment and seeing rewards from you know moving forward as a unit as a team whether it's you know Seven aside five aside whatever What do you understand the child's brain and understanding to be at that time?

Michael Paule-Carres 
So

I don't have a perfect answer to that because I'm not a child at this point and I can't go into what they're thinking. What I would suggest, and this ties into another principle that you're going to be looking at from a Montessori education, which is mixed ages, which is how are people learning from older players through a mirror neuron process, where I'm observing someone and trying to imitate them. That's why I think there's a lot of value for a coach to be able to step in and play with younger players.

Alf Gracombe 
Right. ⁓

Michael Paule-Carres 
Okay, to give them a little bit of a coordinate of reference and what it looks like to open up your body to give access to another part of the pitch, for example. Okay, and then going backwards, older players teaching younger players, ⁓ and then learning by teaching. Okay, just to say carry this on, ⁓ why am I saying with this?

Alf Gracombe 
Hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
is that maybe there are moments where if you're gonna talk about attacking unity, moving together as one, that's going to be a little bit complicated for the child to understand at a certain point. This is where you can condition the game, for example, to make sure that they're being habituated to provide these types of behaviors, ⁓ even though they don't quite understand the why yet. For example, if you have a pitch that's divided into three spaces and saying that, okay, if a team can only occupy two of those three spaces at a time,

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Okay, meaning that if you want to get into this final space to score a goal, then these players have to move up too. Okay, just an idea. ⁓ That these are things that it starts to create the habit and then they understand the why later. It's a little bit like eating vegetables. Okay, if you have a father or a mother or two fathers or two mothers, whatever, that eats vegetables, then the child when they're four years old and maybe has an aversion to eating broccoli,

Alf Gracombe 
Hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
is more likely to observe it and want to do the same. Why? Because it's what the references around them are doing, and they don't have any other way to guide their decision making other than imitating the references around them.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Do you use it all with the younger ages in the academy? Are you showing them game film? Not necessarily of their own play, but like, do you use that at all for instruction? Yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Sure, of course. Of course.

And not to go into, let's say, diatribes or anything like that, but just to make the player understand what it looks like to make a certain decision. And the good side or the bad side? They understand, normally, ⁓ what they did well or when they made a mistake. So really understanding the whole context around it, yeah, it's very useful. And I think that there is an aversion

to doing this, why? Because you want to let the kids play and you don't want them to be thinking so much about their actions. But to just get a little bit of a visual representation helps a lot. Especially if it's just one minute, have a look at this and then go.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, but you're not going to be breaking down tactical formations with eight-year-olds, but it does give them, yeah. ⁓

Michael Paule-Carres 
No, no, no, no, no, no, it's much more, much,

much more individually focused.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, interesting. And so how did these concepts play out as players age through the academy? So now we're 12, 13, 14 year olds. How does this these methods, how do they evolve at those older ages?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm.

Sure, so I think that when you're going to start to look at 11 years old, 12 years old for us, because we have players that are more advanced, demonstrate a certain ability to learn about the correct decisions on the pitch faster, we are able to implement something that looks like a game or something that can be understood as a game model when you're at 11 years old, 12 years old, where you're starting to get a certain idea of how we're working in broad strokes as a team aligned toward a common goal.

and starting to get an understanding, especially with us, that has an ability to, let's say, scout certain players that are gonna fit the needs of the club, ⁓ to get, I'm not gonna say behavior that must be repeated, but to get a certain amount of stability as to what you can be expecting out of the interactions of our players to create something that's gonna be a little bit more identifiable long-term, okay? What I would say is that when you're make that step from 12 to 13, in our case, we're going from seven a side

to 11 a side So what does that mean? A massive increase in space, a massive increase in complexity of the situation, and a more marked definition of team behaviors. Okay, and seven a side it's very transitional in its nature. There's a lot of interchangeability in positions. And when you get to 11 a side everything starts to stabilize a lot more. Okay, so this is where understanding, okay, 13s and their 14s, it's critical.

that you start to get an understanding of, how does a defensive line work together? ⁓ How do you, let's say, one or two lines interact with each other? ⁓ And then through that, on a linear level, intersectorial level, starting to give definition to what the team behavior looks like, okay, to how the collective is working together as one to resolve certain situations.

Alf Gracombe 
Can I ask you, this is something that comes up a fair amount. You know, I'm involved in lot of grassroots football here in the U.S and the community program. ⁓ and there's often a question of, positional play and, we actually go seven-a-side, then to nine aside, ⁓ for the U 12s. And then it's at U 14 that we get to, to 11 aside here in the U.S.

So it's a little different than Spain, but there's always this question of, okay, how much are we focusing on positional play for kids at this, know, kind of the U10, let's say level to seven-a-side? You know, I think I know your answer to this, but.

or at least I've got my sense of like, know, kids should experience the game from many different positions. We try not to focus too much on positional play. It is helpful, of course, to have some structure where you put the kids out on the field so there's some understanding of responsibility for where they are on the field. But how do you look at that at Espanyol in terms of positional play at those younger ages and then as it moves into the older ages?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah,

how I would answer is it depends on what your definition of Syshma play is. So let's start with that.

Alf Gracombe 
Great. You want me to give that definition or do you want... Well, so if I'm a coach, like I need just something, what's practical for me, how do I want to frame this idea of what kids, like I tend to say, especially like you 10, okay, that you want to give them some sense of like responsibility in a certain area of the field or in relation to their team.

Michael Paule-Carres 
So, yes please, yes please.

Mm-hmm.

Alf Gracombe 
And,

but at the same time, like, I don't like to spend too much time on it other than just giving them a starting point in a general sense of the area of the field that they're responsible for. I don't know if that's a good approach, but that's how, how I do it. So it's, it's very rudimentary and is it more sophisticated than that?

Michael Paule-Carres 
No,

I think that the more rudimentary the definition that can provide, the better. For me, why? Because I think that what you just described is making clarity about player roles. And making you understand that, OK, when I'm occupying, let's say, this space right here, and maybe this player had the ball right here, what's my job for the team in this position right here?

And for me, your essential role in the team is to make sure that the ball has access to as many spaces in the pitch as possible. And if you have that clarity about what you're contributing to the collective, then that's going to help you to, let's say, ⁓ self-police your own behaviors. ⁓ Maybe you come too close, which is going to give, let's say, decent ⁓ passing line, a more secure passing line, but then it's impossible for you to get access to this part of the pitch.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
then that's going to be a situation that's not desirable. You're too far away, then this task has a good chance of being intercepted. So I think that giving role is going to give something that gives the player a lot more autonomy toward reaching the collective goals. Why I asked about what is our definition of positional play is that I think that it's gone to a certain extreme to the point that positional play means

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
having to be very associative, having to have everyone on a diagonal passing line, this and that. My personal definition of what positional play is has to do with, how am I as a team and how am I as a player occupying space rationally to meet the goals of my team? All right. A lot of times the goals of your team, when you're looking at this type of definition is like I said.

trying to stagger your positioning between two defenders to be able to maximize the space that you're able to receive the ball, turn forward, find the maximum amount of passing lanes, whatever it is. But it doesn't have to be that. It could be that for my team, our rational occupation of space being in two banks of four with two up top. Why? Because we understand that we're not going to be using our midfield to be building through the thirds. But then instead we're going to have two players to be pushing forward to win second ball if we play direct. And I had to do with a rational occupation of space? For me, yes.

⁓ So I think that it depends, like I said, it depends on what is our definition and how are we applying it. Are we applying it in a way that's going to give autonomy to the player's decision and also respect who the players are? Because this is another thing is that I think that people want to implement this idea of positional play. And they think that because they have the ideas that they're going to be able to transmit it to a player that maybe doesn't have the certain profile, the certain skill set to do this one thing.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Does that mean that player is not valid? No, it's just the means that we're putting them, you know, it's like the old adage of, you tell a fish to climb a tree, then you're never gonna get it's success. You know what I mean? I think it has to be a lot more geared toward that. I like the idea of having a game model that's going to align intentions. It's going to align how we wanna behave as a team. How that manifests depends from team to team because teams are collective of...

Alf Gracombe 
You

Yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
of many different identities with their own interests, their own needs, with their own profiles. And that's job of the coaches, understand that and to try to harmonize that as much as possible.

Alf Gracombe 
Let me ask a very specific question with regard to positional play, because again, Spain going from 7-7 aside to 11-11 aside, and that is a...

Big change, you alluded to it earlier, like just so much more space, and then of course, so many more players. ⁓ It's a big jump. What do you see players struggling with the most between that jump from seven to 11, and then how do you as a club look at how you coach players in making that transition? Am I right to identify that as a kind of key moment in development or?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I think that you do have to deal with a bigger threat of having to, let's say, have more difficulty in duels, more difficulty dealing with space in behind, more difficulty dealing with transitions. So these are things that, yeah, you have to work with, you have to work on. Within the collective session, maybe you're going to be in a situation where you're not dealing with so many aerial duels. So what we tend to do is, say, once a week, more or less.

Alf Gracombe 
I'm too focused.

Michael Paule-Carres 
You maybe do one exercise that's going to be specifically focused on, let's say, specific actions for a certain position. That might be contesting aerial rules. That might be defending a wall pass for white players, or really for any player, but for white players especially, for a fullback. ⁓ How do you sort your feet out to block crosses and not be diving in? ⁓ These exercises that look like Bielsa exercises, I like to call them.

Because if you go on YouTube, look at the Bielsa methodology is very much isolating, in quotes, these moments of the game, but still making it very, very, very representative of the reality. ⁓ Why do I say that? Because it's easy to put together an exercise that has to do with defending in one-on-one situations. But does it encapsulate the essence of detecting when that one-on-one situation is going to come up? And then what are the spaces that you're trying to protect, so and so forth? That's the challenge.

So we do a decent amount of work on that level too. Understanding what are key skillsets, what are key behaviors that are either necessary for the profile players that we need or that are common weak points that you need to be addressing to facilitate their transfer from 7 aside to 11 aside. I made reference to a big center forward that because he's two stories tall, is able to receive, turn, and score every single time.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
An 11 aside, you as a forward need to have the ability to understand how to hold the ball up, delay the attack so that you have three, four, or five players that are able to progress with you. That's a very challenging skill set for some players to understand how to do. And how many times are they going to live that within the collective session? Not so many. So that might be a situation where you have to create a very specific exercise to target

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
that type of action 25 times instead of 2, which might come up in a condition match, for example.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, is it fair to say that when you go to 11 aside that players are starting to experience a wider variety of situations that they just weren't seeing so much at the 7 aside? Yeah, yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Of course. Well,

it's a tough one because, you have a lot more complexity based off of being a more collective game, but then at the same time, you are starting to hone in more on what your position is and what your role and profile within that position is. So on the one hand, the game's more complex in terms of, okay, the amount of moving parts that have to harmonize, but then also your contribution to it becomes a lot more easier to ⁓ understand and to specialize in.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
understanding

that there's always going to be variability. There's always going to be the player that starts as a center back and then ends up as a center forward one day or vice versa. It happens.

Alf Gracombe 
So ⁓ Michael, this is fantastic. ⁓ Really, really appreciate all this kind of deep dive into some of these teaching methodologies and what you've seen at this Academy level and these kids progressing through these ages. ⁓ And even getting into the game model, which again, we could spend hours and hours, I'm sure, on that topic alone. ⁓ Thinking a little bit about...

you know, the grassroots, which again is more where, you know, I've spent more my time as coaching. you know, we're in the U.S here and you grew up here in the U.S in our system such as it is, and then you're into Spain. And my understanding of, you know, Spanish football and then just player development is that there's a real, you know, history there and a lot of intentionality.

It's not to say it shows up everywhere in youth football in Spain, and it's not to say it's completely absent in the US, but I think it is safe to say the US is sort of playing catch up in some ways. ⁓

And ⁓ if I'm a coach, you know, here in the U.S and I'm, there's a lot of content out there, right? Like you can go onto YouTube, you can go onto Twitter. Everyone's got an idea before we hit the record button here, you were talking about, you know, kind of avoiding isms, right? There's a lot of, you know, maybe a coach might feel like, yeah, I've got a kind of small side of games. That's the kind of, I love this guy. I'm following him on, you know, LinkedIn or whatever. And he's always talking about small side of games. Okay.

⁓ How do you think a coach should think about their?

coaching and it's kind of what content they're taking and what to be open to and kind of how to be discerning in kind of your knowledge intake. Because there's a lot out there, right? It's kind of the Wild West in certain ways, especially if you're a new coach and you don't have a system or program around you that's maybe spoon feeding you this or giving you these frameworks in ways to think. Any recommendations for a grassroots coach?

Michael Paule-Carres 
It's a tough one because I have a lot of references, a lot of books that are all in Spanish. Why? Because there are a lot of publication houses here that do a lot of really good work. And this is one of the philosophical houses of the game. I think that in general, and this is something that I talked with some of my friends at the club with and out of the club with, if you want to coach, you want to coach well, and what do you have to do are two things. Number one, understand that you're working with people and understand that your job

isn't to be an encyclopedia of the game, but is to effectively transmit, or is to, I don't even want to say transmit information, but is effectively to facilitate their learning process of the game. Okay, so you have to understand number one, how do people learn? How do our brains work? How do our brains and our bodies harmonize? All of these different details. Okay, so as much content that you can read about, I would obviously recommend understanding more a Montessori method of education.

This is much more in sync with how people actually learn about their environments as animals. So number one, read the Montessori Method. It's on Amazon or wherever you want to buy your books, probably $20. It's been published for 50 some years, 60 some years, and yeah, it's still hold up to this day. So that, I mean, that's one. In terms of pure football content, look, there are courses all over the place. Take as many as you're interested in. I think it's fine.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
What I say about avoiding isms, and I don't want to go into another philosophical debate and this and that, my general aversion to isms, or whether that's capitalism, whether that's positionalism, relationalism, is that what you're doing by aligning with a certain ⁓ principled way of thought is that you're creating, let's say, a certain mental representation of the world that you're following.

Alf Gracombe 
You

Michael Paule-Carres 
⁓ What does that mean? Is that it's very static based off of how it's been presented and how you've been understanding that. Which means that it's always going to be a little bit outdated and it's always going to be a little bit not correct in a certain way to the reality of what's happening around us. Okay, so that's why I say take as many courses, read as many books as you want, but always with a healthy dose of skepticism. Okay, so that's number one. Number two, ⁓

Going into understanding the game more, because this is our idea, is to create context that are going to help the child understand the game at a deeper level. Watching a lot of the game. ⁓ Watch, what I would recommend, watch the best teams in the world. Watch City, Arsenal, Inter Milan, how they play, Bayern Munich, you name it. If you can get access to a tactical camera, please do.

Alf Gracombe 
Mmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
because you're going to see a lot more interactions and a lot better ⁓ vantage point of how the collective is moving together than you will on the TV. But if it's on the TV, it's fine. And really pay attention to the key players that make the difference. How does Halland move in the box to boost his marker to be able to create an easier opportunity to finish at the far post, for example? And then as you're doing that, just write down everything you see. Write down how certain players are interacting with each other.

Okay, it's just like a journaling process. It doesn't have to be anything that you're to publish on LinkedIn or Twitter or anything like that. If you want to, fine, but make it for yourself. Okay. I think that, you know, is there, is there a necessity to network and show your knowledge in this, in this industry? Yeah. But at the end of the day, if that, you're creating things only for the, for the, for the purpose of let's say being more visible is for the wrong purpose. It has to be something that's much more intrinsically geared towards how does this

Alf Gracombe 
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Michael Paule-Carres 
game actually work because what you'll find is that the more and more you dig into it, the more and more doubts you have, the more and more questions you have, and the less and less certainty that you have that your perception of what you thought the game was, was correct. And that's where the beauty of it comes from.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, I mean, just on my own coaching journey, I've I think you have to accept you said at the beginning of this conversation, football is it's a complex ecosystem, right? And don't ever think you're going to have it all figured out at some point. It's not not possible. So sort of embrace that complexity, accept that.

uncertainty that chaos and I think it becomes a much more enjoyable endeavor to think of it as a coach to just recognize like you don't have all the answers you're not gonna be able to answer what to do in every situation you're not gonna be able to perceive every action and reaction that's happening on the field and you certainly can't understand how players are perceiving it right like they've got their own

view of the game from where they are on the field and what they're cognitively able to to take in and recognize. So just accepting that complexity is kind of step one for any coach and recognizing you don't have all the answers you never will and you shouldn't. I think to your point, right? No one does. Like don't just latch on to one thinker in this game and think that that has the full answer to everything because that's just not the case.

Michael Paule-Carres 
No,

100%. I think I don't know what the study is because I never read it, but there is something that's always been talked about that even, say, the top level coaches are only able to correctly answer maybe 30 % of questions about things that occurred when they were observing the match in real time. What does that say? Is that the very best that have years and years and years and years of experience doing this have, let's say, that amount of inaccuracy in their perceptions?

And you have to make peace with that. You have to make peace with that as part of process. And the idea that that's just how our brains work. Our brains try to make sense of everything that we have perceived and everything that we've experienced. And we try to create a narrative for it. And part of life is rewriting that narrative the more with new information that you would imagine would be more accurate. But it's never gonna be perfect. It's never gonna be 100 % true of what's happening in our surroundings.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Number one, because we have our own emotional sway on certain things. Number two, because there are things that it's impossible for us to perceive. Have you ever read Sapiens or Homo Deus or any of those books? ⁓ I always blank on the author's name, so I don't want to say it and I apologize for that. But he goes into this about, okay, there are animals that have different senses that we do. Salmon have a sense of magnetism.

Alf Gracombe 
Just know of them, but no, I haven't haven't read them, but

I'll put it in the show notes, yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
So they're able to perceive a whole different world than we do. So it's impossible for us to have a perfect representation of reality. ⁓

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah,

first time salmon has ever been mentioned on the podcast. thank you for that. Well, Michael, this has been such a great.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah. ⁓

Alf Gracombe 
⁓ conversation and thank you for coming on and sharing your experience and your knowledge and continued ⁓ success to you at Espanyol. I think you've really just gotten into a really ⁓ interesting environment and I look forward to just continuing to watch your progress professionally through the game at that level. So yeah, thank you.

Michael Paule-Carres 
It's been my pleasure.

Alf Gracombe 
But

before you go, I've got a couple more questions. I'm gonna do our little lightning round here. A few quick questions for you. We're not gonna linger on them for too long, but I'd love to get some of these answers from you. And then a closing question, but let's get into the lightning round here quickly. All right, you ready? Okay. All right, what's the best piece of coaching advice that you've ever received?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Hmm? That's good.

Always remember that players are human beings and start from that as the first point.

Alf Gracombe 
Perfect, love it. ⁓ Easy to forget sometimes, right? As a coach, you think you can design these systems and have them perform as cogs, if you will, in the system, but yeah, it's a game played by people.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah, I

mean, not to leap back to my work at the Valley Project that I already talked about, but that's the whole essence of it, is that these are human behaviors, these are human values. And when you start to abstract the player away from being a human being, you're down a tough road. You're down a road that's going to lead to failure at some point. This can lead to a disconnect between the player and the coach.

Alf Gracombe 
Alright, next question. ⁓ What was your biggest coaching mistake and what did you learn from it?

Michael Paule-Carres 
think my biggest coaching mistake was when I first started, ⁓ trying to assume that because I had, let's say, certain tactical ideas, a certain way that I wanted to play, that my team would be able to duplicate it so long as I gave them, let's say, the answers. ⁓ And yeah, number one, I learned that I don't know hardly anything about this game. And number two, that you had to be much more adaptable to your surroundings and to the talents.

Alf Gracombe 
You

Michael Paule-Carres 
the people that you have at your disposal.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, I mean back to your first point, right? Like it is a game played by people and you have to coach the people that you have in front of you and recognize that coaching these players is going to look different than coaching these players. You talked about this a little bit earlier, but if you weren't coaching football, what would you be doing? Can you even imagine that world at this point?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Mm-hmm.

No, no, it's impossible. I would be doing something within this business, whether it's doing analysis for players, whether it's, I can't see myself scouting. It's just not what it really sets my pulse as racing, ⁓ but for sure something in this business.

Alf Gracombe 
Great, and last question, who's a manager or coach right now at the professional level that you really admire that you look to?

Michael Paule-Carres 
Does it have to be right now?

Alf Gracombe 
⁓ no, it doesn't have to be right now. It could be a two-part answer, but yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Okay, perfect. I'll tell you why. Because, sure.

I'll tell you why. Because my childhood idol is Michael Jordan. Okay, my parents are from Chicago. If you grew up in the 1990s if you're born in 1990 in the peak of Bulls mania. Yeah, that is just sort of what's surrounded by me. So what was it say? Always the natural attractor to what a coach should look like, or how a should work would be Phil Jackson. Okay, and that's...

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
That was actually when I made this, when I made the, say the, the, or when I hit the inflection point to go from chemistry to working in sports. That was the first book I read, Just Take Refuse by Phil Jackson. So for me, it's impossible to say that I have another coaching reference, even though it's not in the sport that I ever played. But.

Alf Gracombe 
Mm. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Yeah, here I was expecting

a football answer, but you gave me a basketball one. Great. But yeah, legend. Of course, Phil Jackson.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah.

And then in terms of, you know, in terms of, let's say, coaches today, it's tough. It's tough. I just love to watch good teams play, wherever it is. I got to be honest, I love Simone Inzaghi love, and I really enjoy watching Inter. Why? Because I think that we always are always watching teams that are dominating 75 % of possession. And we see that that's the reference.

But there's something different when I watched that team about their verticality, about the ability of Bastoni to put in an amazing last-ditch tackle, pop up straight a ball wide to Di Marco and continue his run forward. Yeah, it's refreshing to watch. I loved Porto last year versus Arsenal. I think that was one of the better coached teams.

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah.

Michael Paule-Carres 
In terms of how do you set up properly in a mid block? How do you slow down your build up to let's say take this thing out of Arsenal's high press? was fantastic. Okay. It's a weird one because these are all teams that I would have grown up not enjoying to watch. Okay. But I don't know. I think that it's good to have a little bit of yang to your yin, you know?

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, I think this is some of these you've seen some of these coaches, whether it's like Simeone or Inzaghi or or right like they they've adapted to what's kind of become the fashionable way to play. And that's, you know, going back to the Cruyff model. But, know, I Guardiola embodies it the most. But, you know, Klopp with the high press or, you know, Arteta with trying to establish control of the ball. Right. And these are coaches who are putting a different.

and attitude and set of goals. They're not necessarily trying to control the game, but they are creating a lot of high quality opportunities for their teams and how they respond to these other styles. So I'm with you. I prefer to watch the flowing football. I love Arsenal as you do as well, Barcelona, but...

I knew that Barcelona were going to be in trouble against Inter in the Champions League semi-final. just, you know, no one expected Inter to score seven goals over two games, but they did. And you can't say they didn't deserve to win.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Yeah.

Yeah,

and it's not the first time. mean, this is their second final in three years.

Alf Gracombe 
Right, right. So they're doing something right. They're doing something right. Awesome. So Michael, last question ⁓ for our listeners. ⁓ What's a resource that you have that's either a touchstone for you that you return to in your coaching or something that is just right now really has kind of struck your fancy that you're looking at?

Michael Paule-Carres 
So, yeah.

I can send you the book or I can send you a couple of books to put in the show notes because I don't want to, it's going to be easier for people to just go and link to it and then be able to open it up and buy. If I look at my bookshelf right now, ⁓ this is an author. This is Joaquin González Rodenas He was at University of Ohio, Columbus crew for a while. I think he came through Valencia, if I'm not mistaken. Right now as a professor in Madrid.

⁓ I really enjoyed this book. It's in Spanish, so it's not going to be easy for everyone to read. ⁓ I'll send the link to it. In English it's called the representative training process of youth football. Systemic focus about the technical tactical learning process and the development of talent in early stages. The thing about him is that this guy is now an academic, but his papers are very

Alf Gracombe 
Yeah, what's the book? What's the title? ⁓

Michael Paule-Carres 
They're very tangible, okay? ⁓ It's not so much in the weeds about a lot of, let's say, ecological dynamics and this and that. It's very much, okay, ⁓ what is the most effective shot that you have in input vault? It's gonna be the counter-attacking shot. ⁓ What are the preconditions to an effective counter-attack? It's gonna be, okay, maybe your first touch going forward. It's going to be a reduction of a number of passes between players, whatever it is. I'm just making stuff up now. ⁓ But this is a good author that I really enjoy all those papers that he's written.

and this book that he wrote.

Alf Gracombe 
Excellent. I will definitely put that in the show notes. And yeah, if there's other resources as well, you want to send me offline that you think would also align with that question. But by all means, please do send them and I'll put them in the show notes. ⁓ Yeah, Michael, this was great. I really enjoyed this and I appreciate you taking the time out of your busy schedule. And ⁓ yeah, thank you so much.

Michael Paule-Carres 
Absolutely.

No, thank you.

Alf Gracombe 
That was Michael Paule-Carres, head of F7 methodology at RCD Espanyol de Barcelona. Our conversation explored Michael's journey from rural Virginia to a leadership role at one of Spain's elite football academies and his innovative approach to youth player development. A few key takeaways from our discussion. Michael shared how Montessori education principles have influenced his coaching philosophy.

and emphasizing the importance of autodidactic learning environments where players discover solutions through their own experiences rather than being explicitly told what to do. We discussed how constraints-based approaches to training create environments that naturally guide players toward making better decisions while maintaining their autonomy and agency in the learning process. He highlighted the value of mixed-age training sessions where younger players learn through observation and older players reinforce their understanding by teaching others.

And we explored Espanyol's values-based approach to player development, which focuses not just on technical skills, but on nurturing well-rounded individuals with clear principles that guide their behavior both on and off the pitch. But perhaps most importantly, Michael reminded us that players are human beings first and that effective coaches must adapt their methods to the unique individuals in front of them rather than forcing players to conform to rigid tactical systems.

Alf Gracombe 
Michael's insights offer a powerful reminder to coaches that our primary role isn't to provide all the answers, but to create learning environments where players can discover them for just a joy to sit down and talk to Michael, an incredibly thoughtful guy who is putting his ideas and his values into practice at an elite La Liga youth academy at Espanyol

Thanks for listening to the CoachCraft Podcast. I'm Alf Gracombe and if you haven't already, I hope you'll subscribe and share these conversations I'm having with great coaches, with the coaches and friends in your network. Thanks and see you next time.