No Absolutes
There are exactly two absolutes in soccer. Score more goals than your opponent, and play within the rules.
That's it. Everything else — how you pass, how you shoot, which foot, which surface, how many touches — is context. The game changes constantly, and the player who can solve whatever problem is in front of them is more valuable than the player who executes one approved technique in one approved situation.
But walk onto almost any youth training field and you'll hear absolutes everywhere.
Don't use your toes. Always use your laces. Never dribble backwards. Always play it simple. Two touches, then move.
Some of these are good heuristics. None of them are rules.
The Toes Conversation
I was running a summer camp session themed around creativity. Not a passing day, not a shooting day — creativity. The opening question was simple: how can you be creative? What does that look like to you?
The kids lit up. They talked about Rabonas and rainbow flicks and step-overs. One wanted to know if he could try a backheel in a game. Exactly right. That's the creative thinking you want firing before the session starts — players already imagining themselves doing something unexpected, something individual.
Then I asked: can you be creative with your toes?
Almost every player in the group said no. You can't use your toes. They'd been told — probably multiple times, by multiple coaches — that toes are for bozos. Toes are wrong. Don't use your toes.
Now think about that for a second. If the ball is a half-step out of reach and you need to keep it in, what do you use? Your toes. If you're stretching to poke a shot past the goalkeeper, what connects? Your toes. Is it the preferred surface for a twenty-yard pass? No. But does it work, in certain situations, more than you'd expect? Yes.
We taught them an absolute that isn't absolute. And in doing so, we removed a creative option before they ever got to explore it.
What the Technical Reports Don't Say
UEFA and FIFA release technical reports at the end of every major tournament. I read them. They're useful — they show formation trends, set piece statistics, where goals were scored from, disciplinary patterns.
What they never tell you is how the goals were scored. Not in the technical sense. They'll say open play or set piece, header or foot. They won't tell you whether it was struck with the laces or toed in. Whether it was a clean finish or a deflection off a shin. Whether the winning pass was an outside-of-the-foot disguise or a simple give-and-go.
Because none of that is tracked, because it doesn't matter. Goals count regardless of how they go in. Passes count regardless of what surface delivered them. The outcome is the only measure, and the outcome is served by whatever decision the player made in that moment with the information available to them.
That's what we're developing. Decision-makers. Not technique executors.
Creativity and Unpredictability as Themes, Not Topics
At camp, we worked the whole week on themes instead of techniques. Monday was unpredictable. Wednesday was creative. The question wasn't "how do you pass the ball?" — it was "how were you unpredictable today?"
That question lands differently. A player who passed when everyone expected a dribble was unpredictable. A player who checked their shoulder and switched direction three times before finding the pass — unpredictable. A player who played it with the outside of the foot to disguise the direction — creative, and unpredictable.
None of those are a technique to be taught in isolation. All of them emerged from the game environment we created, because we gave players permission to try them.
The small-sided game was the space. The theme gave them something to hunt. The technique — when it needed addressing — came from what we observed in the game.
The Flip Argument
I know the counterargument. Some coaches believe you need to teach the technique first so the player has it available when the game demands it. You need to build the library before you can use it.
I understand the logic. I don't think it works for most players, most of the time.
Here's why. When you isolate a technique — two players ten yards apart, standing foot beside the ball, inside of the foot, follow through — you're teaching the skill without the problem. The player learns the motion. They don't learn why it matters, or when to use it, or how to choose it over any of the fifteen other options the game might present.
When the game creates the problem first, the technique has meaning. My center midfielder can't get the ball wide quickly enough because the opponent is already shifting. Now I have a conversation with her about how to strike the ball with disguise — outside of the foot, or a driven ball early before the block — because she's experienced the problem in real time. She knows what she's trying to solve. The technique is the answer, not the starting point.
Then the development loop closes. She goes home, I give her a specific task: put a cone thirty yards away, get the ball played to you, get your first touch out, strike the cone. She comes back on Thursday. Same environment. Same game. Did it get better? Where is she now?
That's a development cycle built from a game-identified need. Not a session plan I designed in advance for a fictional player.
Position-Relative Training
One more version of this. The face-up 1v1 is the most common individual training exercise in youth soccer. Coach plays the ball, player receives, defender comes at them, they try to beat them and score.
Fine. But not every player faces that 1v1 in the game.
Your goalkeeper doesn't. Your holding midfielder, anchoring a midfield three, shouldn't be winning 1v1s in the middle of the pitch — they should be receiving on the half-turn, shielding, recycling possession. Training them in a face-up 1v1 doesn't develop their actual game demands. It develops a skill they rarely need.
When you remove the absolutes, you start asking better questions. What does this player actually face in the game? What's the technical demand for their position, within the game model we're playing? That question produces different training environments. And those environments produce players who are prepared for what the game actually asks of them.
I Dare You to Try It
The thing I've noticed about coaching absolutes is that they mostly come from fear. Fear that the center back tries something and loses the ball and we concede. Fear that the wide player tries a Rabona and it fails and we lose possession. Fear of the mistake.
But the player who is afraid to try things because their coach told them not to isn't learning to play the game. They're learning to avoid punishment.
The center back who tries an outside-of-the-foot pass and loses it — I want them to try it again. Do it better. Figure it out. That's development. The one who plays it safe and pings it long to avoid criticism — that player is protecting themselves, not growing.
There are no absolutes. There are better options and worse options in specific situations. Our job is to give players enough experience inside the game that they learn, over time, which is which — and the courage to try, fail, and try again.
"I dare you to do it" is more useful than "don't worry about it."
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 59 — No Absolutes
@LeeDunneSoccer