Geometry and the football ecosystem
We must question what we know. Or that which we think we know.
Or better still admit that we really know next to nothing.
Only then can we reconsider what we do and consider why we do it, and whether we can (or should) do it better?
Disciplines often seek to borrow from each other. Sport, business and education cross pollinate with regularity, but sport is as much about structures as it is psychological relationships. What might it learn from physics, engineering, or biology?
Football creates it’s own geometry. The movement of internal organisms structuring and restricting with fluidity and rapidity. This movement creates an on field ecosystem.
The overall system breaks into subsystems. Dyads and triads. Diamonds facing off against squares in a quest for subsystem dominance. The squares may face triangles as the numerical superiority ebbs and flows.
The game is so fluid and dynamic that in reality only at restarts can a set shape be definitively demanded and deployed.
Dense honeycomb shapes begin to form. Nature prefers the hexagon, the strongest structures in nature will feature hexagonal combinations. The formats of football create a geometry based on temporarily fixed points. Nature doesn’t have to worry about whether it is in or out of possession.
When a team has possession is when the gaps are created and the team in possession becomes vulnerable to counter attacks due to the spaces within its own structure. Spaces that the team has created for itself. A shape often not dictated by the game, not self organised and not natural. A shape created by the coach.
By adopting natures hexagon a team may be able to make itself more secure.
Using natural geometry may help us to solve the issue of dominating territory and possession, being impactful in attack, while not leaving ourselves open to counter attacks.
Search far and wide, you never know where solutions will appear.
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