When I start cooperation with the Team I think about how I want my team to play. Which 'style’ fits best to players I gave in my Team? Maybe most of them grew in any 'handball school’ and the best and most efficient way is to continue this work? All that considerations leads us to teach our players what will be the 'core’ of our game. Skills and behavior that needs to be trained for months will build our strategy. For example all 'spanish style’ teams have to have a players who perfectly attack the free space while in 'scandinavian style’ teams more important is how we play 1 vs 1 with the player on a small space. And we build the strategy around that. And the same think is about defense. Not only about which system we choose but what is more important: how we manage common situation during the game like 2 vs 2, pressing rules etc. For example: we want to circulate the pivot from front having in mind that behind us is the weak point or we want to defend pivot from one side having in mind that other pivot side is our weak point. And for our strategy we build the training plan – we try to learn how to defend our weak points and perfect the strong side of our strategy. There are no ideal strategy. Every game system, every game decision and game sector have weak points. The think is to know them and train how not to lose because of them.
All above skills that build our strategy have to be trained for months and cannot be changed in a short period. Obviously there are players who know different strategies and can adapt however it is more about synergy and cooperation in whole team. So we can ask: why we do not teach all styles and just juggle them depending on the opponent? The answer is simple: if you train all styles you will be good enough in all of them but you will not be the best in the optimal system. And again, we need months our players to learn instinctive behavior and movements. We do not have a time to train everything. That is why we always see on a big tournaments that teams play differently. Gidsel, Remily, Dujshabaev – all great players with different (A) style (strategy) they used to learn for years. Can you see the difference between Spain, Poland, Egypt vs France vs Norway, Sweden, Iceland?
The important think about strategy is that we cannot change that in a short period. It is a common mistake that coach train the team for one strategy for months and then try to make huge changes for one next game. For example we train to defend passive 6:0 for months and then seeing next oponent decide that the best will be to play active 6:0. It never works out if you have not trained that before. That is why it is important to train alternative defense system.
So what the Tactics is? The Tactics is the plan for the game. Tactic is based on our strategy. We can moderate tactics from match to match and adapt some situation. For example in our strategy we make pressing in active 6:0 defense. The tactic for the opponent with 3 right handed playmaker could be higher pressing to Left Back. Or the tactics in attack for the teams who make pressing could be: more pivot running behind the back – more than in base strategy. Or we target the weak point in defense and play 1 vs 1 or 2 vs 2 there. It is good to show tactics for the next game on a video session and then train that on a training before the game.
In my opinion there is huge difference between strategy and tactic. If we want to know the vision how the team should play in the long run, in the future – then it is strategy. Once we ask the coach after the game what was his plan – we ask about tactic. What do you think? Do you agree?