Meeting the standards

Complex

 

In the midst of our daily lives, the football world cup, various events in our communities and the always nourishing holiday season, the 8th World Floorball University Championships was held in Lodz, Poland.

Even though the tournament might not of the most prestigious ones, it still has become a somewhat of a tradition in the international calendar, and therefore it is to be treated with respect and professionality. Especially by a country of the highest calibre such as Finland.

Perttu Kytöhonka from our Complex Floorball collective posted some tweets regarding the issues in the game performed by Team Finland, which then raised some thoughts, or rather more questions concerning the tournament,  and Finnish floorball in a broader sense.
 

As a background in short, the Finnish floorball federation has during recent years been renewing its player development programme. A part of this has been the forming of the U16 – and the U23 -national teams, which has been part of the creation of a larger entity, the national team path.The aim of this structure has been to become the best floorball country in the world and outlining a path for the players starting from a junior level always until the senior level.

Team Finland played 4 games in the tournament, beating Japan and Slovakia, and losing to the Czech Republic and Switzerland. The losses against the latter ones with a rather big margin is worrying signal regarding Finnish floorball, and on a more general level, the attitude towards the nature of floorball as a complex team sport.  

If we take a look at the roster of Team Finland, we see a competent team formed by players playing at the highest level. There should not be constraints to preform quality floorball with a well defined playing model. Still, without going to a deeper tactical analysis (not to be excluded in the future), especially the semi-final match against Switzerland exposed many problems, which raise questions regarding the preparation process of Team Finland for this tournament. If we put the team’s performance against the visions of the earlier mentioned federation’s player development programme and the national team path, it raises concerns. One could picture there being a clear defined playing identity running through all the national teams. Unfortunately the performance of this team looked more like an individually led project, than something belonging to a broader playing identity.

As we journey deeper behind these negative results, we must raise the question of what/how/why the preparation has been done. Has there been time and if so, how has this precious time been used?

We know that a training camp was held the end of may, where both the men’s team and the U23- team took part in. As this would be an ideal place to prepare for the forthcoming tournament, the reports about the tournament draws a rather different picture. For instance one whole day was dedicated to fitness and technical tests, which included a newly introduced “pig test” (a combination of running strides and strength-endurance). After the camp the men’s head coach Petteri Nykky said that the focus on this camp was not so much in the tactical side, but on other aspects. From this we know that some time was at hand for preparing for the tournament, but we can question the usage of time.  

Instead of the time used to improve collective floorball, the contents of the camp seem to confirm the views of the persons leading finnish floorball, who strongly emphasize the individual in floorball, even narrowing the game to a series of 1v1 – situations. From the amount of individual testing during the camp, the saying “you appreciate what you test” can be applicable.

 

It is hard to draw a line from a preparation consisted of individual testing and “focusing less” on the tactical side, to a successful team performance in an international tournament. In one hand,  If the case really is that team performance is being compromised by focusing on individual attributes, then it has to be asked what is the reason in taking part in such a tournament. On the other hand, if there has not been sufficient time to prepare in order to maximise the potential of the team performance, we come again to the same question of why taking part. We can ask the same question for a third time, if we take in consideration the high standards and professionality a leading country such as Finland should always keep. For comparison, Sweden did not send a team in the tournament, as it felt it did not meet the standards.

To conclude with, what truly concerns us here at Complex Floorball, is that this performance is not analysed in the context of a complex team sport, but instead it ignites even more the discussion regarding the individual and the enhancement of it’s attributes. The denial and almost the neglectance of the complexity in an invasion sport is deeply worrying. Instead of becoming the world’s leading producer of players and coaches it risks its place at the top.

 

Mikael de Anna (@MikaeldeAnna)