Christian's Coaching Journey
Soccer is Christian’s life
Christian, like most Spanish kids, started life with a soccer ball at his feet. The ball followed him everywhere he went, just like his dog Trasto. Trasto in Spanish means "difficult to control", "naughty" and "does what he wants". Trasto lived up to his name and all he wanted to do was play.
Christian, like Trasto, also knew exactly what he wanted from life, and that was to play soccer. His parents, who weren't particularly competitive, were also happy to let Christian obsess on soccer as his grades in school were always good. They felt he had balance in his life.
Like many of his friends, all Christian really cared about, thought about, talked about, watched, played and lived was soccer. However, Christian had a level of determination, focus and drive that his friends lacked. He always hated mediocrity.
So this drive to be a better player quickly started to produce results and his skills and performances stood out. He realized that if he kept this up, his dream to be a professional player could actually become a reality.
His mind-set and focus led to an understanding that to be successful he needed to control as many factors as he could. Factors like training hard, studying the game, watching professional matches, following all the advice he was given or read (not always a good idea), and to use what he knew about some players who had gone professional before as a roadmap.
Christian's process was mostly self-directed as there wasn’t one single resource he could turn to. Over time he created and refined his own unique path that combined many different factors. Most importantly, his approach was producing results on the pitch and he was rapidly progressing toward his goal.
Shattered dreams
However, like all things in life, there are also uncontrollable factors. Factors such as injury, the level or talent of a particular coach, the style of play you have to adopt, the country that you are born in, the way a federation chooses to educate coaches, the teams that you are in and even the level of teams you get to play against.
And not everything goes as you dream.
At 17, Christian suffered what turned out to be a career ending groin injury. He could not play, missed two full seasons, and this caused him to fall behind his peers at a critical time in his development. Fate closed the door to being a professional player and Christian therefore chose to pursue a degree in Sports Science, but fate was not finished yet.
New way of thinking
Having already invested thousands of hours in soccer, playing and learning, Christian once again found himself studying soccer in his Sport Science degree.
But, as luck would have it, Christian’s University happened to have two innovative Sport Science Professors who were shaping the future of soccer. They believed soccer wasn't really about athleticism or fitness, it was about solving problems. The pair had created such a reputation that coaches and players would drive from towns and cities 3 to 4 hours away each week just to hear them speak.
Their ideas were different to anything Christian had ever seen or heard and yet they made perfect sense to him. It was a light bulb moment. He saw the future and he saw what soccer could be and it was overwhelming. This was a completely new way to see soccer, a game he had already dedicated much of his life too, and yet it was like he was seeing the real game for the first time. He believed that their approach had the potential to change soccer forever!
Even though he had been playing soccer for 15+ years, he now had to adopt a beginner’s mind, leaving everything he thought he knew about soccer behind. He stepped into the unknown with a sense of excitement and adventure.
This new approach also appealed to his drive for perfection, and his thirst for this new knowledge was unstoppable. So much so that Christian's Professors asked him to work with them and together they formed a soccer education company.
Christian then expended countless, often gruelling, hours going down theoretical rabbit holes looking for better tactical expressions on the field. Together with his two Professors he began teaching professional clubs, players and even nations about a new way of seeing and understanding soccer.
Validation in parallel
At the same time as Christian was exploring this new game, the Spanish people had come to the end of their patience with the Spanish national soccer team. They were so bad that they were considered a "national joke".
But another innovator in Spain at the time was on a mission to create a cultural change, one that had a massive effect on Spanish and then worldwide soccer. This innovative Sports Scientist applied a Systems Theory approach to soccer. Up until then soccer was considered just like athletics, but he also saw that it wasn't really about fitness.
He took this problem-solving approach to FC Barcelona and with a group of young soccer players they would openly set the stage for a style of play that led to a golden period for the Spanish national team, the world number one spot, and critically a World Cup trophy.
This was real world evidence showing that the ideas of Christian and his Professors were on the correct path, and also decades ahead of their time and the competition.
Theoretical mastery of the game is not enough
It was during this time that the second lightbulb which was just as crucial and just as unexpected went off for Christian. One that could be considered diametrically opposed to his career to date, one that was painful but painfully honest. It was that no matter how deep you went in understanding tactics and play styles, tactically bad coaches could still create winning teams!!!
He observed that overly theoretical coaches who understood the game deeply would and could still be beaten by coaches who had a lower level of game understanding, especially if they couldn't motivate, unite or inspire their team.
To be the best coach, mastering theory was not enough! You needed to understand and develop tactics, technique, fitness, motivation and determination. In the rare instance when a coach can combine two or more of these areas, they can become unstoppable.
Coaches needed to be able to develop players with resilience, who can adapt, and who can solve problems on the field in real time.
Mastering theory and practice for success
The last life changing realisation was a moral and values based one. In 2012 he started out on his own journey and once again created his own path. One that aligned with his morals and values of treating all people fairly and with respect, especially young players.
He integrated his almost unmatched theoretical understanding of soccer with a practical application of coaching, and with his passion for assisting young players to learn and succeed.
Since then, Christian has invested over 35,000 hours into soccer, education and coaching. He has helped players make their own dreams come true; some have made it professionally, others have made national teams and others have been granted scholarships.
From Spain to the world
Christian now brings all this knowledge online for the first time ever with the Kairos Soccer Academy Individual Fundamentals Course. Available for anyone, anywhere in the world, with a desire to be the best player they can be.
Fate it seems might have a purpose after all!
Kairos Academy Origin
Kairos began simply, like many stories do, with a parent's love for their child
Naturally drawn to a soccer ball
There was a young child who fell in love with soccer, which unlike Europe, Africa, Central and South America was not the most popular sport in his country. He always had a ball at his feet (inside and outside) and would dribble on his tip toes around his toys on the floor.
When he was about 4-5, and despite being 3 years younger than his sister, his parents remember him joining in her indoor soccer team. He barely came up to their other kids’ waists, but he was a “natural” with the ball and didn’t shy away from competition. This child seemed destined to play soccer.
Learning to play and standing out
Like most children, he joined a local club and was coached by enthusiastic and passionate parents, some of whom had play for the local senior teams. The child quickly showed he could out dribble, out skill and outperform his peers. He was “pretty good” and “dreamed of being a pro”.
How good is good relative to the competition?
It is one thing to be among the top of your peers in a small city in a small country, but what many don’t realize is that the competition is not the local children. If you want to go pro, the competition is players in other countries. The players who have access to the toughest competition week in and week out, the best coaches and scouts, and in locations where soccer is said to be like a religion.
From the side-line, his father was unknowingly in a very challenging position. The father had dedicated his career to tracking, monitoring and understanding factors which contributed to and improved elite athletic performance internationally, and was working alongside some of the world’s best elite teams and sporting organizations. Yet, he had almost no knowledge about soccer development and coaching, as it wasn’t a national sport, and there weren’t any UEFA A or B licence coaches anywhere near where he lived. However, his backgrounded was elite sport and if you want to improve, you need to have high level coaches, structured training, good competition and opportunities to extend yourself in the right developmental zone.
The father knew he didn’t have the infrastructure locally to provide strong enough competition or coaching and he looked for viable options. Leaving “no stone unturned”, he searched through all of the online courses (European and American) to try and find the best coaching content to see what he might be missing. The father and son attended any international camps that came to their country to help try and assess their level. Yet, he still felt disillusioned about whether a soccer dream was an actual possibility for his son, even if a remote one, or whether people were stringing you along because they simply wanted your money.
Searching for a trusted source
With a deep thirst for finding answers and a thorough understanding of elite sport from his own career, the father searched even wider. After months of research and investigation he found a thread from an American parent who’s child had been selected to play for one of the most prestigious clubs in the world, the FC Barcelona youth side.
This American parent was organizing exclusive small group trips to Spain to work with a private coach whom he credited for his child’s success. He never mentioned the coach by name.
Through more exhaustive research the father eventually discovered who this secretive coach was from a training group picture.
The difficulty in finding the coach (Christian) was in large part due to his desire to stay out of the limelight; out of the “self-promotional, self-proclaimed, everyone is an expert, buy my stuff, come to my training camp rubbish” that you find everywhere that is run by people who have done very little. Christian is instead a quiet, humble and deeply profound student of the game, and he lets his results for those who follow his methods speak for themselves.
That one image and the subsequent phone call, changed the course of the father's and his son’s life forever. Instead of going to a training camp in Spain and helping only his son improve, he wanted to help provide opportunities for all of the local talent. Thus, a camp was arranged for a group of players (of all ages) and Christian flew half way around the globe for a one-week intensive training camp.
A camp that blew everyone's mind!
The sessions were beyond what anyone could have anticipated. The concepts seemed so simple and yet so mind-blowingly important, and yet no one had even heard of them. It really was a new way of thinking about soccer, and Christian was teaching “why” you did certain actions, at certain times, not just about learning the actions for the actions’ sake.
Christian had decoded this game that the players and parents thought they knew, but were really only just seeing for the first time. And this was also clearly just the tip of the iceberg. It was like Christian had pulled back the curtain and shown them things that were always right there in front of them. The children and parents had just uncovered that knowable secrets existed that effectively unlocked the game. For one week they got to learn a fraction of the information.
Yes, we are behind!
Critically, the father got an honest answer about the level of the local players. His suspicions were right and they were indeed behind relative to their peers overseas. Christian remarked that the children’s drive to learn and the readily available training spaces were some advantages that may help them to catch up.
What next?
Christian headed back to Spain and sent individual work outs and videos back to the children. Realistically, if the children were to ever have a shot at their dreams they needed to learn and be trained in these concepts regularly.
Yet, no coach wanted to put in the work and take up the mantle of effectively relearning how to coach soccer from this new view-point.
A parents' dedication
Luckily, there are few things stronger in this world than a parent’s desire to help their child. There are also fewer parents who could have actually gone to the lengths that this father did. Although he had no real understanding of soccer, he knew about teaching and coaching to a high level (from other sports), he understood performance and he was willing to give up all of his free time to give back and help children have a chance, no matter the location.
1000's of hours were invested
Christian and the father set about implementing a plan to effectively get Christian to coach remotely. Christian created a coaching and learning program from Barcelona, which was then delivered by the father. They caught up multiple times a week and Christian carefully explained the sessions intent, the session design and the father reviewed the content and got back to him with any questions about drills etc. The father then delivered 3-4 sessions + a game and feedback to Christian on how each session went, what went well, what didn’t. It was about 20 hours a week, and 5 hours of review. Then Christian would design the next week’s plan. This went for two years.
The sessions were all centred around what we now call the Kairos Fundamentals, but at the time it was about getting a small group of players, from a small city to see the game in a different light and level up as quickly as possible. The conversations and exchanges between the pair continually challenged the father on how to approach every aspect of the game, tactics, technical training, positioning, and to understand why to do some things and not others. Together they broke the game down to help coach players in a simple, yet effective way.
Rapid progress and success
Importantly, the young team was clearly benefiting from learning these concepts. They were progressing at a rate such that they played two age groups up, they competed in national tournaments and beat local academy teams from larger cities, and even ambitiously travelled to an international tournament to test their level against the toughest youth competition. For the father, seeing the young players practicing the concepts and improving their game was a joy and a privilege to be part of.
The father’s commitment to become the learner and Christian's desire to teach created a lasting friendship between the two. It also brought a father and son closer together as they shared this journey together (yes, there were challenging and tough times and being a parent coach is something that we would not recommend as it is not always easy on either the child or the parent).
Why release the Individual Fundamentals now?
Discovering Christian changed the course of the father’s and his son's life, just like it did for the parent whose son was now playing for FC Barcelona's youth team, and for the many other amateur and professional players who Christian has coached.
The pair had already dedicated thousands of hours into essentially creating a course that was taught remotely. Both Christian and the father work in elite sport and have seen how “luck” often impacts sporting outcomes; how lucky you are to grow up in a certain country, be in right year group to have a group of peers who excel, or even live close to a coach who cares and dedicates their life to improving their own knowledge and skill so they can help others.
The father believed that others in the world should have a “Coach Christian” there to guide them in their journey, and Christian was already thinking along the same lines. The pair wanted to share the individual, positional and team fundamentals and concepts used by the top players, clubs and countries in world soccer. Location and luck would no longer be a factor that prevented players from achieving their potential.
Giving other parents a chance to help their children
Critically, there are many good and a few great coaches around the world, but there are only a handful of coaches on a different level. Christian is the latter. Here is a chance for both you and/or your child to learn directly from someone for who soccer is more than a religion, it has been their life’s work.
The father remembered how stuck he felt trying to navigate the youth soccer landscape. With all the information and false promises out there, Christian was the first to give an honest appraisal. He remembered being in that position of wanting to help and support his child but not knowing where to turn or what to learn. Christian solved that for him, just like Christian solved that for professional clubs and players and national teams.
This parent now wanted something more, to help fellow parents, to give their sons and daughters the same gift he was able to give his son, the chance to learn and progress in the game they all love.
Kairos is a Greek word loosely translated to "Right Action at the Right Time". It's now time for you to take the right action at the right time and join Kairos Academy and be a part of something special.