Learning vs Performance

This is a very interesting topic. I have read about it in the book "Youth Soccer, form Science to Performance", written by Thomas Reilly, Dave Richardson, Gareth Stratton and Mark Williams.

Obviously, the concept of performance refers to how good one performs at a given time and the concept of learning refers to how much one is learning.

There is this very important fact that can also be applied to football (soccer) training sessions and games: what is good for performance might not be good for learning.

I will give just two simple examples:
(1) During a game the coach can give a lot of instructions telling the players all the time to whom to pass the ball or when to take a shot. This improves his team's performance, but does not help his players learn a lot. Instead of trying to find solutions on their own, they will be forced to listen to the coach.
(2) Let's say we have a U12 team. If their coach spends a lot of practice time to teach them tactics and if he teaches every player to play a single position, then their results will probably improve, but they would have lost valuable time in which their training should have concentrated more on technical skills.

I think this idea goes against the common belief that the coach of the winning team is generally the better coach. And if the players of the winning team seam to have less technical skills then even more we are tempted to say that their coach is the better one. This is often not the case.

Coaches that care too much about winning and think more about performance than about learning will not give the best possible football (soccer) education to their players.

In youth coaching learning should always come first!