Soccer, the most popular organized sport in the world, has also become one of the most popular sports in the United States the last 20 years, and the global connection of tactics and style can be seen even in Mississippi.
This was the case with the Starkville High School boys soccer team this season, fueled by the passion of its head coach, Evinn Watson.
“I started playing soccer very young,” Watson said. “I was raised by a basketball coach, so it was kind of funny I got into soccer, but it was my first love. I played other sports — football, baseball, basketball — but I could never get away from soccer.”
Watson, a physical education teacher in the Starkville-Oktibbeha Consolidated School District, has coached for the last few years in recreational soccer and was an assistant for the Jackets before taking over as head coach of the program in 2020.
Growing up he was a goalscorer, idolizing legendary strikers like Thierry Henry and Didier Drogba, and he more recently took a liking to Diego Costa. For Watson, the influence of those players, and his following of the English Premier League’s Chelsea, the club Drogba and Costa played for, has influenced his own coaching methods as he hopes to expand the “soccer IQ” of his players.
Watson spoke of the dominance of “athleticism” when it comes to the way Americans view and think about sports. Indeed it’s one of the most important aspects of sport in the U.S., but as any athlete will tell you there’s more to putting a team together than athleticism. Only in recent years has the level of technical ability and tactical understanding among professional U.S. men’s players gone up, and it’s come largely from players whose education and development happens overseas in Europe, he said.
“We aren’t teaching the tactical part of the game enough, and that needs to start at a young age,” Watson said. “That’s one problem America has. They can spit out athlete after athlete, but the real question is: can you produce players that know the ins and outs of the game and develop that game? … We want them to develop the mental part of the game as well.”
He encourages his players to study the game off the field, recommending YouTube videos on tactics and skills to his players as well as assigning homework and projects during the offseason, and in preparation for this season.
Watson also drew on inspiration from his beloved Chelsea club, running a formation with three players back — essentially giving the team an extra defender in the center of the field and an extra body in front of the goal.
In soccer, each team has 11 players on the field, including the goalie, and most formations operate with only two back line players.
“This season we ran the 3-5-2 and 3-4-3 with variations of that 3 at the back setup,” Watson said. “I will admit I definitely ran it because of Chelsea, but it worked, and I knew that it was a good way to utilize the players we had as well. It’s about finding that balance between where your team is at with the basics, the athleticism, and the tactics.”
The Yellow Jackets adjusted to the system and went on a tear, posting an 11-3-3 record that included an undefeated mark in their district. Their only losses between the end of November and the end of January were in non-district games.
Watson’s team wrapped up the district title with an exciting 4-3 win over Oxford before blanking Tupelo 3-0 in its last two contests. But the Jackets stumbled to a disappointing 1-0 home loss to Hernando in the first round of the state playoffs, ending their season.
“We came back after winning district and nobody really had the right mentality, myself included,” Watson said of the drop off going into the playoff game against Hernando. “It felt like we’d won state already, winning a tough district undefeated, but it’s a whole new part of the season. I don’t think we played our best, I think we went away from our tactics and started playing by (Hernando’s) tactics.”
Disappointing ending aside, Watson said he saw so much growth from his team this year, especially as it embraced looking closer at the mental, tactical side of soccer. Raising the players’ “soccer IQ” has also increased interest for some in playing the game beyond high school.
“I see a lot of interest in the sport from them,” Watson said. “There are those kids that want to push themselves and push their career as far as it can go. Others maybe not, but a couple players I can tell that it’ll still be a part of them.”
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