Liverpool midfielder Thiago Alcántara goes through clips and explains his thought process. He talks like a coach. He’s great at explaining his thinking simply in a way where you feel like it could be replicated with practice, but it’s far from simple.

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Thiago explaining the importance of body orientation:

It is also important to not just look about how your body is, because if you receive the ball here, the game is here. So where is biggest space? The biggest space is here. So we have to put your body in some way, perfect your body in some way, to have the bigger picture.

Thiago has this great understanding of orientation to get the most out of the space offered to him. Feints, changing the type of pass based on how he receives the ball, but he has it ingrained in him to always react.

Always my father says, “Football is a joy with responsibility.” This is a kind of, as I say, habits, that you have to have, but when it’s football coming, you react.

The habits to orient your body this way, or receive with this foot, or move here, all are there but he has the instinct to change what he’s doing to both adapt to the environment and make the environment change based on what he is doing.