Charles Hughes (football coach)

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For other people with this name, see Charles Hughes.

Charles Hughes was the director of FA coaching for the Football Association. He is best know for authoring the FA's official coaching manual, The Official FA Guide to Basic Team Coaching (ISBN 0-34-081600-7). His ideals were developed from the [those developed by] World War II Wing Commander Charles Reep. Hughes developed his ideas in the now defunct magazine Match Analysis from watching a variety of matches in soccer and concluded most goals were scored from less than three passes. So it was important to get the ball quickly forward as soon as possible.

Hughes defense was based on a statistical analysis in particular of the areas of the field from where goals were scored. He called these area the POMO - Positions of Maximum Opportunity and that became the focus of play. Get the ball into the POMO enough times and you are sure to score.

Unfortunately that analysis was conducted on lower league games and thus unrelated to the reality of top division or international football^{[citation needed]}.

Many British coaches advocated his long ball philosophy but critics have derided his philosophy for encouraging a generation of players who lack basic technical skills and have lack of understanding of diversity of different tactical playing strategies.^[1] ^[2]^[3]