Improving Your Teams Possession Play

Every coach wants their team to keep the ball. every weekend you can hear coaches begging their team to, 'Keep Possession!' and 'Don't Give the Ball Away!' This book will help you teach your team to retain more possession and turn that possession into scoring opportunities.

Improving Your Teams Possession Play will show you how to create practices that will train your players to support the player on the ball and create passing opportunities with the appropriate movement. The book is divided into five sections: Concepts, Explanations, Exercises that Teach the Concepts, How Runs in the Match Reshape Left/Right/Split Support and Why Training is done with 5 v 5 or Larger Small-Sided Games. Concepts, details the key ideas that are necessary to understand in order to have your team maintain possession. The section on Explanations, provides you with a detailed breakdown of each of the concepts including, Left/Right/Split Support, Sharpening, Open Body Shape and First Touch. In Exercises That Teach the Concepts, specific example of ways to teach the concepts to your team. They begin as very basic practices and progress to involve larger groups so that the players can relate what they have learned to the larger game. How Runs in the Match Reshape Left/Right/Split, examines how a team keeps their shape during the flow of the game. Finally, Why Training is Done with 5 v 5 or Larger Small-Sided Games, discusses the best environments to use to training your players to understand the movements and shapes that help a team to maintain possession of the ball.

David Goldstein is a soccer coach with an extensive coaching and playing background. As a player he was a standout at Claremont McKenna College. After college he had the unique distinction of being drafted both as a forward and as a goalkeeper in the old NASL and ASL.

Since his playing days, Goldstein has amassed an extensive coaching resume. He is currently the Director of Coaching Development for a league in Boise Idaho. Prior to that, Goldstein held several coaching positions at the college level as both an assistant and head coach. In addition, he has been involved in the Olympic Development Programs as the Far West Regional Coach for girls and serving as the State Coaching Director for both Ohio North and Idaho.