So much of soccer can be broken down to 1 v 1 and 2 v 1 yet we tend to want to over-complicate matters by thinking bigger numbers. Here is a fun game to work on 1 v 1 and 2 v 1 situations. The grid is 30 x 15 with a 3 yard wide
Continue readingIs working hard the best way to get in shape? There is a lot of talk by coaches about working hard. The thought is the harder you work the better shape you will be in. The problem with this is when you have a long season or you have a short season with a lot
Continue readingTeaching players to turn with the ball is an area that I don't see covered very often by coaches working with players from eight to 12. I'm not sure if it is because the coaches think the topic is difficult to teach young players or because they don't want to take time away from areas
Continue reading4-4-2 vs 4-5-1 vs 3-5-2 Technical training vs tactical training vs functional training. Zonal defending vs man to man marking. Pushing up into an offside trap vs sitting back and “parking the bus”. Coaches have these types of conversations (either with other coaches or internally with themselves) on a regular basis. The conversations I don’t
Continue readingMany activities work on attacking and defending. Many activities work on possession. Not many work on both. This activity, and many like it can be seen in the book Full Season Training Program - Elite Team by Terry Michler This activity is a 6 v 5 plus a keeper in the penalty area. 5 attacking
Continue readingIntegrating goalkeepers into team sessions is often a challenge for coaches who have experience playing or coaching the position. John Murphy deals with this subject in his excellent book, " Team Training for the Goalkeeper". Below is an excerpt from this book. It is from the Goalkeeper and Team Warm-Up Chapter. If the goal is
Continue readingIs it bad for your team to be predictable? A lot of people talk about creativity in soccer and how if you can make the opponent predictable it’s much easier to defend against them. My question is, is it really that bad to be predictable? To me, being predictable doesn’t necessarily mean making the same
Continue readingI was reading the book, Coaching Soccer Tactics recently and it got me thinking about the long time rule of thumb for soccer in the defensive part of the field has been “If in doubt, kick it out”. The logic for this rule of thumb is when the ball is in the defensive part of
Continue readingThis post comes from our official Soccer Conditioning experts at SoccerFIT Academy. I found it interesting and thought you might too. Rhythm and Soccer: a theoretical coaching approach to effective movement February 17, 2011 By Scott Today’s post is written by John Lytton, a sports performance coach and former pro-soccer player with a facility in
Continue reading* “I need a good drill” * “Do you know a good practice to work on shooting?” * “I saw a professional team training and was wondering if it would be good for my U14 team” These are some of the most frequent things I see in emails from subscribers. While I appreciate them wanting
Continue readingA dynamic warm up is vital to a successful training session. There are many different versions and mixed feelings regarding whether there needs to be a ball involved or not. Many feel any time in training that doesn’t utilize a ball is wasted time. I, and others, feel it’s more important to get a good
Continue readingBrazilians learn the game by playing the game. In many countries training sessions are focused around drills and exercises that isolate techniques and tactics. Brazilian coaches spend most of their time creating playing environments with small-sided games that put an emphasis on the specific areas of the game but also train the player ‘globally’. One
Continue readingSafety is such an important part of youth soccer but it gets a lot more lip service than actual service. The one topic that is mentioned most often is goal safety. We all know how important it is to make sure goals are secured but how many are actually doing it? Sadly a recent event
Continue readingIncorporating the keeper into team training is vital to do but so often neglected. Those teams “fortunate” enough to have a designated keeper coach tend to have the keepers go with this coach for part, if not all, of the team training. The reason for doing this is because the skills, techniques and tactics in
Continue readingWe all want our players to be able to recognize certain situations and then choose the correct option to take advantage of it. One very effective way of showing players these situations is to set the attacking team up with an advantage and condition the defenders to play in a certain way. This allows the
Continue readingSAO PAULO - Brazilian football legend Ronaldo, who helped his country to two World Cup trophies and is still the tournament’s top scorer, retired yesterday, Brazilian media reported. Widely regarded as one of the greatest players of all time, Ronaldo (known as ‘El Fenomeno’ during his prime), had held out hopes of one last World
Continue readingWayne Rooney's goal against Man City was pretty impressive to say the least. This got me thinking, what other great goals have been scored "inside the box"? There are plenty of great goals from 25 yards out but what about the great goals that were scored inside the box. Here is Rooney's goal. Send details
Continue readingThis thought provoking post about whether or not you always need to have a ball included in every aspect of training is from our friends at Soccer Fit. The folks at Soccer Fit are on the cutting edge of the latest soccer conditioning science so their perspective is worth listening to. Today’s post is by
Continue readingThe February, 2011 issue of the WORLD CLASS COACHING Digital Magazine has been uploaded to the Member Drills Database. It has some great material. Below is a short movie that gives a preview of the February issue. And don't forget, the Member Drills Database not only gets updated every month with a digital issue of
Continue readingI have spent many hours over the last week or so, setting up the WORLD CLASS COACHING Fan Page. It's incredible how fast technology moves. Just 6 months ago, I didn't see an urgent need for a WCC Facebook page, but now it's a "must". Many people now use Facebook on a daily basis and
Continue readingThe winter is a natural time for coaches to evaluate the progress of their players during the first half of the year. We are always 'evaluating' our players but most of the time this is information we use to make decisions about where to play one kid or another and what we need to work
Continue readingI have mentioned the NSCAA Convention before and I thought I would follow up after this years Convention in Baltimore. But rather than give the usual report of how the Convention went and all the great field sessions put on by the clinicians, all the fine lectures and the usual business that was done, I
Continue readingLionel Messi was just named as the FiFA world player of the year. The awards were based on the votes of the coaches and captains of national teams as well as global journalists. Messi scored more than any other player in Europe's top five leagues in 2010, with 42 goals in 36 La Liga games,
Continue readingThis is a game that I've used as a warm-up and in the main part of the session. I like it because of how many different things you can coach depending on your focus. As with most small-sided games, the kids really enjoy playing it so they get a lot out of it. Here is
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