Mike Smith Archives - WORLD CLASS COACHING Training Center

0 Fake the Switch for Central Distribution

By Mike Smith “Switch it!” Standard game day lingo for parents, players and coaches alike. That open person on the far side, so tantalizing to hit a long ball to. The problem is, pressure around the ball can take the long switch away. Also, once the ball is in the air, an organized team can

0 Distribution From the Holding Midfielder

By Mike Smith I have often used a holding mid with the idea of supporting defensive play. Most of the time this player is placed in front of the defensive line in the center of the field. However, as many teams want to quickly get the ball wide, up the field, or both, the holding

0 Defensive Cover the Right Way

By Mike Smith Pressure, Cover, Balance. Foundations of defense. While tons of work is put into the various aspects of pressure, we as coaches often miss a chance to improve our team defense by only dealing with cover as the next player in line to pressure. For this reason, many players simply fly to the

0 Waist High Service to Force Mistakes

By Mike Smith What if your early service to the far post isn’t working? What if your opponent packs the box so full your players can’t find the combinations on the ground? What if your players who are usually good in the air are marked by players who know how to take that advantage away?

0 Pass and Move or Pass and Hold

By Mike Smith “ Go!!!!”, “ Give them some options, don’t just stand there!” , followed by “ Support!!!”, “ Don’t run away from the play!”. These are some of the most confusing and contradictory instructions players hear. If a player is supposed to always pass and move, how can they also stay in and

0 How to Call For the Ball

By Mike Smith - In almost every game, there are going to be those moments where the keeper and the defenders both have a play on the ball. While we all know the keeper can and should call off the defense, most of the time coaches just go with any outcome which doesn’t result in

0 Turn Your Shape to Train Possession

By Mike Smith I have found 3 distinct common developmental categories for initial youth soccer teams. I am talking about the time around 8 to 10 years old when the focus on teams and tactics starts to take hold. What I have seen from a strictly cursory non-scientific view point are teams ( and thus

0 Teaching Diving to the Ground

By Mike Smith - “JUST FALL ON IT!!!!” I have carved out my coaching niche over the past 20+ years working with not just youth soccer – (U8 – High School) but also new or struggling teams and programs. One constant for me has been the need to “make” a keeper for almost every team

0 Let Your Fullbacks Roam

By Mike Smith In a recent high school district championship match, the perennial district champs found themselves down 1-4 to the usual runners up with about 20 minutes left to go in the match. After a furious comeback to level the score and force overtime, the comeback win was completed off a corner kick from

0 Team Handball For Goalkeeper Training

By Mike Smith - When I was getting my USSF D License I remember the instructor saying “If you are working on defense, work on defense. Don’t worry about what the attackers are doing!” What the instructor (Coach Parrish ) was trying to do was make sure the coaches understood the need for clarity and

0 Stopping A Near Post Cross

By Mike Smith - Over the course of my coaching career I have struggled with a contradiction in my coaching style. Offensively, I swear by just getting the ball down the field and making a team eat crosses. This is my shotgun approach, just keep the ball going across the opponents net and good things

0 Be a Distraction In Goal

By Mike Smith - I was first introduced to the concept of being a distraction in goal through what I felt at the time was a poor choice of words. I actually always wanted to be a full time keeper but as I was always small – I was only 5 feet tall 100lbs when

0 How to Extend a Goalkeepers Reach

By Mike Smith - Just as most field players have a dominant foot, most keepers have a dominant leg they prefer to push off from. This usually corresponds with the dominant foot so if your keeper is right footed, chances are they prefer to launch from their right leg. I teach my keepers to shift

0 Saving the Ball With Your Legs

By Mike Smith - Maybe not every game, but certainly every season I have ever been a part of I can remember a great kick save or two. I actually had a keeper several years ago who routinely pulled off amazing kick saves,( most of the time at the expense of the more fundamental text

2 Getting Your Chest on the Ball

By Mike Smith - “ You play goal keeper with your feet, not your hands.”….. “ And really, you are trying to get your chest to every ball.” These two statements rocked my youthful understanding of goal keeping as at 10 years old I was really really sure being a goalie was all about using

0 Delayed Central Pressure to Stop Three Man Combos

By Mike Smith I have told my team several times, if I could get them to understand 3 and 4 and even 5 man combinations at the high school level we would make some noise in the state tournament every year. The fact is, most teams understand the basic “ give and go” two man combo

0 The Perfect Goalie Punt

By Mike Smith - I am taking over a new program this fall, one which has struggled with coaching consistency and on field performance. This has me thinking about many of the simple things I have used to help players improve quickly over the years. In a perfect world, my keeper would not punt the

0 Send It All The Way Across The Goal

By Mike Smith One of the biggest strengths or weaknesses of any system comes down to how the style of play matches the system of play. At the high school level especially, I see so many teams who have excellent shape and formation but it just doesn’t match what they are trying to accomplish with the

0 Plyometric Saves

By Mike Smith - I was first exposed to plyometrics as a training tool in 2000. Simplified as “ jump training” we used plyo work more as a preventative to ankle, knee and hip injuries. I worked primarily as a junior varsity coach at this time and it was my job to develop the next

0 Using Two False 9's

By Mike Smith I have a player on my high school team who eats breathes and sleeps soccer ( Yes, just one. We are a small school, I wish I had more.). He loves not only playing the game, but also studying the game. A few years ago, actually when he was a junior varsity player,

0 The Sweeper Keeper

By Mike Smith - I wrote a previous tactical based article on the role of the sweeper keeper in support of an aggressive high pressure attack. While this is not usually my preferred style of play, from a keeper training aspect, many of the points of focus in using the “ sweeper keeper” can help

0 Half Spaces and the Five Five

By Mike Smith I had the pleasure of writing an e-book titled How Pep Guardiola Wins with Inverted Fullbacks. During my research I discovered how much focus Guardiola put on “ half spaces” and how effective this understanding had been to Man City’s success. In addition, I began to understand how the majority of the time,

0 Effective Goalkeeper Communication

By Mike Smith - A vocal keeper is a must, however there is a saying in the educational field which I find holds very true in sports as well – “ Just because you can talk, doesn’t mean you can communicate”. One of the first things I usually find myself doing with new teams is

0 Central Triangle Plus Width

By Mike Smith I was asked this week by a fellow coach for a scouting report on a team in my district, which is currently ranked 26th in the state. He was overly concerned with formation in my opinion so what I told him to do was disrupt the triangle in the middle and force play

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