Tag Archives for " World Class Coaching "

2 The Importance of Teaching Individual Defending

I think coaches spend a lot more time teaching offensive skills and techniques than they do teaching young players how do defend individually and in small groups. The attacking techniques of dribbling, passing and shooting are easy to create training sessions around and they are definitely the sexier skills of the game. But teaching a young player to defend a 1 v 1 effectively is vital to their development as a player.

This point was driven home to me last weekend as my teams played their first games of the new season. We had worked on all of the attacking skills but spent no time learning how to defend correctly. There are so many topics to cover that you just can't do it all in two weeks of training sessions before the first game. So this week

6 Juggling - Developmentally Important or Just a Nice Trick

Our club recently established a set of benchmarks for how many times the players should be able to juggle at a given age. Here are those targets:

U8 - 10 with feet only - 10 with thighs only - 4 with head only
U9 - 20 with feet only - 20 with thighs only - 6 with head only
U10 - 10 with feet only - 10 with thighs only - 12 with head only
U11 - 80 with feet only - 80 with thighs only - 24 with head only
U12 - 100+ with feet only - 100+ with thighs only - 50+ with head only

Unfortunately, most of our players in the club are below these standards so we'll be working to improve that this year.

When you talk about juggling with coaches you usually

1 First Practice of the Year

Is it time to start 'Fall' practices again already! If you're like me you found yourself asking this question this week. I don't know where the summer break went but it's gone.

Like the first few series of the football game, I like to plan out my first few weeks of training way ahead of time. I know I want to cover a number of topics including some technique to knock the rust off. I also want to start talking about how were going to

1 Speed Training Exercises

We all have such limited time to impact the technical, tactical and physical abilities of our players that finding ways to integrate each of these into our training sessions is very important. If we were training four or five times a week we could afford to practice them in isolation but most of the coaches reading this won't have that luxury.

0 Should We All Try to Play Like Spain?

At the end of every major World Cup or European Championship those involved with youth development look at the results, what conclusions can be drawn and how they relate to the youth level of the game. In the case of Euro 2012, many coaches and commentators are asking, "How can we get our players to play like Spain does?"

A loud and consistent voice advocating move toward a more player-centered, creative game has been Soccer America's Paul Gardner. He has often bemoaned the direct, 'kick-ball' game and asked coaches to set aside their selfish desire to

0 A Variation of the 4-3-3

No formation will fit every group of players. A coach that plays the exact same formation with every team will be frustrated by certain players inability to, 'fit the formation'. For years my teams always played 4-4-2. There are some variations you can used depending on how you play your forwards and your central midfielders but that's pretty much it. Sure, you could play sweeper/stopper with the center backs but very few teams play with a sweeper in the modern game. You can change every
formation to a small degree but I feel that the 4-3-3 is the most customizable of all of the popular formations.

There are so many ways to vary the 4-3-3. You can play with the midfielders spread across the field with a right, left and center. They can be in a

0 Game Speed Testing – Testing with a Purpose

Today's post is from Scott Moody, our Soccer Conditioning Expert at the Soccer FIT Academy. This blog post got my attention because I've had many conversations with parents and other coaches on this subject. There are an ever-increasing number of, 'Speed and Agility' trainers, camps and businesses. But all to often they are not soccer

1 Preparing for Regionals

A few weeks ago I had a post entitled, "Preparing for State Cup". Well despite my coaching my U13 girls won the Kansas State Cup and are heading to the Region II Championship in Saginaw, MI. Obviously development is the most important thing at their age but I firmly believe that developing the will to win is just as important as technical, tactical and physical development. While the players had many individual goals that were centered on improvement, we had one common team goal, and that was to win State Cup.

The week after State Cup we have tryouts which causes a problem; what do you do if one of the players isn't selected for next year's team? Every team has the same issue and they deal with it in different ways. But this year

0 Tryouts for Youth Teams

Each state in the U.S. sets their own time for tryouts. In the mid west the date usually falls in June sometime after State Cup has been completed. In Kansas tryout can officially start one week after State Cup is completed.

There are two types of clubs, a truly tiered system where the best players are place on the top team in the club and the next strongest players are put on the second team and so on. The goal of this type of club is

1 Nature or Nurture?

This week's post is an excerpt from our latest book, "Developing the Complete Tactical Player". This unique book focuses on methods to train players to develop tactical knowledge, faster decision making and smarter use of the ball. I think we can all agree that this is an aspect sorely missing in many of our players but can make all the difference in taking them to an elite level.

This brief excerpt looks at

0 Preparing for State Cup

It's hard to believe that the end of the soccer year is coming so quickly. Our State Cup is June 1/2/3 so were in review mode to prepare for the biggest tournament of the year. We want to do our best to be successful because the winners of State Cup attend the Regional Tournament to play against the best teams in our Region. The players learn so much for that type of experience that I want the girls to have that opportunity.

We've covered a lot this year and I've really seen

0 Attacking Patterns in the 4-3-3

Can you teach creativity? Some coaches believe that players are either creative or their not. Certainly there are players that we can all name that appear to be, 'naturally' creative but I believe that most players need to learn to be creative.

I don't think that you could have put Mozart in front of a piano at seven years old and he could just start playing. Learning the basic patterns and structures is vital first step in the process. Once you understand the framework and basic skills you can start to put things together in new an innovative ways.

I take this same approach when working with my teams when it comes to ideas for attacking. I like to give them a number of different attacking patterns to work on before freeing them to see what the defense is giving them and deciding how they can take advantage of it.

Since this is the first year I've implemented a 4-3-3 formation with any of my teams, I turned to an expert for idea on both the attacking and defensive

4 Which Fakes to Teach Young Players

I'm in favor of teaching young players to be very comfortable and confident with the ball by teaching them different fakes . During the initial learning phase I want the players to use them every time they get the ball. Some coaches have told me that you can't teach creativity but I think you give them the tools and then teach them how to use them. This can look a bit rough at first as the kids get comfortable with the fakes but if they use them enough they learn when to use a move and when to choose another option.

There are so many different fakes you can teach that an important question becomes

1 Finishing from Volleys and Headers

I've always had a standing challenge to my teams (U13 and below), if they score a headed goal, I buy ice cream for the next practice. It's been a way to encourage the players to try and score with their head if they can. This has been most successful with the girls teams I have coached. The extra incentive has become something that the team rallies around.

After spending a few weeks working on our combination play to score we played very well in our next games. Two of our three goals came from combinations in the middle of the field.

Another area that I've wanted to address

3 Teaching the Movement of the Forwards in the 4-3-3

As I've written about several times, I've been going through the process of training one of my teams to play the 4-3-3 formation. I've always used a 4-4-2 or a 3-4-3 in the past so this has been a learning experience for me as well as the players.

I began with the defensive phase of the game to give the team a foundation to build on. They now have a good understanding of their responsibilities when we don't have the ball and that has made us a tough team create chances against. As a part of this we've worked a great deal on getting our wing backs involved by pushing them forward when we win the ball. This put emphasis on our wide play and we've been able to generate a lot of our offense by attacking the flanks with both our wing backs and wingers.

The area that we have been lacking

0 Using Small-Sided Games to Develop Players

Most coaches use small-sided games as part of their training sessions. Sometimes this is limited to a 10 minute scrimmage at the end of the session.

During the spring season I will often run an entire session that revolves around two or three small-sided games to reinforce technical or tactical topics that we have covered a number of times during the fall and winter. As the session continues the players move in and out of the two or three different games. Each one has a slightly different challenge for the players to solve. The players enjoy the change of pace and the games help the players connect the skills we've developed to the game itself.

I'm always on the lookout for games that are a bit different. A book that we recently released has given me a number of good games that my players have really enjoyed.  Check it out here.

Developing Creativity Through Small-Sided Games, is written by Brazilian soccer coach, Eduardo Andriatti Paulo. He feels that the Brazilian system has moved away from

0 Beating the Offside Trap Follow-Up

In a post last December I talked about how I was working with my team to understand the different ways to beat the offside trap. Some of the ideas and exercises I use are from the book, 'Offside!'.

A reader suggested that runs from the midfield was another way to effectively defeat the trap. Here's what David Williams says about these types of runs in, 'Offside!':

"Tell the loan striker to restrict his runs forward

4 Testing to Evaluate Player Ability and Development

As a coach I'm always evaluating my players but mostly on a subjective level. I do some 1v1 and 2v2 statistical evaluations that I wrote about in a previous post but that's the only objective information I've used to in the past.

This spring our club has implemented the SoccerFIT Game Speed Assessment for all of our teams. The test looks at three specific categories - Speed/Agility, Soccer Fitness and Technical Skill. The ideal situation is to see a balance between these unique areas but in most cases players will be stronger in one or two and weaker in the others. Here's an example of a report that you would receive after entering your data from the tests:

There are 15 different test

17 Is the U.S. Development Academy Taking Away Choices for Players?

The main topic of discussion among soccer coaches and parents over the last month has been the U.S. Soccer Developments Academy's move to a 10-month season beginning in 2012-13.

U.S. Soccer created the Development Academy in 2007 to improve the everyday environment for the elite youth player. The Development Academy is a partnership between U.S. Soccer and the top youth clubs around the country to provide the best youth players in the U.S. with an everyday environment designed to produce the next generation of National Team players.

U.S. Men’s National Team Head Coach JURGEN KLINSMANN commenting on the change said, “If we want our players to someday compete against the best in the world, it is critical for their development that they train and play as much as possible and in the right environment. The Development Academy 10-month season is the right

4 Shooting Drills Competition Winner

It was difficult to choose a winner in our recent shooting drills competition because we received so many good entries. In the end we picked this exercise from Dennis Hillyard of New York. We were looking for drills that were easy to understand, used equipment all coaches have access to, provided a lot of repetitions for the players, were scalable to larger and smaller numbers and provided progressions that could be used as the players develop. This exercise meets all of those criteria.

Shooting Competition - First Time Shooting

4 FC Barcelona - Style and Domination

FC Barcelona has become the world’s top club and has set the standard for all other clubs to follow.  With more than a dozen major championships and counting over the past four years, the team has achieved remarkable success in La Liga, the Copa del Rey, the Champions League and also the FIFA World Club Championships.  Further, the bulk of the 2010 World Cup Champion Spanish National Team mainstays call Barcelona their home club.

What has prompted this run?  Certainly talented players including the likes of Lionel Messi, Xavi Hernandez, Andres Iniesta, Gerard Pique and others are critical to the team’s stunning run.  However, the Barcelona model is much more complex, as the coaching, philosophy, tactics, team culture and more all contribute to the spectacular results and consistency that have been the hallmark of the club in recent years.

A new book that we've just released call, FC Barcelona: Style and Domination, A Tactical Analysis of FC Barcelona examines the special qualities and practices that have been critical to the club’s recent success.  From a profile of the manager and summary of the club’s overall

8 Technical Work – The Faster the Better

This week's post comes from our Soccer Conditioning Experts at Soccer FIT. This article struck a cord with me because I think that as coaches we are sometimes guilty of the single-minded focus on technique especially for our youngest players. The post makes the point that we are in danger of obsessing over perfect technique to the point that we lose functional speed.

When it comes to “technical work,” can we be TOO technical?

Interesting question…and in my opinion the answer is “YES!” I understand that foot angle & toe placement when touching the ball is extremely important. But as coaches, we must ask ourselves “how much technique is

0 Forward Passes and Runs

As I've discussed in earlier posts, I think that most coaches agree that our players don't watch the game being played at the highest level enough. Kids in countries where soccer is part of their culture grow watching professional player every week so when it comes time for them play they have a rich source of creative ways to break down defenses. They've watched Messi and Iniesta rip apart a back four with quick passing combinations and then tried the same thing with their friends at the park. Our players need to be given examples of ways to create goal scoring opportunities so they can look for those situations

13 Early Specialization in Youth Soccer – A “Catch 22″

Today’s post is from our Soccer Conditioning Experts at Soccer F.I.T Academy and looks at whether or not having our kids specialize in soccer at an early age is beneficial or harmful.

As a fitness professional, youth club staff member, and soccer dad, I hear ALL sides of the discussions about “early specialization in youth sports across the U.S.” While this trend affects many youth sports, this dilemma as it pertains to the American soccer landscape is the most interesting in my opinion. FACT- The U.S. is behind the rest of the world in technical ability, tactical competency, and situational soccer awareness compared to our competition across the world. FACT – The ONLY way to narrow this gap is for our youth..our children… the future of U.S. Men’s & Women’s Soccer is to play…and play more. FACT – The U.S has highest rate of youth