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Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

Tom Mura: Soccer Coach, Skills Director, Co-Owner WORLD CLASS COACHING and Blogger

Get an in-depth look at the methods, strategies and techniques used by a youth coach working full time with players of every age and skill level. This includes training plans, team management and planning ideas, latest trends in coaching and education, as well as interviews with other coaches and trainers that are on the cutting edge of soccer development.

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Top 10 Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING Episodes

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#238 Social Distance Training Session

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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06/19/20 • 30 min

Well my voice is coming back slowly but it wasn’t helped by having Pre-Tryout Camp this week. It’s a four day camp that helps prepare new players to our club for tryouts and gives current players a chance to get together after not playing for a while.

Our tryouts are tomorrow. None of our current players are attending because we’ve already offered them places on teams for next year. Having only new players will allow us to focus on them but it will be difficult for them to see the quality of the teams we’re offering them a place with. That’s just a challenge that we’ll have to do our best to overcome.

My teams are getting together for, ‘kick arounds’ on Saturday so that the new players can meet the current players and I can have a meeting with the parents. I’d like to get started with practices as soon as next week. Just once a week until the season starts but it’ll give the players a chance to get together after months of not training. It would also give us a head start on preparations for next fall.

Today’s question comes from Nick. He has a question about social distancing rules for training.

Nick says,

“I was wondering if you have any reference guides or material for drills and sessions in keeping with regulation social distancing rules. We are due back to training in two weeks so I wanted to get planning done asap.”

Thanks for your question Nick!

I’m not aware of any guides out there. I’m just using the six-foot rule when designing activities.

What to do in between activities is also something to consider. I plan to have cones set out 10 feet apart off of the field as a guide for players to put their bags and water bottles.

Here are some other guidelines we’re using: Players are bring their game jerseys to use instead of pennies. Only the coaches touch the cones and goal. No tackles, only interceptions. Hand sanitizer after water breaks.

I haven’t seen any guides for creating training sessions but I’ll pass it along if I find one.

In this Episode

I’ve put together a Social Distancing Training Session that I’m going to use as the framework for my sessions during the summer. It includes a lot of technical work using activities that are designed to get the players working together while still staying apart.

Future Episodes

Next week I’ll share an interview that I did with Shaun Spencer. He came to coaching in a very interesting way. We talk about the importance of taking charge of your own education as a coach as well as the importance of creating your own training sessions rather than relying on what’s worked for other coaches with other teams.

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06/19/20 • 30 min

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#237 The Pros and Cons of Playing with a Back Four and a Back Three

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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06/12/20 • 66 min

I’ve been really struggling with my voice (as you’ll hear in this episode) so I decided save the Social Distance Training Session for another week. I have uploaded the printable show notes with all of the diagrams and descriptions of the activities to our Patreon site so that Members can view it or download. I’ll describe it in detail next week but for Members that would like a sneak peak, you can click the link below.

In this Episode

This is another in our series of Facebook live debate. This one features Mike Saif, Alex Mason and Keith Scarlett. Their discussing the pros and cons of playing with a back four and playing with a back three.

Future Episodes

We’re getting closer and closer to being able to get back on the field with our players. Some states are already holding training sessions with certain restrictions. Next week I’ll share a training session that takes in account Social Distancing requirements while attempting to create a fun and engaging environment that will give players a chance to work together while staying safe.

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06/12/20 • 66 min

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#236 Coaching Conversation with Tim Wszalek

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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06/05/20 • 35 min

This week was the start of our tryout process for the 2020-21 season. We started by contacting parents and finding out if they were planning to return to the club and let them know what tryouts would look like this year. Since we decided not to move players down this summer, only up, then they knew that they would at least be at the same level as the previous year. This was meant to simplify things for the families, club and coaches.

Then on Thursday the coaches in each age group got together on a Zoom meeting and discussed which players should move up and who should stay with their current teams. It took us about 90 minutes to go through the U8 to U12 girls teams. This was easier than it could have been since we’d been keeping a fluid rankings list for each age group since last August.

On Friday each coach sent their families an email letting them know that a coach would be contacting them on Monday with an offer to join their team. We asked the families to get back to us quickly because the first team would start but the second team coach couldn’t send their email until the first team had all of their commitments.

On Monday morning (12:01 am to be exact) the first team coaches sent their email. At 8am I sent an alert through TeamSnap letting my players know that I’d sent them an email and asked that they complete the Google Form quickly to keep the process moving. We hoped that it would all go quickly but it didn’t go as fast as we would have liked. The last teams didn’t finish until about 9pm.

I thought this might be something that we could do every year but now that we’ve tried it I don’t think it would work if we were only offering some players spots and not others because we wanted to see which players would come to tryouts. I’m sure we’ll go back to the usual ritual of crazy tryout weekend next year.

This week’s question is from Keith. He’s asking about which methodology should be taught to their volunteer coaches in the club.

Keith gave me some background on his club and then said,

I was taught the progressive model in my coaching education (and should do some more formal education) and that has been my go-to but I have used Play-Practice-Play since you’ve been talking about it on the podcast. I find it very effective for the high school, although I cheat a bit and do a physical warm up with them before the first play phase to combat injury.

Using the first play phase as younger players gather has been very effective as well for the select teams I’ve coached. I’ve struggled some in the other phases with the purely recreational teams as the players are less self motivated and it’s harder to have 2-3 groups playing at the same time with only me as coach and still getting coaching points across effectively to everyone. I have also so far failed to get many of the recreational players to train at home, so I have questions about skill development similar to your guest’s.

This leads me to my question: given that our club exclusively uses volunteer parent coaches, should we be teaching them one methodology over the other, both, or no specific methodologies?
New volunteer coaches take the online US Soccer grassroots course, but in my experience, it takes them several years OR close mentoring to actually put those concepts into practice on the field. We don’t currently have a DOC in the club so I and a couple other experienced coaches try to provide instruction and mentoring.

Thanks for the Keith!

First off, don’t think of adjusting PPP sessions by adding a warm-up as, “cheating”. You’re giving the players what you feel they need. You can never be cheating if you’re doing that.

Second, I would focus on PPP with volunteer coaches for three reasons: 1) It’s consistent with what they would learn from the Grassroots courses 2) It’s the easiest methodology to implement 3) If the coaches know nothing about teaching technical or tactical concepts the players will still be exposed to many of them just by playing AND they’ll have fun just playing.

If you have some volunteers that would like to learn about other ways to structure practices then you can show them the progressive method or WOLI.

In this Episode

Today I’m talking to a fellow coach who’s pursuing a degree in Applied Sports Psychology. We all know how important the psychological component of performance is. I think that most of us are also concerned that we’re not doing enough to help our players in this area. I think this discussion will give you some good ideas for ways that you can help your players improve their mental game.

Future Episodes

We’re getting closer a...

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06/05/20 • 35 min

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#235 The Great Debate – Direct Play vs Possession Play

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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05/28/20 • 72 min

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend. This is the first time in years I wasn’t in Chicago. With soccer being on hold I actually forgot that it was coming up. Who looks at a calendar anymore.

I had planned for my teams to play in a local tournament and stay home anyway but I always look forward to tournaments on that weekend because it’s the end of the soccer year for most teams and preparation for State Cup for others.

The soccer league season officially canceled the day after I recorded the last episode of the podcast two weeks ago. Since then we’ve been dealing with the fallout.

Our league is issuing credits so our club is passing on those credits. This is such a unique situation. No one has a road map for how to navigate it. Some city run leagues have issued refunds. That’s fine for leagues that are taxpayer supported. Not every league has that structure so they have to approach this problem differently.

Passing on credits works if you’re receiving credits toward future seasons. Many people view credits negatively and I understand that. It’s a tough situation for everyone and we’re all doing the best we can to navigate it.

In this Episode

Today I’m sharing another World Class Coaching Facebook debate. This one includes Rob Gale, former Canadian U20 National Team Coach and Stephen Constantine, former National Team Coach of India on the different styles of play. They debate the merits of direct play vs possession play.

Future Episodes

Next week I’m talking to a fellow coach who’s pursuing a degree in Applied Sports Psychology. We all know how important the psychological component of performance. Most coach are also concerned that they’re not doing enough to help their players in this area. I think our discussion will give you some good ideas for ways that you can help.

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05/28/20 • 72 min

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#234 Using Play – Practice – Play vs. Progressive Training Method

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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05/15/20 • 62 min

The discussion I’ll share this week is pretty long, like last week, so I’ll give you a quick update and then get right into the conversation.

I feel that my players are experiencing a lot of, ‘At Home’ training fatigue. It’s only natural since they’ve been stuck at home for two month without a chance to play. Training without playing would get old pretty fast for anyone let alone youth players.

The trick shot videos that I asked the girls to create last week and post on Flipgrid gave some of them the fresh motivation that they needed. More than one parent told me that it took their daughter several hours to get it right. They enjoyed watching them work hard as something soccer related again.

Our fun activity during the Zoom team meetings was an individual scavenger hunt. I gave them one item to find and the first one back with that item won that round. We didn’t keep score. It was just a fun way for them to do something with their teammates.

As you can see, most of my time on these Zoom meetings is to keep it fun. There are other coaches doing workouts with them or analyzing old games. I’ve provided them with the Techne App for individual training and set the expectation that they spend at least an hour per week on that. Hopefully the challenges also focus their training a bit.

Some of my players are spending hours doing online school through Zoom or other platforms everyday. I want our meetings to be fun and a chance to interact with friends; a break from the online school world.

In this Episode

It’s only been two years since US Soccer introduced the Play – Practice – Play methodology in it’s Grassroots Coaching Courses. There are some coaches who have really embraced it and others who are still skeptical. The conversation that I’ll share today is with a coach who prefers a more progressive approach.

Future Episodes

Next week I’ll share a debate with Rob Gale, former Canadian U20 National Team Coach and Stephen Constantine, former National Team Coach of India on the different styles of direct play or possession play. This is another Facebook Live conversation that I thought you would enjoy.

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05/15/20 • 62 min

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#233 What Should be Done with VAR?

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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05/08/20 • 67 min

We have a pretty long conversation that I want to share with you about VAR today so I’ll just give you a short recap of my week and skip our usually Q & A.

My team meetings followed the same format we’ve been using. We reviewed the players progress on the Techne App and our Flipgrid videos. The challenge we gave the players was to juggle as many times as they could in one minute. If the ball hit the ground they picked it up and kept counting from where they left off.

I asked the players to practice their juggling all week and then record there attempt on Friday. The idea was to motivate them to spend more time juggling since that’s a skill that not many of my players have been working on. Some argue that it’s a waste of time have the players juggle. My view is that we want players to spend as much time with the ball as possible. Giving them different things to work on makes it more likely that this will happen.

Many of the players mentioned that having the limited time to juggle as many times as they could made it more enjoyable. Obviously, if it’s more fun then they’ll be more likely to do it more.

There were a couple of different fun activities that I used with my players this week. My younger teams played, ‘Guess Who’ on Zoom. The older teams completed a Kahoot! quiz where they tried to match a photo of the player’s cleats with one of their teammates. The kids enjoyed both activities. I may switch this in coming weeks to allow both groups to experience both games.

Next week’s Flipgrid Challenge is to have each of the players create and film a, ‘Trick Shot’ video. The idea came from CSW Team Member, Tim Wszalek. The only rules are that the players need to use a ball (any ball), their feet and they need to make sure it’s safe. I don’t want anyone hurting themselves doing a trick shot. If we get some good ones I’ll share them on the Member’s site next week.

In this Episode

The President of WORLD CLASS COACHING, Mike Saif, has been hosting some discussions on Facebook Live about various topics. I’ll share a number of these over the coming weeks. This week’s discussion includes Barry Walmsley and Alex Mason. They talk about one of the newest issues that we’re dealing with in the modern game.

Future Episodes

Next week I’ll share a conversation that I had with a fellow coach about the pros and cons of the Play – Practice – Play methodology vs. the progressive training session plan.

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05/08/20 • 67 min

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#232 Using Game Design in Training Sessions

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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05/01/20 • 59 min

One week is looking a lot like the last these days; lots of Zoom meetings with teams and coaches as well as a constant stream of webinars. I can feel my players starting to get a bit tired of isolated training at home. I’m trying to do everything I can to switch things up and come up with fresh ideas.

This week I have my teams doing a juggling challenge. They’re working on their juggling all week and then recording a video to upload to Flipgrid.com on Friday. They’re counting how many times they can juggle in a minute. If the ball hits the ground they just start again and keep the count going. My hope is that this will motivate them to work on their juggling during the week and create a habit that will last beyond the shutdown.

My younger teams did Kahoot! quizzes made up of questions that they submitted. The questions ranged from personal, to soccer, to geographic. The kids seemed to enjoy it.

With my older teams I led them through a series of questions that they discussed in small groups and then came back to the team to share. We used the, ‘Breakout Room’ feature in Zoom for the small groups. I’ve put their answers together in a post on our Patreon site that you can access from the link on the right side of the page.

This week’s question is from Brian. He’s asking about the Veo Camera

Brian says,

My question is about the VEO camera/service I heard about on your show. As a soccer coach and parent I have made hundreds of videos. I have spent probably thousands of hours editing. There are two things that are challenges. 1.) Getting the game footage. Nobody likes filming because it’s hard to watch the game while you are filming. Also, even when parents do film the game often times they miss the things you really want, or lose the ball right as the goal is scored. 2.) Video editing is a HUGE time commitment.

Watching the product demo on the company webpage the VEO camera (and online AI software) seems to solve both of those problems, which is amazing, but to me almost too good to be true. My question is...is there any downside? It is really as easy as it appears on the company webpage? Is there anything people should know before purchasing the camera?.

Thanks for the idea Brian!

I’m happy to say that the Veo camera operates exactly as advertised. They did have some bugs that caused me to lose a couple of games but a recent update is supposed to solve that issue. Now I just need to get back on the field to try it out again!

Their AI automatically recognizes most goals and it’s easy to create highlights. They’ve also recently added the ability to customize the highlights more with, “Directed Highlights”. This allow you to focus on the areas of the field that you want highlight to include.

You should be sure that you have a computer with at least 8 GB of RAM. My old computer only had 2 GB! It was difficult to watch the video and use some of the options. The new computer I’ve just switched to has 32 GB and the video playback is smooth and everything works great.

I’d say that the one downside at the moment is that you can’t download all of the highlights at once. They have to be downloaded individually and then put together. They say that they are working on creating a condensed video of all the highlights but there’s no timeline for that.

If you’re looking for a camera to record games that will quickly and easily process the footage then I don’t know of a better option than the Veo Camera.

In this Episode

We all know that players enjoy games. The challenge we have as coaches is to make our training activities as much like a game as possible in order to maximize the engagement of the players and motivate them to put in their very best effort. If they’re working hard and enjoying what they’re doing they’re much more likely to benefit from the training and be excited to come back for more.

Future Episodes

The president of WORLD CLASS COACHING, Mike Saif, has been hosting discussions over Facebook Live. Next week I’ll bring you a conversation he had with Barry Walmsley and Alex Mason about what should be done with VAR. It’s an interesting conversation that I think you’ll enjoy.

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05/01/20 • 59 min

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#231 ‘Soccer in the City’ with Director Michael Holstein

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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04/24/20 • 47 min

It’s week six of, ‘Soccer Coaching through Social Distancing’. I don’t have any practices or games to tell you about so I’ll let you know how my team meetings went this week.

We continue to use the Techne Futbol app for skill training and Flipgrid.com to complete assignments and share videos. These have been great tools for me and my players.

While I was reviewing the assignments this week I noticed that there was a lack of intensity and speed in the activities. This is the biggest challenge for players training on their own. It’s hard for them to generate the focus and motivation to push themselves on their own. As I was putting together a presentation for my players about the need to train at, ‘Game Speed’ I received the weekly email from Yael Averbuch and Techne Futbol. She made the same points in her email so I took the email and put it together as a Google Slides Presentation. I have it available to the public on our CSW Patreon page. I think it made an impression on my players. We’ll see if they aren’t training harder when I review the videos next week.

For our fun activity we did a, ‘Soccer Scavenger Hunt’. I divided the players into, ‘Breakout Rooms’ in Zoom and gave them a list of 20 items. Some were soccer related, some based on our current situation and others were just for fun (one slice of pizza :-). The girls enjoyed the activity. It didn’t teach them anything; it was just a fun bonding experience.

There are a lot of continuing education opportunities that are available right now. I’m averaging about two webinars per day on various subjects. United Soccer Coaches have had some good ones. Aspen Institute’s Project Play Initiative offered one on, ‘What Kids Need from Coaches Right Now’. The Kansas State Youth Soccer Association has one tonight focused on, ‘Developing Your Purpose Statement and Philosophy’.

This week’s question is from Kyle. He’s asking about how to get his keepers more involved.

Kyle says,

I’m big into getting all the girls evolved in the game and playing every position. I’m not concerned with winning or loosing. I have rotations setup every week for practice and the game so each player knows their position for that game and each girl has to take a turn as keeper. Unlike the coaches I play against who leave their defenders on the 18 yard box the entire game, I also push my defenders up so that they are in the attack. But given all that I feel like my keepers are not involved and get bored.

I’m really thinking about pulling my keeper up as a “sweeper keeper “. We’re not a dominant team but I just want to change things up and experiment by making the keeper position more fun and dynamic. Do you have any experience or thoughts on sweeper keepers?

Thanks for the idea Kyle!

The best way to get you keeper more is to focus your team on playing out of the back. This means that each goal kick and goalie possession is passed short to one of the defenders and your team tries to connect passes as they work the ball up the field. This is not an easy way to play but it will involve the keeper more and have the added benefit of teaching all of your players to possess the ball.

When your team has the ball in the other team’s half I would encourage the keeper to be at the top of their box or even outside of the box to help keep them connected to the rest of the team. if the ball is kicked long and goes over or past your defenders I would ask them to play the ball back to the keeper and build out from there.

The players will make mistakes playing this way but over the long term they’ll be better players for it.


This week’s episode is brought to you by Veo soccer cameras.

Veo is a portable and affordable soccer camera that helps soccer teams record and analyze games and training sessions without the need of a cameraman.

All you have to do is set up the camera, press record on your smartphone, and start recording. After the final whistle, your game gets uploaded to the cloud where Veo’s AI software automatically creates a fully viewable recording of your game with highlights.

Use it to analyze your matches or share your best moments with friends and family. Cool features include AI detected goals, player tagging and draw-on-screen.

Go to w...
play

04/24/20 • 47 min

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#230 The Impact of Mindset on Performance

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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04/17/20 • 54 min

Welcome to Week Five of Coaching at Home! This week my son and I build a new computer because my old one just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I’ve heard this described as, “Adult Legos”. It was a bit cheaper and more specific to my needs to build it rather than buying one off the shelf.

We’ll see if you notice a change in the production quality as I get used to using some new tools. It’s certainly going to make reviewing video from my Veo easier! It’s also going to make it possible for me to create more video content for the Patreon Members.

I’ve started to do all my interviews through Zoom, complete with virtual backgrounds! I’ve posted the videos of this week’s interview there for Members so if you prefer to watch interviews rather than just listening to them you can check out my Patreon page from the link on the right.

I continue to meet with my teams on Zoom Meetings on Monday and Tuesdays. This week we reviewed their progress on the Techne Futbol app. We’ve agreed to spend at least 1 hour per week on the app. Some of the girls are putting seven to nine hours each week!

We also looked at the Flipgrid activity. This week I asked them to record their favorite Techne activity. This tool is proving to be a great way for the girls to stay connected while we can’t train together.

We did the photo matching game that I talked about last week. The parents all sent in pictures of their daughters when they were three or four. I should have used baby pictures because some of my younger players haven’t changed all that much! I did with my youngest team and it was a bit more challenging. It was still a good activity for the players because they enjoyed seeing each other’s pictures.

This week’s Flipgrid assignment is to have each player do the same skills challenge on Techne and record it on Flipgrid. That’ll create some competition around who does it best.

I’ve got a couple of ideas for our activities and assignments for next week. I’ll let you know how they go.

This week’s question is from Nicholas. He’s asking about training large group of high school aged players.

Nicholas says,

”I’m a boys high school coach from Ontario, Canada. I’m not sure your familiarity with high school soccer/sports in Ontario but many public schools have a junior team (U17) and senior team (U19). Our season runs in the spring April-May. Also, as is the case for me, many of the teachers are also the coaches as well.

I’ve coached at the school for over 10 years – mostly the senior team. However, last season I began coaching the junior team with the intention of working with the same group of players throughout the 4 years of their schooling – transitioning from junior to senior divisions.

The school community has heavy interest and participation in soccer. The city rep clubs have an ‘A-team’ and ‘B-team’ and ‘C-team’ – with many of my players also playing at the city club too. I do not have that luxury at the high school level to have an A-team B-team, etc. so because of this I have a large roster of 27 players. I also like to keep student athletes involved.

There are advantages to a large roster but recently as we are in preseason training, I’m finding it challenging to have everyone involved and engaged throughout the entire session. I do have 2 assistant coaches that help out. Do you have any ideas or suggestions to keep a large roster fully active and engaged throughout training sessions?“

Thanks for the idea Nicholas!

My suggestion for training large groups is to use multiple small-sided games. This will keep everyone active and you can manipulate the games by grouping the players in different ways. You could put all of your position players together on a field. Grouping your stronger and weaker players into separate groups would allow the players to be challenged at the appropriate level. These are just two ways to organize the groups. There are many others that you could use depending on what you want to achieve with the game.

I think this method will also work well for preseason because it’s a very efficient way to train. You’ll be incorporating technical, tactical, physical and psychological components to the training session. Since small-sided games are also engaging and fun you should see a high level of competition and intensity.


This week’s episode is brought to you by Veo soccer cameras.

Veo is a portable and affordable soccer camera that helps soccer teams record and analyze games and training sessions without the need of a cameraman.

All you have to do is set up the camera, press r...

play

04/17/20 • 54 min

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#239 Developing as a Coach

Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING

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06/26/20 • 46 min

Our tryouts were last Friday. I don’t know of any coaches, players or parents who enjoy the necessary process of tryouts. Everything has been different this year and the same can be said for tryouts. We only had new players attending so there were a few times when there were only had slightly more players than coaches. It was difficult evaluate the new players in comparison to our current players but we just had to do the best we could. I’m sure that we made mistakes in some age groups but we’ll just have sort those out through the next year. We’re looking at this year as a time to stabilize the teams and not gain a competitive advantage.

There’s a very dark side of tryout and I talk about a couple of examples from last week in this episode.

Most of our coaches got their teams together on the Friday after tryouts as a chance to bring together the new and returning players for a kick around and parent meeting. I thought this was a great way to solidify the team as a unit and kick off the new year.

Today’s question comes from Andy. He has a question about training high school players of different ages together.

Andy says,

“I coach and teach for a small rural school in Oregon and we have one team. It poses for all kinds of coaching challenges for me. I have 18 year old girls practicing and playing with 14 year old girls. within the 3 years I have coached at my current school we have varied from 13 to 24 players each season. I struggle with how to run my practices dealing with the different levels of skills, and especially the physical abilities between the the different age groups of the players.

For example, if we are working on passing the older more experienced girls get bored because of the many mistakes and the slowness of the session that inevitably come from the younger girls. The younger girls often get better quicker playing with the older girls however, my older players never really progress the way I would like them to.

We rarely have problems with attitude or desire. We are a close team. I am not looking for a quick fix here, just some advice from an experienced coach who perhaps has run into similar challenges. I will take any advice I can get.”
Thanks for your question Andy!

Coaching a wide variety of skill levels within a team is probably the most challenging situation for a coach so I applaud you for taking it on. If the attitude and desire of the girls isn’t an issue then you’re doing a lot of things right.

As for helping your older players to improve I would suggest that find times when you train the older players against each other and the younger players are grouped together. You could be doing the same activity in each group but by dividing the players this way you’ll raise the speed of play and get more consistency from the performance. Of course you want to balance this with times that you mix the groups. This would also give the younger players an example to look at and try to emulate.

It sounds like you have good team chemistry so I wouldn’t suggest splitting the players too often but you’ll need to read the group to see how it impacts the team.

In this Episode

Today I’m talking with Shaun Spencer about the importance of taking charge of your own education as a coach as well as why you should be creating your own training sessions rather than relying on what’s worked for other coaches with other teams.

Future Episodes

Next week I’ll have an interview that I with a coach that looks at the game from unique perspective. I’m talking to Liam Shannon about the connection he’s made between a 2,400 year old military treaties and soccer.

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06/26/20 • 46 min

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Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING currently has 400 episodes available.

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The podcast is about Podcasts, Sports and Soccer.

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What is the average episode length on Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING?

The average episode length on Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING is 35 minutes.

How often are episodes of Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING released?

Episodes of Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING are typically released every 7 days.

When was the first episode of Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING?

The first episode of Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques and Tactics from WORLD CLASS COACHING was released on Feb 28, 2015.

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