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

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.

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.

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.

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...

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.