#235 The Great Debate – Direct Play vs Possession Play

05/28/20 • 72 min

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

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.

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.

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.

In this Episode

Future Episodes

Previous Episode

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

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.

Next Episode

#236 Coaching Conversation with Tim Wszalek

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

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