The Game Within the Child

So you have decided to enroll your child in our soccer program. If you have no experience with soccer, then this article is for you. First, I wanted to talk to you about the nature of the game. Unlike baseball or football or organized basketball, the game does not have any plays. As a result, the role of the coach during practices and games is different. Instead of the coach controlling the action and the players working hard to run the play the exact same way every time, players get control of the game. If you can imagine, every time the player gets the ball, the situation is different and the player has to come up with a way to solve the problem. The solution to every problem requires ball skills like dribbling, controlling the ball and shielding/turning with the ball. As a result, our practices should include lots of time on the ball. The exercises that the players do should require them to make decisions and use their skills to carry out their decisions. They should also focu...

When I first earned my A license back a really long time ago, I got the pleasure of having the last session and the topic of high pressure defending. The players (and coaches who were playing) were dog tired and it was going to be hard to run a session and play a game that required a high-intensity effort. I gave the team a few visual cues and sent them out to play. They had had a couple of opportunities to go into high pressure mode, but I was following the advice of my instructors and letting the players see if they could identify the opportunity. Then one of my evaluators came up and told me that if my team didn't score in 4 minutes, I was fired. Knowing my success or failure in this course was on the line, I stopped the action at the next opportunity using the freeze technique . Since this was a corrective point, I had a chance to give the players a short breather while we reviewed what I wanted them to do. The breather re-energized the players and they used the cues on the nex...

So one of the most difficult tasks for our U8 and below players is changing directions, especially turning, with the ball. They are amazing at going fast in a straight line, but it takes a lot of coordination and concentration to change direction and go the opposite way. Often, you will see a player dribbling towards their own goal and the parents/ coaches are shouting at them to "turn around." I have already described in an earlier post why this is a counter-productive behavior, but today I wanted to show you how to play a game specifically designed to get players to change directions. It has a nice progression that is appropriate for the U6 and younger crew, but it can also be scaled up to U10 as well with just a few tweaks and can even be scaled up to a small-sided or expanded small-sided activity. Oh NO!! starts with a grid divided into three sections. The center section is narrow and the two end sections are wider. Have one coach/parent at each end of the grid. You get...

Working with 6-7 year old players means that you will be asked to engage, entertain and entreat them. While it is a chore to keep their attention sometimes, there are other times where they will act like a sponge and pick up everything you ask them to do. As a high school teacher during the day, I constantly encounter peers who say that they couldn't deal with a group of 6 and 7 year olds. With a spouse who is an elementary school teacher, I hear comments from her peers about how they couldn't handle older children. For some reason, that has never been an issue for me. I don't know why, but I can coach any age and not be intimidated or uncomfortable. For over 20 years, I have taught parent coaches how to work with the U8 player. The past seven years, I have been able to watch these coaches then go out and try to coach. This is not to say that a 4 hour training session or a season's worth of experience will make someone a master coach, but I should expect to see some i...

U6 is the entry level for many players in soccer. Because the level isn't very high, there is an idea prevalent that anybody can coach U6 players. That idea is quickly dispelled when parents go out to coach for the first time. While it may be easy to entertain your 5 year old, when you have a group of 5 year olds, the challenge is much more complex. As a high school teacher during the day, I constantly encounter peers who say that they couldn't deal with a group of children that young. With a spouse who is an elementary school teacher, I hear comments from her peers about how they couldn't handle older children. For some reason, that has never been an issue for me. I don't know why, but I can coach any age and not be intimidated or uncomfortable. For over 20 years, I have taught parent coaches how to work with the U6 player. The past seven years, I have been able to watch these coaches then go out and try to coach. This is not to say that a 4 hour training session or ...

I have always been reluctant to post model training sessions. Probably the most important reason is that coaches may take that model and then simply copy it, without putting in any of their own philosophy or ideas. Having taken model sessions from others and trying to implement it never worked out that well. The next issue is that the session should match the players as well as possible and that takes the ability to read the session and making changes as the session progresses. However, after watching hundreds of practices, I came to the conclusion that my model of providing coaching courses, suggesting activities and dropping in on practices was not giving me the quality of session from my coaches that I was hoping to see. In short, only a few practices were at an acceptable level. The vast majority were of low quality and did not focus on the core skills I have identified as important to develop players. So this season, I decided to do a relatively generic session that included ...