soccer drills - effective design

What Makes Excellent Soccer Drills?


Excellent and effective soccer drills must support the theme of the practice session. They must be targetted in complexity towards the age group and the competitive level of your team and players. They must motivate the players. Young kids need fun motivational games, older and more competitive players need more challenging exercises since they are motivated by accomplishment and competition.

Effective soccer drills must be easy to explain and demonstrate. They must be designed for the space and equipment available and must be adaptable as the players go through them (add or reduce the complexity). They must always show improvement in players performance from beginning to the end of the drill.

Excellent soccer drills must be relevant to game situations and players must easily understand how they can translate what they learned to a game. You can test this in the end-of-practice scrimmage. They must keep players' attention and interest and must keep players moving with a ball as much as possible and must always end with a success.

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Soccer Tactics - Transition Play

In previous articles we have discussed the relative benefits of a possession vs a fast break approach to the game. Today, we'd like to briefly review what we believe to be the "engine" of modern soccer tactics:

Transition Play

Stepping back for a second, the aim of the game of soccer hasn't changed since its inception: Score goals and prevent the opposition from scoring on you. Sounds simple, but with today's athletic ability, technical ability and sophisticated training methods, its not so simple anymore, or is it?

Looking at the game from a different perspective, one can say that soccer is a game of constant change of possession. So one team is always defending trying to win the ball, while the other wants to move the ball into scoring position and score. Unless the team in possession scores, there will be a change of possession. After change of possession, both teams will need to transition:

The team that lost the ball now needs to transition from attacking to defending, trying to force a turnover. The team that was defending now needs to transition to attacking. How best to do this?

The simple answer in today's soccer is:

AS FAST AS POSSIBLE

Speed is of the essence. Looking at it from both teams' point of view:

Transitioning to Defense:

You want your team to immediately pressure the ball and not let the opponent get organized into an attacking mode. This is best done by putting a challenging and a support player on the opponent with the ball and everyone else to close down passing options by marking players and closing down passing lanes. This requires mental and physical speed. Mentally, your players need to react extremely quickly to a change of possession, perceive the position and movement of opponents and anticipate possible plays so they can prevent them. This requires lots of training sessions, co-ordination of positional responsibilities and communication. Physically, players need to be able to get to their destinations as fast as possible, sprinting and not jogging is the requirement.

Transitioning to Offense:

Your team has won possession of the ball. It should already know what the opponent wants, i.e. see comments above. Your goal is to get the ball moving towards the opponent's goal as quickly as possible, before the other team has done its job of marking and closing down options. In this transition, your players also need to react quickly, perceive where the spaces and opponents movements are, anticipate plays and make the runs and passes quickly. This requires technical accuracy (passing in particular), physical speed and mental speed.

If you train your team to be fast in both transitions, faster than any opponent you can imagine, and train to execute accurately at high pace, you will be successful.


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Soccer Systems Of Play

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Soccer Goalkeeper Evaluation

How can you determine if one goalie is better than another? Whom should you pick after team tryouts are complete? Who should start?

Here is one method to objectively evaluate your goalkeepers. It is based on a weighted point system. Give your keeper a score for each attribute between 0 and the maximum number of points for that attribute. Add up all the scores for each keeper and you have a rating based on complete soccer goalkeeping skills. If you would like to assess different values to each attribute based on your preference, feel free to do so.

Soccer Goalie Attribute Rating Systems:

1. Reaction and reflexes on goal line (20 points)


2. Domination of penalty box - catching crosses (20 points)


3. 1 v 1 ability (speed, angles, save %) and challenging (20 points)


4. Organizing the team from the back - vocal (10 points)


5. Playing with confidence and being a presence (10 points)


6. Flexibility (10 points)


7. Upper body strength (10 points)

Total Maximum Score: 100 points

How do you assign the scores? You can use your observational ability over time or you can use specific measurements. For example, count the number of saves a keeper makes on the line facing shots from various distances and angles. Number of crosses caught in traffic and without pressure (low and high). 1v1 situations saved. Game observation regarding team organization and presence. Flexibility tests and bench pressing strength.




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Soccer Goalie Practices

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Kids Soccer Practices

Youth Soccer Practices

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English Soccer Goalkeepers

This will be one of our shorter articles, but perhaps one of our most controversial ones. One may ask why England is struggling at the national team level, indicated most recently by failure to qualify for Euro 2008.

One theory is to look at the number of English players in the Premier League. In 1992, 75% of all players were from England. In 2007 that dropped to 38%.

Now that may not be unusual in the top leagues today; Germany has a high % of imports in the Bundesliga, and they have enjoyed moderate success. Italy, France and Spain also have imports in their leagues, but more nationals??

Now here is the interesting difference between England and Germany, for example. Premier League teams have an unusual high % of import goalkeepers. And that is where we will challenge your thinking, if you're an England fan. Could it be that the goalkeepers are more important than experts give them credit for?

Where are England's Kahn, Lehmann or Buffon? Aren't critical goalkeeper mistakes in world cups (Seaman), qualifiers and friendlies becoming routine? Why start a national rookie against Croatia?

Our suggestion: ENGLAND - DEVELOP WORLD CLASS GOALKEEPERS.

Godspeed


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Soccer Goalie Practices

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Kids Soccer Practices

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Soccer 1v1 Skills - A Necessity

We want to share a statistic from a major European soccer league with you. Tracking close to 150 games they measured the amount of 1v1 situations each of the teams won in a game. They then correlated the 1v1 success to wins, ties and losses. The results are:

The team that won the majority of 1v1 battles:

• won 48% of the games
• tied 23 % of the games
• lost 29% of the games

One way of looking at this statistic is to say that if you win the majority of 1v1 situations in soccer, you have a better than 70% chance of not losing the game.

We think this is incentive for coaches to train 1v1 situations. Our soccer drills and practice plans emphasize 1v1. Also, click on the soccer skills training link below to access the Coerver Coaching system and other soccer skill training resources.

Our Practice Books And Resources

Soccer Systems Of Play

Kids Soccer Practices

Youth Soccer Practices

Competitive Soccer Practices

Soccer Goalie Practices

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Soccer Systems of Play - A Global Perspecive

Today we want to focus on a debate that has been dividing soccer clubs, soccer coaches and even entire countries. The question is:

Should there be a unified system of play that is taught at all age groups, across all soccer clubs across a whole country? Or, should each team, coach and club be left to develop the system of their choice?

The Unified Approach

If an entire country adopts a unfied approach from the ground up, then players arriving at the national team will now the system to perfection and make the team stronger. For example, if a country chooses a 4-4-2 system with two central defensive midfielders, then starting from age 9 or so, all teams can train that system. Coaches will be taught how to develop players and as kids move up in age, they will be very familiar with their roles on the field. This allows coaches to focus on individual technique development, fine-tuning the system, teaching targeted variations. Coaches will not have to spend time retraining new kids arriving on the team with whatever system the coach prefers. Imagine you are taking on a competitive U17 team and everyone knows how to play their position. Or taking on a college team?

The downside is that teams become predictable to their opponents. Teams will find it difficult to adapt to a different system when the game situation calls for it.

The Individual Approach

At the youth level, players have different talents and skills and quite often the coaches have no influence over who shows up to play on the team. Since everyone wants the team to perform at its best, the coach needs to pick a system of play that best suits the abilities of the players and is most effective in their competitive environment. Therefore coaches train each team uniquely. The next year, new players arrive and a new system may be required. This keeps coaches thinking and trying to optimize performance. Players will learn different positions and different systems and become very adaptable. By the time kids reach adulthood, they should be able to quickly adapt to any system.

The downside is that you may develop generations of players who know a little bit about everything and aren't expert at any one thing.

The Answer ?

We will not pretend to know which is the better way. We do propose that each country and club within a country or region thinks about this topic and makes a strategic decision as to how they want to approach player and team development. It could be a unified approach, an individual approach or a hybrid of the two. Once a strategy has been selected, stick with it and implement it with discipline.

Let us all be mindful, that the fundamental goals of soccer have not changed:

1. Prevent the other team from scoring goals
2. Score goals yourself

Then develop the strategies and programs best suited for your environment.

At Soccer Drills and Soccer Practice Plans we offer soccer drills and complete soccer practice plans that fit either philosophy. Our soccer drills are designed to develop players and teams techniques and tactical understanding regardless of system used. Our Soccer Systems of Play book introduces all modern systems of play for you to choose from. Check it out.

Our Practice Books And Resources

Soccer Systems Of Play

Kids Soccer Practices

Youth Soccer Practices

Competitive Soccer Practices

Soccer Goalie Practices

Indoor Soccer Practices

Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training

soccer drills

As we approach the new year it is time to plan your 2008 season. We are here to help by offering state of the art soccer coaching resources. Regardless of age group and skill level of your team, we have top quality soccer drills and soccer practice plans for you. That includes specialized goalkeeper training sessions. We also offer clear, up to date, explanation of modern formations and systems of play. Fully diagrammed with coaching tips. Click on any of the links below to get more info.

Our Practice Books And Resources

Kids Soccer Practices

Youth Soccer Practices

Competitive Soccer Practices

Soccer Goalie Practices

Soccer Systems Of Play

Indoor Soccer Practices

Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training