Soccer Drills & Coaching Advice: Coaching Soccer

In this article, I would like to deal with a slightly different aspect of coaching.

When discussing the coaching of soccer players and teams, we often focus on the technical areas such as individiual skill improvement, team tactics, fitness, or mental preparation. Depending on your coaching situation, you may need to consider the business side of raising funds, team budgets, team support staff selection and management, or even facility management. Typically, the emphasis is on the upcoming season and issues are dealt with and decisions are made on an "as needed" basis.

Working in the business world, I have applied many of the soccer coaching principles, especially around team building, team development and individual people management. There is an aspect of business management that I don't see too often in the soccer coaching environment, yet I have found it extremenly helpfull. That is STRATEGIC PLANNING.

I would like to briefly review the strategic planning elements and give a few pointers as to how they may apply to operating a soccer team, or a soccer club for that matter. The intention is not to deliver a comprehensive review of the strategic planning process, but rather to introduce the basic concepts.

I would also like to point out that the strategic planning process in its entirety is best suited for situations in which the coach is involved with a team for more than a single season. Certain elements can be used in single season environments.

The first step in the strategic planning process is to define the VISION and VALUES. This is followed by stating the team's MISSION.

The second step is to develop broad GOAL areas.

Third is to define specific and measurable OBJEJCTIVES for each goal area.

Fourth is the development of detailed STRATEGIES stating how to meet the objectives.

Fifth (and somewhat optional) is to develop specific TASKS or ACTIONS for each strategy.

Finally, in very complex environments, it may be of value to sequence all the tasks and strategies into an implementation plan.

VISION

My favourite way to develop a vision statement is to think of it as a future newspaper article describing the accomplishments of my team. For example, it may start like this:

HOMETOWN KICKERS WIN NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP !

We are happy to congratulate our very own Hometown Kickers on their first ever national soccer championship. After winning their division going undefeated,.....
When asked about the reason for their success, Coach Tom credited a process that began some five years ago .......

The vision is best developed by the coaching staff with the support of the athletes and their parents if coaching a youth team.

VALUES

It is important to define three or four key values that will not be compromised under any circumstance. A way I was taught to think about values is to imagine a time capsule that is being developed and sent into space. What are the three or four key statements I would want the team to be known or remembered for.

Create a long list and then narrow it down through a collaborative filtering process until there is consensus on the final list.

Some common values are fairness, integrity, sportsmanship, excellence, teamwork, family orientation, responsible, etc.

MISSION

The vision and value sets are typically somewhat intangible, in a sense a bit of dream oriented. The mission statement supports the vision and values in a very tangible and concrete way. Here is how to very quickly develop one. Good mission statements follow this template:

We are .... who do ... for ...leading to.....

Example:

We are a passionate group of soccer players and coaches who excel in the game for the benefit of our club leading to national championships.

When you are in agreement on the statement, run a "sufficiency" check by asking this question:

If we accomplish the mission, will we reach our vision and maintain our values. If the answer is yes, you've got it right.

GOALS

You now need to establish general goal areas to accomplish the mission. We recommend that you use 4-7 goal areas. We also recommend that the following four are used for any team. They are:

Technical Skill Development
Tactical Development
Physical Fitness
Mental Fitness

This leaves you up to three specific goal areas for your team. Examples might be Finances, Community Improvement, Health Improvement, etc.

Again, when you have defined the goal areas, ask yourself if by achieving these goals you will fulfill your mission.

OBJECTIVES

For each goal area, develop a maximum of seven specific and measurable objectives. Lets use the Technical Skill Development goal area to illustrate this and future points. A specific and measurable objective may be:

Complete 90% of passes longer than 20 yards.

Again, after the development of all objectives for a specific goal area, ask the sufficiency question.

Depending on the number of people you have helping you coach or manage the team, you can assign a specific person to be responsible for each objective.

STRATEGIES

Strategies are the "how to's" for meeting the objectives. In the case of technical, tactical and physical fitness objectives, I would suggest that the strategies are in fact your practice plans and drills.

Once again, ask the sufficiency questions and assign individuals to each strategy.

TASKS

You may go beyond your strategies and develop task lists. You can pick and choose where necessary. If you do define tasks, then list all the tasks for a given strategy, check for sufficiency and assign people.

IMPLEMENTATION

So far you have created a list of acticities, strategies, objectives, and goals. In most cases you can't start everything at once, nor should you. Some things must be completed before others can start, some have different priorities. So it is good practice to sequence all the tasks/strategies including dependencies. For example, you may need to decide on a tournament you wish to enter before you can establish a budget, which then allows you to set fundraising targets and to develop fundraising activities.

This implementation plan will result at the very least in your season plan and at the very most in a long term strategic plan.

How far out you want to go in time depends on the initial parameter you set wen developing your vision - is it for one season, three years, five years, or??

If it is for more than one year, you will actually be developing successive season plans and you will want to update the following season with new information before it starts. In other words, a long term strategic plan must remain dynamic.

Coach Tom