Keys To Effective Soccer Practice Design

Interview with Tom Sauder, author of best selling Print & Go Soccer Practice Plans


If you had to narrow a great session down to 3 factors, what would they be ?


Maximum number of touches on the ball for each player


Holistic session incorporating skill, tactics, fitness, mental elements all culminating in a game situation scrimmage at the end, and united by a theme (i.e. counterattack, zonal defending, etc.). Players need to know the relevance of each drill to playing the game and running a bunch of random drills doesn’t work.


Injecting a reasonable amount of humour and fun to give a mental break from the concentration and focus required for each drill.


In your mind, how important is it that youth soccer players do no spend a lot of time standing around in line or listening to coaches talk at length? What are some ways coaches can eliminate this issue and get players engaged and moving?


As I said earlier, maximum touches and constant movement with or without the ball are critical. To really develop soccer skills youth players need about 4,000 touches on the ball per week. I have seen practices where in an hour a player gets 30-40 touches. They stand in line, listen to the coach or are in extended scrimmages and aren’t involved. Our practice plans get between 600 and 800 touches per hour. In a situation where a competitive team practice 5-8 hours a week the 4,000 touches would be achievable.


The ways to accomplish this are:


Be prepared for the practice. Set up ALL your drill grids/cones before the practice starts so that no time is wasted between drills. Sometimes the movement or addition of a few cones in a few seconds gets the next drill ready


Spend no more than 30 seconds (60 seconds for very young children) explaining/demonstrating the drill and then step outside the drill grid to observe. The coach needs to really rehearse and be mentally ready to be this efficient and effective. When a correction is necessary, stop the drill and in 30 seconds explain what went wrong and how to fix it. Then step out again. “Teaching/talking” time should be no more than 60-90 seconds per 15 minute drill.


Break each exercise into as small a group as possible, each group running the same drill. My favourite example is shooting drills. I still see 11 kids line up in front of a goal for shots. In 10 minutes every child is lucky to get three shooting (ball touches)opportunities. That’s boring and ineffective. Instead I suggest setting up 4 goals with three kids each. One in goal (you find new goalies and train existing ones)and two take shots. Have a volunteer behind each goal to retrieve the ball and throw it back to the shooter (needs to control ball and dribble it to starting point – more touches). While the first shooter gets their ball back and gets ready, the second player shoots. Then rotate the goalie after two shots each. Everyone is busy all the time. There are variations so shooters sprint (fitness training) to retrieve their ball and dribble (skill, more touches) it back to get ready.


How important is training at game speed, and what are some ways coaches can get their players to increase the reality and intensity of sessions?


Training at game speed is important, but not at the expense of holistic development. I always stress accuracy over speed when starting a session/drill. Accuracy is achieved by having no/low pressure and slowing it down. Once accuracy is achieved game speed and game situation execution become important. This is accomplished by adding pressure in the form of adding players to the drill, demanding faster movement (i.e. you have 5 seconds to get a cross into the target area, starting at midfield), reducing the number of touches per player when they have the ball (my favourite is two touch soccer), and by reducing the size of the grid. Small sided games that incorporate the tactics/skills at the end of the practice are useful. Full field games with a focus work as well, for example switching the point of attack from left defense to a cross from the right wing by stringing together  3-5 passes. Exhibition/test games are best to put it all together. Keeping score or setting goals during drills introduces competitiveness and it is amazing how quickly players turn into game mode. Just say that the losing team in a 4v4 scrimmage has to get water bottles for everyone and nobody wants to lose. Our practice drills all have progression options explained and coaching points to correct drills that aren’t working to expectations.


Access of 500 soccer drills and 80 practice plans for all skill levels and ages at:


www.soccerpracticebooks.com

Children Soccer Development - Best Practice

 

Question:

I am told that the best way to develop young players is to have them PLAY IN THE SAME AGE GROUP. I believe that it is more important for them to PLAY IN THE SAME SKILL GROUP. Who is correct?

 

Answer:

We believe soccer is based on four pillars, at the individual AND at the team level:

 

1. Technical Skills 
2. Tactical Understanding 
3. Physical Conditioning and Game Readiness 
4. Mental Understanding and Game Readiness

 

Underneath each of these pillars are various attributes, such as:

 

  

Technical - ball receiving, passing accuracy, ball control, shooting, heading, 1v1 moves, etc.

 

Tactical - formations, own position, other positions, running patterns, pressuring, balance, etc.

 

Physical - speed, strength, agility, flexibility, etc.

 

Mental - maturity, emotional control, anticipation, decision making, reaction, movement without the ball, etc

 

It is the combination of all of these that make up a player and a team. It is important that each child gets the opportunity to develop. By definition then, they should all get the opportunity to get as many touches on the ball during practice and in games as possible.

 

Some people think that grouping children by age is the way to ensure that all the players are fairly evenly matched. Age mostly addresses mental development and physical development. Only if kids have grown up playing the same number of hours every week since age 3, one might infer age is an indicator of skill and possibly tactics. But even the mental and physical development assumption could be wrong. A lot of organizations play boys and girls together and group ages, like 4 & 5 year olds together. A smallish 4 year old girl and a physically advanced 5 year old boy are significantly different and chances are that in a game, the 4 year old girl doesn't get much action. Now if you only play boys together and we are talking U 13 then age may be a reasonably grouping. If you add that this is a competitive U13 then skills and tactics should match. 

Other people think that skill should be the matching factor. Probably be more appropriate at the youngest ages. But skill alone could be detrimental. We have seen 7 year old boys who have more skills than some 11 year old boys. But in a game, the 11 year olds would likely dominate simply because of sheer physical advantages.

  

In the end, the goal should be to have balanced teams with children that will have a fairly equal chance to get touches on the ball. The best organizations use this approach:

 

• They split boys and girls at a very early age, some as early as age 4/5 - U5. 
• They group them in single age groups, not combining ages. The difference between a young three year old and an older 4 year old in a combined U5 team could be huge.
• They asses the abilities of players in pre-season evaluation sessions and identify the exceptionally talented players - the ones that would be good enough to control the ball most of the time in a game. They then selectively put these exceptional kids in an older age group to level the playing field. Messi was such a kid - playing 2-3 age groups up. 
• Finally, at age 10 and up they split their teams into recreational and competitive/travel.

 I hope this answer gives you some idea about the complexity of trying to do the right thing for the children.

Coach Tom

 

 

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Possession vs Fast Break Soccer

The final results are in after compiling statistics from 306 games from the Germans Bundesliga's 2011/2012 season.

The teams with the majority of posession:

• averaged 56% possession
• averaged 6.0 scoring chances per game
• averaged 1.33 points per game (win=3, tie=1, loss=0)

The teams that had less possession:

• averaged 44% possession
• averaged 4.7 scoring chances
• averaged 1.41 points per game

The non-statistical observation was that two teams, Munich and Dortmund, had over 60% possession in many of their games and won. We suggest the same would be true with high possession teams like Barcelona. These teams are so good that it doesn't matter what style they play, they will win.

What the analysis suggests is that dominating possession is no guarantee for winning games. Quite the contrary, fast break soccer, meaning quick transition, is a recipe for success.


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Possession Soccer Does Not Equal Winning

We have analyzed published results of a major European soccer league after the first half of the season. For each game we reviewed the ball possession (%), goal chances, and wins/losses, awarding three points for a win and 1 point for a tie. The results conclusively prove that domonating possession does not guarantee winning games. We found quite the opposite:

The teams that had 50% or more of ball possession generated 5.93 scoring chances per game and achieved 1.24 points per game (winning 32.7% of their games). The teams that had 50% or less possession generated 4.61 scoring chances and achieved 1.51 points per game (winning 41.8% of their games).

The results indicate that possession leads to more scoring chances but not to more wins. Why is that? We have long held the opinion that the quality of the chances makes the difference. Why would more possession generate poorer quality scoring chances? Extended possession allows the defending team to organize their defence. Therefore the attacking team has to work hard to find openings and quite often is forced to take shots from difficult positions, longer distance, or poor angles. A team that believes in fast break attacking after gaining possession does not allow the opposing defence to get into shape and balance. Hence the final passes set up shots for players with a clearer path to net. Therefore a fast breaking team will create better quality chances, score more goals and win more games.

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Dynamic Warm-Up For Soccer

We have developed a dynamic warm-up routine that can be used in conjunction with our soccer practice and soccer drills books or on it's own. It is on one page and can be taken to the field. The page also has a link to a web site that shows video clips of all the exercises. Click below to access it:

Dynamic Warm-Up Routine: Soccer

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soccer coaching supplies | soccer equipment

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possession soccer or fast break soccer ?

There has been a lot of international soccer in the past few months, starting with the Champions League final between Barca and ManU, through the U21 Euro, the CONCACAF Gold Cup to the current FIFA Women`s World Cup.

While the soccer has been entertaining and at times of excellent quality, the "expert commentating" has been lacking, in my opinion. Even downright annoying.

Watching Barca playing the typical Spanish national team style of keep away (possession) soccer has all the commentators in a rage that this is how soccer needs to be played. and they criticize any team that doesn`t. The best example are the Canadian commentators slamming the Canadian women`s team.

There are two main issues to consider when talking about soccer styles of play. First is the skill level of your team and second is the attractiveness of the play.

Very few teams, including ManU, Germany, Holland have the skills to play the Spanish possession game at this very high level. Even if they did, should they?

From a results perspective there is no correlation between time of possession and winning. What seems to matter is whether or not whatever possession time you have is effective, i.e. are you generating chances and converting them or just pushing the ball around. Again, if you coach Barca, it doesn`t matter which style you play, you`d win anyways.

Contrasting the Barca - ManU game with another very entertaining game, the Gold Cup Final between Mexico and the U.S., is a good way of understanding soccer.

Mexico and the U.S. played fast break attack soccer. Play was direct and vertical and lots of scoring chances were generated. 6 goals were scored and there was never a dull moment. Fans were on their feet. Barca and ManU, to be honest, was a very boring match to watch, despite the goals scored.

Yes, Barca players have a high level of ball skills and can play keep away soccer and it works for them. But it doesn`t mean that this should be the standard of soccer. All soccer players need to continue to develop their skills and then apply them in a way that makes the game exciting, fast, and fun to watch.

Imagine if a team like Barca played a fast attacking game - scary....

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Soccer Sense - How it impacts player performance

Have you ever wondered why all of your practicing with some of your players, or your entire team, is not translating into game performance?

For example you practice finishing with your strikers and in the next game they miss an easy chance, an open net. You practice passing and in a game your players are striking the ball too hard, too soft, or simply into the wrong direction.

You practice with your defenders not to dive into tackles, only to see them lunge at an attacker in the next game and be easily left standing behind.

We have heard a lot of coaches give us these examples asking us what they can do to avoid these errors and improve their team's game.

The first thing we need to state is that the difference between practice and a game situation is the opposition. Typicall in practice, you start drills with little opposing pressure, i.e. your players have all the time in the world to execute a drill. Typically with this time they can hit the net, deliver a pass, control the ball. As pressure increases, this becomes more difficult and mistakes creap in. But you are limited what you can practice by the skill of your team. If in competition you never play a better team, a team with more skilled players, stop reading now. You probably won't recognize the issues we described earlier. Although I would say that unless you have won the championship every year and have won every game, you probably want to read on.

In a game there are two key differences to a practice:

First, your opponents are determined to make you fail. They will put on pressure and thus take away the time your players need to execute. The better the opposition, the less time your players will have on the ball.

Second, the mental pressure to perform in a game puts stress on individuals. Fear of making mistakes actually causes mistakes. Under stress, people generally tend to fall back into bad habits. In other words, they lose control.

So how do you fix these problems?

Before you can solve a problem, you need to identify it's root cause. We suggest that poor execution of skills AND tactics in a game is caused by a lack of soccer sense. We define soccer sense by the intuitive knowledge a player has to allow their body to function automatically based on stimuli received and/or decisions made, consciously or subconsciously. An example would be for a striker approaching the goal to see the goal, the open space of the net, the keeper. Without pausing physically or mentally the player strikes the ball into the upper corner of the goal. The player didn't spend time thinking about where to shoot or how to execute the shot, it "just happened".

Well, it didn't really just happen. We teach mental speeds in our soccer programs and have identified the following mental speeds:

Perception

Anticipation

Reaction

Decision Making

Perception is seeing what is going on around you during the game. Seeing the ball, seeing players in motion, seeing spaces open and close.

Anticipation is sensing what is going to happen next before it happens. What is the player with the ball going to do? If a player has the ball, it is them anticipating a run by a team mate before it happens and playing the ball into that run.

Reaction is to quickly adjust to what actually happened. "I thought the opponent was going to pass so I anticipated intercepting the pass. But they actually took me on in a 1v1 so now I have to get into proper defensive position...".

Decision making is deciding what you are going to do well in advance of the ball being played by an opponent. If you are about to receive the ball, then your decision as to what you will do with it has to be made well before you receive the ball.

In sum total, soccer sense is the intuitive execution of these four mental speeds of soccer in any sequence that the game calls for. No time to think through them. You perceive a situation, anticipate the play, decide what you'll do, and react/execute. All automatically.

How do you develop players to get there? Run specific soccer drills that teach these mental skills over and over and over again. Ask your players to play pick up soccer with friends, over and over, and over. Ask them to train the technical fundamnetals over and over and over again so when the subconscious decision to (for example) take a shot is made, the body has enough memory to actually deliver the shot where the brain decided it should go.

You can't demand soccer sense from players, they either have it or they don't. Your job is to assess who has it and how much of it. Then decide if you need more and commit to training it.

All our practices train mental speeds of soccer.

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Fast Break Soccer - Competitive Pro

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Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training

Sports Nutrition

Fellow Coaches, Parents and Athletes:

You know how important nutrition is to health and performance. Your athletes spend too much time and effort trying to get better at their sport to throw it all away simply because their nutritional choices keep them from reaching their potential

Young athletes simply don’t make good nutritional choices.

But it’s not because they refuse to eat healthy.

They probably just don’t know what they SHOULD eat!

Or how much… (It depends on their age, gender and sport)

Or how often… (Five to six times per day!)

Sometimes they’ve simply been misinformed as to what is healthy and what isn’t.

And when it comes to food and nutrition, you don’t want to hand out advice you don’t quite understand yourself.

At the same time, they can’t afford to keep eating garbage.

Here’s the truth about nutrition for growing athletes:

It doesn’t have to be that complicated. And you don’t need a college degree or fancy certification to give your athletes healthy nutritional information they can quickly understand and easily apply.

Soccer Skill Development - Number of Ball Touches Needed

The key to developing soccer skills as a young kid is the number of touches you get on the ball. I heard it said long time ago that 4000 ball touches per week are a good number. So let's do the soccer math:
As a kid, we used to play 3 hours a day, 6 days a week. Half of it was 1v1 , 2v2 or 3v3 games with lots of individual action. The other half was full field scrimmages. At an average of 5 touches a minute, this translates into 5400 touches a week or more.

Contrast this with what you see on soccer fields today. First of all, kids tend to only play in organizations, i.e. clubs. If they are fortunate, they practice twice a week for 1.5 hours and play one game. Let's observe practices. The absolute killer to soccer skill development are line drills with many kids sharing one ball. You can tell by kids standing around waiting. Next are long set up times the coach uses between drills. Then you see warm-up runs without a ball and fitness work without a ball followed by full field scrimmage. If the kids are lucky they get 200 touches a practice and maybe 20 in a game. Total is 420 per week and you wonder why kids aren't as skillful as they used to be? As they grow older, it becomes more and more difficult to make up for that lost time.

That is why our practices at www.soccerpracticebooks.com are based on maximizing the number of touches on the ball. The key principles is to work in small groups of 2-4 players for most drills. Warm-ups quite often involve individual ball work. Fitness drills involve a ball as well. Players never wait for their next touch of the ball. We also have designed the entire practice sessions such that a coach can set up cones for all the drills before the practice starts, so that there is no time wasted between drills. We focus on continuous action with the ball. In our typical 90 minute practice session, we estimate a player gets between 700-1000 touches. At two sessions per week and a game this gets you to 1420 to 2020 touches a week or five times what you see around the parks.

We believe we are close as possible to delivering the skill development of earlier generations. Try our practices - you won't regret it.

Soccer Fitness: The Downside Of Static Stretching

The downside of static stretching

STATIC STRETCHING before a run, or other exercise, for that matter, makes you run more slowly and less efficiently, a study recently published in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research warns.
In this study, re- searchers at Florida State University collected data from 10 trained distance runners who performed two one-hour runs, once with stretching beforehand (four 30-second reps of five basic stretching exercises) and once without. The one hour runs consisted of 30 minutes at a set pace (65% of VO2max) during which basic running economy was measured, then 30 minutes going as fast as they could to see how much distance they could cover.
The non-stretchers burned about 5% fewer calories in the first part of the experiment, and ran 3.4% farther in the second.

In another study, researchers from the University of Milan also found that static stretching before any exercise makes you jump lower, more slowly and with less force. Adding to earlier research, this study looked at different joint an- gles, such as you might encounter in swimming, basketball, soccer, etc.

Numerous studies confirm that static stretching decreases muscle strength, but they don't define how much stretching it takes. So researchers at George Mason University (Prince William campus, Manassas, Virginia) had subjects test their one-rep maxes on the leg curl after doing 0-6 sets of 30-second hamstring stretches. They discovered that one set of 30-second static stretching decreased muscle strength by more than 5%. Each additional set of stretching affected leg-curl strength even more, with six sets causing an almost 15% decrease. Before training, stick to dynamic stretches; save static stretching until the end of your workout or game.

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Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training

Soccer Defending and Warm-Up

We will start sharing some results of our continuous research with you.

An excellent video on defending technique can be found here:

Defending Technique

A good dynamic warm-up program can be found here:

FIFA Warm-Up

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Soccer Fitness Training

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Coerver Coaching

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Soccer World Cup 2010 - Tactical Observations

Now that the world cup is 2/3 through the first round, some observations on tactics can be made.

Defense

Not much has changed here. Most teams operate with a flat back four zonal defense. At most one team appears to be playing with three defenders, that being Chile. Definitely no more sweepers. Central defenders by and large maintain their position, with the exception of Lucio from Brasil who does venture forward occasionally. The outside defenders do move wide, mostly for the purpose of building the attack from the back making themselves available for an outlet pass. Surprisingly, there aren't as many overlapping runs by outside defenders because...

Midfield

Most teams play with two central, largely defensive (or holding) midfielders. Their job is to win the ball in the middle of the field and quarterback the attack. Usually one is more defensively oriented while the other is more adventurous in moving forward. A good example of flexibility in this position is Germany. With Ballack out, Schweinsteiger and Khedira take turns with penetrating runs through the middle while the other then stays back.

There are two predominat styles using the two central midfielders. One is within the classic 4-4-2 offering two wide midfielders. The other, seemingly more popular, is playing with three attacking midfielders in front of a single striker. Two of the three usually play wide while one supports the striker more centrally. The key observation is that in the better teams these three midfielders interchange position thus making covering them more difficult. Another benefit are quick runs through the zonal defense thus avoiding off-side and getting into scoring positions or crossing positions from within the penalty box.

A few teams play a 4-3-3 on paper, although when looking how it functions it looks more like a 4-5-1, the notable exception was Paraguay against Slovakia, playing with the three true forwards - reminiscent of days long gone by.

Attack

As mentionned above, usually one or two strikers. It would seem that the lone striker system is only effective when one of the central midfielders supports them. Which then raises the question: Why not play with two strikers in the first place? It also seems that teams that play this 4-2-3-1 revert to a 4-4-2 when they need to score.

Transition

We are seeing about an equal amount of slow , possession style build-ups from the back and fast break transitions. It seems to depend on the amount of defense facing the team with the ball. Spain in their first half against Switzerland played the slow build up almost (if not totally) to a fault. When they needed to score in the second half, they played a much faster and more effective game. No coincidence that this was helped by a second all out striker. Surprisingly, Brasil is playing the ball out of the back much faster than they used to. Germany is playing a mix of possession with sudden penetrating runs/passes through the gaps in the defense, and fast break attack when the opponent isn't regrouped defensively.

Opinion

I can see why lower ranked or underdog teams play a 4-2-3-1 - it gives them the best chance of not getting scored on - witness New Zealand against Italy. Skilled and better teams have no reason to play a slow possession game and act with one striker. Every time they do, they slow themselves down. When they need to attack, they quickly switch to two or even three strikers and dominate the opposition. Why not start out that way and set the tone from the beginning. I believe a lot of scores are close because the better teams are actually too afraid of the underdogs, too worried about being embarrassed.

Enjoy the rest of the tournament

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Soccer Player Evaluation - Performance Index

One issue a soccer coach is often confronted with is how to select players for their team (making cuts) or how to award positions in the starting line-up. We have previously written about player evaluations. We now have developed a very simple measurement system to RANK players.

THE SYSTEM

Rate your players on a scale from 0-10 for their soccer performance. Performance should include technical skills, tactical ability, physical fitness, and mental fitness. You can use our player evaluation tool or develop your own way of coming up with a rating.

Then rate your players on practice attendance on a scale from 0-10. The rating is simply the practice attendance percentage. A practice attendance of 60% for eaxample gets a rating of 6.

Multiply the soccer performance rating by the practice attendance rating to come up with the PERFORMANCE INDEX.

For example, a soccer performance rating of 8 and a practice attendance rating of 8 equals a performance index of 64.

Now set a target for where you would ideally like all players to be, say a performance index above 80. Also set a cut off target below which you would not keep players or below which they should not be in the starting line up, say a performance index of at least 64.

Rank your players and see where the cut-offs are.

THE APPLICATION & MEANING

We suggest that you might want to start with an ideal performance index of 80, which means a soccer rating of 10 with a minumum attendance of 8, or a minimum soccer rating of 8 with attendance of 10 would be your ideal player.

You may want to set the cut-off at 64 based on a rating of 8 and attendance of 8. This also means a player with a rating of 10 and attendance of 6.5 would make the cut, or a player with attendance of 10 and soccer performance of 6.5. Not unreasonable we think.

You can use the results to have a discussion with your team to explain that you value both soccer performance and practice commitment. You can have individual meetings to share the index with each player and thereby point out which areas they need to improve.

If you are coaching a team where performance OR attendance don't matter, then this index wouldn't work for you.

Give it some thought, play around with it, and see if this may be useful for your situation.

Coach Tom

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Soccer Drills & Practice Plans - World Cup 2010 Editions

soccerpracticebooks.com has just released all new editions of their soccer drills and practice plans. The new editions feature added coaching points, drill progressions & variations and tips for each drill as well as updated graphics. Check out an example right here:

Youth Sample Drill

Coach Tom

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Fast Break Soccer in FIFA World Cup 2010

In 2008 we told you about our new book:

FAST BREAK SOCCER

Getting ready for FIFA World Cup 2010, major soccer nations and experts validate our approach. To quote a recent article by CBC:

"A counter-attacking World Cup?
Fast-break soccer could be all the rage in South Africa....What will it be next year in South Africa? If current trends are any indication, the 2010 World Cup could be all about the counter-attack, and soccer played at a breakneck pace. "

To read the full article, click:

Fast Break Soccer at World Cup 2010

We predicted it and now you can train your team the way the pros will at FIFA World Cup 2010. Check out this great resource by clicking on the book or the text link below:

Fast Break Soccer

Coaching Soccer - Strategic Planning

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

Our Practice Books And Resources

Kids Soccer Drills & Practices

Youth Soccer Drills & Practices

Competitive Soccer Drills & Practices

Soccer Goalie Drills & Practices

Indoor Soccer Drills & Practices

Soccer Systems Of Play

Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training

The Role Of The Soccer Coach

As we get ready for new seasons in parts of the world, we thought it would be good to give some reminder perspective on what it takes to coach.

Soccer coaching is more than running a practice, pick the line up for the enxt game and call in substitutions. Depending on the level of competition, it can be a lot more complex.

Coaching little kids at entry level requires you to have the ability to communicate the purpose of the game, the practice exercise to a bunch of little kids who may have no idea why they are there. They just want to have fun and be entertained. So it is important that you plan your practices and incorporate a lot of fun, even non-soccer drills. Be patient and let them go at it, this is not the time to stop them, instruct them and insist on proper soccer behaviour. You are more of a social facilitatot than a coach. Parents at this level are also engaged with their kids, they want to enjoy the occasion and see their kids have fun. It could be useful to involve them in some of the activities. Make sure there are water breaks and little rewards for the children, just for coming out each time.

As you coach youth players (8-12), you can expect the kids to be there because they like soccer. Regardless of whether you are coaching in recreational or competitive leagues, the idea of winning exists and it becomes more and more important. So does the individual performance of the kids, to themselves and their parents. It is now appropriate to move away from strictly socializing and fun activities during practice to teaching skills and introduce tactics. Flexibility, fitness concepts can be introduced and trained. Attentional control may be a challenge. This is also when playing time may become an issue with parents, i.e. why is my Johnny only playing 30 minutes when some kids are out there the whole game? So managing parents becomes important. This can best be handled through expectation setting meetings before the season starts. Practice drills must be releveant and practices must be planned properly, allowing for breaks and some unstructured fun time. Social events such as pizza or pool parties are appropriate.

Coaching adolescents represents a new challenge. With kids going through puberty all sorts of interesting situations and sudden behaviour changes can occur. This is where you need to develop your highest degree of patience. While caring about individuals, objectivity must be maintained. This is also where a split between recreational and competitive soccer occurs. Children are in one of these streams because they like the sport, but some are more skilled and competitive than others.

The recreational program very much carries on in the same way as with younger kids. Results should not be a focal point, everyone wants to win anyways. Playing time should be equal and basic skill, tactics and fitness must be trained. Coaching demands are still fairly relaxed in terms of time, psychological and emotional investment.

Competitive youth coaching steps it up a big notch for coaches. Players and parents expect the coach to be very knowledgable about the game, have the ability to teach players new skills, bring them up to high fitness levels, prepare the team mentally and WIN GAMES. WE recommend that you take coaching classes and become certified to coach competitive youth. Often extensive travel is involved and expenses run high. Sponsors are needed, special team uniforms and equipment as well as training tools are essential. This is like running a business. Typically this involves a team to run the team, such as Head coach, assistant coach(es), team trainer and manager. As coach you are responsible to design the season program, both on and off the field. But your role during practices and during the year changes. Your assistants should run drills and you should observe, evaluate and corrct. You need to think about team development as well as individual development.

You are now managing (for performance, for satisfaction, for enjoyment and for success) several diverse groups: Your players, your coaching staff, your parents, your club administration, your sponsors, your club administration and your game officials.

You need to evaluate all aspects of soccer specific fitness and design programs to improve or maintain the correct level. You need to know about motivation, constructive criticism, reading people, communicating, conflict resolution and problem solving.

You need to know how to evaluate skills of already highly skilled players and how to design programs to improve them.

You need to know tactics and gane strategies and be able to advance your team, get it to be flexible and adaptable to opponents and game situations. You need to mold individualists into a cohesive unit on the field.

You need to be a public person with PR skills and programs. You need to be a fundraiser, organizer and travel agent - tasks can be delegated, the decisions and design of programs are yours.

As you coach adult competitive teams all the way to the pro level, everything we said about coaching competitive youth teams just gets bigger. Budgets, staff, programs, hours spent, complexities, pressure - everything gets agnified. You need to ensure that your skills and abilities grow with the requirements, ideally, stay ahead of them.

This is why knowing and having played the game isn't enough anymore. You need to know how to manage groups of people, know about physical fitness training and evaluation, mental training and sports psychology, communication, managing money and season schedules, know how to elevate the performance of team and individuals.

This is not meant to be an all inclusive coaching profile discussion. We hope it gives you a good idea of what is involved at various levels. We hope that if you feel lacking in certain aspects, that this article encourages you to seek out the appropriate coaching development program for you.

Winning Soccer Games - Mental Training

The mental aspects of soccer are the third corner stone of winning soccer games. Previous articles dealt with technical and tactical skills, the fourth and last article will deal with physical fitness.

Mental preparation is more than a pep talk before the game. It is a strategic and comprehensive program to get individual players and the team to perform at its best. We will outline all of the elements a coach needs to consider in developing the appropriate mental strategies. Examples will be provided to enhance certain points and concepts.

The People Involved

The following individuals or groups need to be considered:

Individual Players

Each player has their own ideal performance state (IPS), the mental state that allows them to perform best. As coach, you need to identify what that state is. The level to which you need explore this depends on player age, competitive environment and team goals, factors which will be reviewed further down. Suffice it to say that the IPS of a 5 year old in a fun league might just be to feel happy with his friends while that of a college athlete prior to a championship game might be an intense state provoked by visualizing his most aggressive play in the last game.

The Team

Although players have their own IPS, they need to function together as a team. Team dynamics play a key role. How do you get a group of individuals to work together and help each other as a team? As coach, you need to sense the "team spirit" at any one time and you must decide what you want it to be like. For example, if your women's regional team performs best after a 10 minute "social time" prior to warm up, then build that into the schedule. If your team responds to loud and vocal pep talks, deliver them appropriately at the right time.

You - The Coach

How you act and project yourself means more than the words you say. If you want the team to approach a game in a relaxed fashion, you must project a relaxed state of mind. Do not be tight, stern, clenching, rather usem open body language, smile and speak calmly. If you build your team on respecting each other and others, don't be the one yelling and screaming at the referee.

Game Officials

This one is easy. Game officials hardly ever change a call and never respond well to an irate coach. So regardless of how you feel about the official's performance, remain calm. Your best opportunity to take positive influence is to approach the official calmly and factually at half time. If the official doesn't want to talk to you, suck it up and move on.

Parents

If you are coaching non-adults, you likely will deal with the parents of your players. The key to remember is that most parents look out for the interest of their kids. That is natural, they don't have your insight into each player, the team dynamics, etc. Be prepared to prepare the parents. Have a pre-season meeting laying out expectations and accept their input. Lay some ground rules (such as "I will not let the line-up be determined by parents") and set boundaries (appropriate behaviour by parents during games is required). As the season goes on, take time to communicate with parents as a group, as individuals - in writing and in person. Always take time to listen to a patrent's concern.

Media

At high levels of competition, you may deal with media after games, during games or even before games. Develop a strategy of how you want to deal with media - short and factual, humurously, sternly, not at all. Be sure that your media message is consistent with the rest of your messages.

You may ask what all these external people have to do with the mental preparation of your players and team. The connector is the consistency of your message and your behaviour. Your players will observe you and will get feedback from what you say to others and how you behave. If you want your team to play a confident and composed game, then you better portray a confident and composed image at all times.

Player Age

Mental training for different age groups needs to be different. We break these into four groups:

• kids (4-8)
• youth (9-12)
• teens (13-18)
• adults (19+)

There some general mental training concepts for each age group:

Kids (4-8)

Kids just want to have fun. Your job is to motivate them to come to practices and games, and to come back next year. Ignite a passion for the sport in them. Engage kids in fun games that at the same time teach the required skills. Do not run drill that have them standing idle a lot. Let them play different position in games - do not shoe-horn them into certain roles. Add lots of social time around the required practice and game events. If it's hot, have a water gun fight duriong or after or in the middle of a practice. Bring snacks for games. Have a pool party. They need to feel good about the whole soccer experience. be mindful of the fragile egos of the little ones. Don't ever make fun of the chubby boy or treat the shy girl by putting her in the lime light.

Youth (9-12)

Here you can be a little more structured in your approach. You will likely have a mix of those who have played for some years and those who are new to the game (in a recreational environment). You may also have a team of U12 in a competitive league. At this age, the concept of winning and success is taking shape in addition to having fun. The seeds of the idea that winning is a big part of fun are sown. You still ned to be sensitive about the emotional state of individuals and how you deal with them. You can start to talk to these youn athletes about the goals they have. You can observe how they respond to individual input and feedback from you. You can engage the team in short conversations about setting some goals for the season. They will start to understand your review of the last game and how you see them do better or as good the next time. They will develop an interest of how peractices relate to games. Team harmony is still developed through social interactions outside a game or practice event.

Teens (13-18)

Arguably the most difficult group of athletes to deal with. Why? You are dealing with all the joys and challenges of puberty in addition to trying to advance their soccer skills. Hormones are running interference, rebellions are common. Expect to be challenged by individuals or little groups that may form within a team. You need to be very aware of your individuals and what goes on intheir lives and you need to decide how you will deal with them. If you're too tough, they may rebel and quit on you (mentally). If you're too lenient, they may take advantage of you and goof around. Your sensors and diplomatic skills are most taxed with this group. A middle of the road approach often works. Show you team respect. Lay out the ground rules and get their buy-in. Be firm when you need to be and relax when you can afford it. Explain a lot about what you are doing and why so that they will respect you. They will look at your competence and respond to you based on their conclusion.

Adults (19+)

Most likely you will be coaching adults in a competitive setting. Even more so than with teens, your skills and competence will be scrutinized. Engage your team in your thinking, your approach, your strategies for the team. Set goals together and treat them as contracts. The focus here can and should be on individual and team performance, how to optimize each. They understand intuitively that winning is fun and losing is not. Develop communication strategies with your team dealing with losses, winning streaks. The IPS should be explored in depth and each player should have a plan to get into the best mental state before each game. Address the team before a practice, after a practice, before and after games and review objectives going in and results obtained. Be professional with your players and tam and do not over coach them. They don't need endless demonstrations of a drill, they should have the capacity to understand and respond to a quick correction. If you are close to the age of your athletes, avoid the trap of wanting to become a "friend" of every player. Maintain a close and cordial distance. Have rules about behaviour, public conduct and be clear what the consequences of breaking the rules are. Encourage direct communication between individuals, the entire team and you. Choose mature captains and use them to buffer the team from you so that you don't have to deal with all issues all the time.

Competitive Level

We touched on it earlier in some of the examples. Competitive level of your team sets the tone for expectations and mental training. If you coach teens in a recreational league that does not practice or rarely practices, don't treat the team as if they were playing for the world cup. The less competitive the league, the more the elements of fun and social interaction take precedence. If you are a coach who is driven to win, dp not coach recreational soccer. On the other hand, if you are not driven to win, do not coach teams that compete at regional or national levels. This seems obvious but failure to recognize the competitive environment has led to many frustrating and unsuccessful situations.

Gender

Coaching male and female athletes is different. Books have been written on this topic and we couldn't do it justice here. At the risk of offending someone, we will state some observations:

Females need social time with each other, Team bonding and harmony are important. Developing relationships throughout the season is a definite goal of most. Public criticism of females is an absolute no-no. When the team is in harmony, individuals perform best, so spend time on creating that harmony and positive environment with females. Females also tend to respect the coach more and are easier to instruct. They appear to try harder to imlement instructions and are less likely to improvise. Tactically they are easy to coach because they seem to have a built-in capacity to support each other on the field.

Males also need social time, but that social time is closely related to the game of soccer, alot of it occurs after the game. Males work more as individuals and can be more concerned with individual performance than team play. You need to be astute in providing lots of opportunity for individual improvement. Take more time practicing tactics and team play. Males generally can handle direct and to the point feedback, positive or negative. they are motivated by opportunities for improvement. They will require more discipline, particularly in the teen age group.

Situation

Have a strategy for preparing your team for practice, for a game, for a road trip. Different situations require different game plans in terms of mental preparation. Discuss with your team on how to deal with media. Prepare for half time speeches during a great and an awful game. How do you get the most out in what is left in a game and the next game. Consider short and long term. Be prepared for dealing with unfriendly opposition (players, coaches and fans).

Strategy

How do you pull all of it together to have the best mental training for your team? Develop a strategy !!!

Consider all of the factors discussed earlier and then:

1. understand the vision of the organization (club, league) in which you are coaching and be consistent with that vision.
2. develop a specific mission for your team, with the input of all critical stakeholders (players, parents, club officials)
3. Set specific short term and long term goals for your team. Here, engage mostly the players because they need to make it happen.
4. Develop strategies for yourself, each player, the team on how to best deliver the goals. Follow through on implementing the strategies.

Above all, be consistent, fair, respectful and professional - and communicate at the right frequency delivering the appropriate messages at the right time.

Our Practice Books And Resources

Kids Soccer Drills & Practices

Youth Soccer Drills & Practices

Competitive Soccer Drills & Practices

Soccer Goalie Drills & Practices

Indoor Soccer Drills & Practices

Soccer Systems Of Play

Soccer Fitness Training

Soccer Skills Training