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

This weekend I’m taking my girls teams to Iowa for a tournament. This year I split up my teams and took the boys to one tournament and the girls to another. This gives me more time with the players and families away from the field. These are the only two out of town trips I’ll do with my teams this fall. We have so many good teams come into town that we don’t really need to trave...

Last weekend I had two teams in a tournament in Omaha. We travel with our teams that are U10 and above at least once a season. It’s a great way to see some new competition, in a new environment. The fields were grass as opposed to the turf fields that we normally play on. They were good fields but provided their own challenges. In addition to the different on the field challenges, traveling...

Our club has started a program called, ‘RecConnect’ to provide a resource for recreational coaches. Five of our club’s premier coaches have ‘adopted’ a 2nd grade boys or girls division. We send out weekly tips and suggestions, make ourselves available to answer questions and attend the games on the weekend. This helps create a stronger link between the rec and premier...

I’m working with five different teams this year, U9 boys, U10 boys, U11 girls, U13 boys and U16 girls. That may seem like too many teams but I’m able to schedule the practices easily since we have lighted fields and the league and tournament scheduler does a great job making sure I don’t have any conflicts. Putting them all in the tournament this weekend gave me 17 games over the...

I was watching the US Open Cup game last night with Sporting KC vs San Jose. The game went to PK’s and it got me thinking about the differences between youth and adult PKs. The goalkeepers are usually much smaller in relation to the goal so the things that will work for young players will not be effective for professions. I tell my youth players to keep the ball on the ground and aim for one side...

After two weeks of training my teams are getting ready for their first games. I’m starting to get an idea of how the teams fit together. The formations I use for small-sided soccer keep it pretty simple. I always use a 2-3-1 for teams playing 7 v 7 and 4-3-1 for playing 9 v 9 games. I’ve found that these formations are effective, easy to teach and create a great pathway to the 11-a-sid...

We started back to training this week. It seems earlier than usual but that’s just how the calendar came together. There are still a lot of families on summer vacations so attendance has been spotty. That affects what I try to cover because I don’t want to have to repeat myself once I have everyone back. I also want to give the players a chance to adapt to training again rather than th...

This is the last week before our club starts training for the fall season. The weather in the midwest has been incredibly hot and humid. Fortunately, the heatwave is going break over the weekend and next week won’t be as hot. The first few weeks of training are always inconsistent because families are taking the opportunity to travel before the summer is over. That means that I won’t h...

Last week provided a nice break over the 4th of July holiday. Stepping away from the field and not thinking about coaching for a bit is always a welcome change of pace. We now only have two weeks remaining in our summer break. It seems like it just started and now it’s half over! Now I’m working on the plan for my team’s first couple of months of training. I don’t like to s...

I continuing to enjoy my summer break from the field.  The summer doesn’t start for me until the team meetings are completed and that happened last weekend. I’m using the extra free time to work on the Fall Technical Training Curriculum for our U8 through U12 teams. Talked about that back in episode 18 Creating a Technical Training Plan . If you want to know why we do this and how it&#...

With tryouts behind me I’ve had a nice break from coaching. It’s given me more time to attend and watch some professional games. Unfortunately, the international leagues have finished but the Confederations Cup has had some good games. I was watching the Mexico v New Zealand game when an incident happened in the box that made me ask the question, “Who’s responsibility is it...

We completed our club tryouts last weekend. It’s a crazy time for player, parents and coaches but an important one to make sure that our players are challenged at an appropriate level. I’ve talked about our process in previous episodes including Episode 105 just a couple of weeks ago. We’re not working to prepare our teams for the preseason meetings that we hold each year. I&#821...

We concluded our State Cup tournament in Kansas this week. Each state holds it’s own competition for U13 to U19 teams. The winner of each age group advances to one of four different regional championships where the winners earn the right to attend the US Youth Soccer National Championship. This is one of my favorite times of the soccer year because it showcases everything that the teams have...

I took last week off from the podcast to take some teams to Chicago for a Memorial Day weekend tournament. It was a great weekend and a fun way to wrap up the year for the teams. We played on grass fields which really slowed the game down compared to what we’re used to when playing on our home turf fields. It was a different challenge for the players which they adapted to well. I love playin...

I had my teams in a tournament this last weekend. We enjoyed great weather and very good competition. These end of the season tournaments are great for me and the players. I can see how far they’ve progressed over the course of the year and the players have a chance to put all of our training into games against some very good teams. A couple of the teams played up into older divisions to cha...

Coaching my games this weekend and covering for a couple of other coaches the “kickball” being played by some of the teams we played against was killing me. It was hard to play against because anytime we build the play up if the opponent won the ball they just kicked it as far up the field as they could. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that my way of coaching the game is...

The weather was so bad in the midwest last weekend that we weren’t able to play most of our games. It rained pretty much non stop from Friday morning through Sunday morning. They had it even worse in St Louis where many of their fields are built in 100 year floodplains that flooded much more recently than that. These are photos of the St Louis Soccer Complex during the flooding. Obviously ma...

First of all, thanks to everyone that sent me an email, left a comments on the site or provided a rankings and reviews on iTunes about the 100th episode of the podcast. I truly appreciate everyone who takes the time to listen each week and I love hearing from you when you have a question or comment. Doing this podcast has forced me to evaluate what I do and your feedback has helped me improve the...

100 Episodes! When I started this podcast more than two years ago the idea of getting to 100 episodes seemed so far off. Just producing the first three was a huge challenge. Now thousands of coaches listening to each episode. There have been more than 690,000 downloads of the show since I started. I owe all of you, the listeners, a huge THANK YOU! I appreciate you listening each week and sharing y...

In the last month my teams haven’t played every weekend due to spring break and a number of local tournaments that took up field capacity. One team hasn’t played in three weeks. This has given us time to do some concentrated training. We’ve been able to work on improving some areas of our play without worrying about having a game on the weekend. I’ve this has helped us developmen...

Last weekend I had a game on turf Friday night, a game on very rough outdoor field on Saturday and then back to the turf for our match on Sunday. The grass field was so uneven that it made it very difficult to try to play the kind of soccer we normally attempt. I decided to take the pressure off my players and give them permission decide when they could play to feet and when to play more directly...

I actually spent more time refereeing last weekend than coaching. I’ve always enjoyed refereeing. Especially when I get to work with new referees. I can see why so many young referees quit. It takes a level confidence that most kids just don’t have naturally. Experience and success breeds confidence but we don’t give them a chance to develop confidence so we lose young referees who could be very g...

Last week I talked about what you should and sometimes shouldn’t say during your team talks. Planning that episode made me realize that most of my effective pregame, halftime and postgame team talks followed a similar pattern. If you didn’t have a chance to listen to the show last week I’d suggest that you go back and listen if you can. This week’s question is from Tony Tony says...

We had great feedback to last week’s episode on checking your shoulder . The combination of the description, diagrams and actual training video really helped to paint the picture and show how the exercises are organized. If you haven’t had a chance to listen to that one or see the videos in the show notes I would check it out. This has been a crazy spring break week in the midwest. Our...

Technical Training for our club started this week. Once a week all of the teams, U12 and below, complete the same training session. It’s focused on a particular technical topic. I talked about how we structure our technical training back in episode 18 – Creating a Technical Training Plan . It’s a great way to make sure all of the team in an age group are being exposed to the same...