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

This was my last week of ‘Summer Training’. It’s been great to get the players back out on the field. I thought it was important to do something this summer to get them started. These sessions have also turned into a bit of a Pre Season for my teams. They gave the players a chance to train once a week after not training together at all for months. This was great for them in all a...

I’ve just finished my third week of ‘Social Distancing Practice’. To be honest, I’m really missing high fives and pats on the shoulder. I didn’t realize how much those simple acts helped me connect with players. Nothing can really replace those. We tried, ‘foot fives’ but those seem awkward and forced. It may not happen for a while but I can’t wait u...

I’m sorry there wasn’t a podcast last week. I’d forgotten that it was the Fourth of July holiday. With family in town I didn’t have time to put the episode together. With everyday seeming like the day before I’d really lost track of where we are on the calendar. It was great to have a bit of time off and enjoy some golf, bar-b-que and family time. This is the end of t...

Our tryouts were last Friday. I don’t know of any coaches, players or parents who enjoy the necessary process of tryouts. Everything has been different this year and the same can be said for tryouts. We only had new players attending so there were a few times when there were only had slightly more players than coaches. It was difficult evaluate the new players in comparison to our current pl...

Well my voice is coming back slowly but it wasn’t helped by having Pre-Tryout Camp this week. It’s a four day camp that helps prepare new players to our club for tryouts and gives current players a chance to get together after not playing for a while. Our tryouts are tomorrow. None of our current players are attending because we’ve already offered them places on teams for next ye...

I’ve been really struggling with my voice (as you’ll hear in this episode) so I decided save the Social Distance Training Session for another week. I have uploaded the printable show notes with all of the diagrams and descriptions of the activities to our Patreon site so that Members can view it or download. I’ll describe it in detail next week but for Members that would like a s...

This week was the start of our tryout process for the 2020-21 season. We started by contacting parents and finding out if they were planning to return to the club and let them know what tryouts would look like this year. Since we decided not to move players down this summer, only up, then they knew that they would at least be at the same level as the previous year. This was meant to simplify thing...

Last weekend was Memorial Day weekend. This is the first time in years I wasn’t in Chicago. With soccer being on hold I actually forgot that it was coming up. Who looks at a calendar anymore. I had planned for my teams to play in a local tournament and stay home anyway but I always look forward to tournaments on that weekend because it’s the end of the soccer year for most teams and preparat...

The discussion I’ll share this week is pretty long, like last week, so I’ll give you a quick update and then get right into the conversation. I feel that my players are experiencing a lot of, ‘At Home’ training fatigue. It’s only natural since they’ve been stuck at home for two month without a chance to play. Training without playing would get old pretty fast for anyone let...

We have a pretty long conversation that I want to share with you about VAR today so I’ll just give you a short recap of my week and skip our usually Q & A. My team meetings followed the same format we’ve been using. We reviewed the players progress on the Techne App and our Flipgrid videos. The challenge we gave the players was to juggle as many times as they could in one minute. If the...

One week is looking a lot like the last these days; lots of Zoom meetings with teams and coaches as well as a constant stream of webinars. I can feel my players starting to get a bit tired of isolated training at home. I’m trying to do everything I can to switch things up and come up with fresh ideas. This week I have my teams doing a juggling challenge. They’re working on their juggli...

It’s week six of, ‘Soccer Coaching through Social Distancing’. I don’t have any practices or games to tell you about so I’ll let you know how my team meetings went this week. We continue to use the Techne Futbol app for skill training and Flipgrid.com to complete assignments and share videos. These have been great tools for me and my players. While I was reviewing the...

Welcome to Week Five of Coaching at Home! This week my son and I build a new computer because my old one just wasn’t cutting it anymore. I’ve heard this described as, “Adult Legos”. It was a bit cheaper and more specific to my needs to build it rather than buying one off the shelf. We’ll see if you notice a change in the production quality as I get used to using some new to...

In the fourth week away from training I’m starting to get into a routine. On Mondays and Tuesday’s meeting with my teams over Zoom. It gives us a chance to all see each other and interact. We go over our progress with the Techne Futbol app and discuss any issue or questions as well as review last week’s assignment on Flipgrid. If you’re not familiar with Flipgrid , it&#8217...

We’re now into the second full week of the ‘Stay at Home’ order in Kansas. I wish that more people were following it strictly. I’m seeing too many people on the news that are just acting as if nothing is out of the ordinary. Kansas hasn’t seen the huge spike in cases and deaths that some areas have. I’m hopeful that we can avoid that happening by taking the necessary steps now. My hope...

This is the first full week of the ‘Stay at Home’ order in Kansas. The schools are out for the spring, the league has been delayed until the end of April and now everyone has been asked to keep their distance if they have to be in public. I think I’ve been every bit as busy as I would be if we were training. All the extra work to put things together for the club, the age groups I direct and my own...

Well, I can safely say that it’s been the weirdest week I’ve ever had during a spring season. Things seemed to be changing by the hour not just by the day. At the end of my intro last week I said that I hoped to be back on the field in two weeks. Now it’s looking more like two months would be a more realistic time frame. The local league, and also our club, have canceled everything through April 3...

My games last weekend were really a tale of two entirely different days. On Saturday my teams played well and were very successful. Part of that could have been due to the fact that we played teams that were were just better than. On Sunday the games were very challenging. Especially the game with my U12 who played a very good U13 team. There’s such a big developmental difference between U12...

It was great to get back to outdoor games last weekend. I was curious to see how the teams transitioned back to the outdoor game. Each team had a slightly different reaction. My youngest team that plays 7v7 didn’t really have an issues. They seemed to pick up right were they left off but with more confidence and creativity on the ball. That was great to see. There was a bit too much use of t...

This is the 5th Anniversary of the CSW Podcast! It’s hard to believe I’ve recorded 223 episodes that have been downloaded more than 1.6 million times. I really appreciate everyone who listens, contributes or spreads the word about the show. THANKS! Last weekend we had our last Futsal games of the winter. It was weird having games after the Nationals but there was a weekend that was can...

The Futsal Nationals took place in Gardner Kansas last weekend. I had two teams competing. One team missed out on the semi-final due to a close loss in their third game. The other team reached the final but lost on penalty kicks. I go into detail about the weekend in this episode. It was a great event that included teams from across the country as well as at least one from Canada. Our preparation...

I continued to focus on defending with my teams this week. With the younger teams it was more about individual defending while the older teams worked on defending as a team in preparation for the US Youth Futsal Nationals this weekend. During the session I wondered if I might be spending too much time on defending. Would that time be better spent on improving the player’s attacking understan...

The last two weeks have been crazy; I finish the second meeting for the Grassroots Instructor’s License Wednesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. The first meeting back in November covered the course content for the Grassroots In-Person Courses (4v4 through 11v11). The second meeting was focused on presenting the D License Course. The D is like getting an advanced degree in the Play &#...

Last weekend we had the U.S. Youth Futsal Central Regional Championship. It was a long weekend with all four of my teams participating. Two of the teams were actually playing up an age group while the other two played with teams their own age. The teams played up because they won’t have been challenged in their own age group. I think that playing up in Futsal is even more difficult that play...

I’ve been working through some issues I’ve had with the audio quality of the podcast for the last few weeks. I’d appreciate it if you would leave a comment below if you’ve noticed a problem in previous episodes and if it’s been resolved in this one. If you haven’t noticed a issue then I’d like to know that as well. My teams were supposed to play their firs...