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

My family and I enjoyed a great winter break. We went to Glenwood Springs, Colorado to ski at Sunlight Mountain. If you’re a skier in the U.S. and haven’t visited Sunlight you’re missing one of the best kept secrets in Colorado. It’s especially great for families. It’s inexpensive and consolidated in one area so it’s easy to keep track of everyone. There’s...

Last weekend was set to be a normal winter Futsal weekend. I had seven games on Saturday and I was all set for another five on Sunday. Overnight a storm came in and by 9 am it was obvious that it wouldn’t be a good idea for anyone to be traveling if they didn’t have to be. The league made the decision to cancel all games for the day. So what does a soccer coach do when all of his games...

I’m into the flow of Futsal practices and games at this point. My teams are training less during the week but the weekends are crazing because most of my teams are split into two teams for the league. This gives them more playing time but that means more games for me. It’s worth it though. The teams are all progressing nicely. I have a slightly different focus with each team. With the...

I really enjoyed the weekend off for Thanksgiving. Lots of time for family, friends, food and football (mostly American Football). The week before my teams started their Futsal season. I never know what to expect on that first weekend of Futsal but the teams all played really well and made a much quicker transition than I had expected. We were fortunate to player our first games on some of the lar...

I had last weekend completely off. No games! I always take the first weekend of the futsal season off. This provides a welcome break between the outdoor and indoor seasons. It also gives me one more week of practice with my teams before we play our first futsal games. For the first two weeks of indoor practice we focused on finding the openings or creating the openings when attacking. This week we...

Since I didn’t have a podcast last week I have to catch you up on what I’ve been up to. Two weeks ago I had my last outdoor tournament of the fall. Two teams played in the tournament and it was a great way to wrap up the season. I go into all of the details about the weekend in the episode. We had our first two weeks of futsal training sessions in the last two weeks. Moving indoors cha...

With only one game last weekend it left me with a lot of time on my hands. Saturday consisted of work around the house to get it ready for the winter (which seems to have started already!). My game on Sunday was at 8 am but first I decided to get up early and watch the Rugby World Cup Semi-Final between Wales and South Africa. That started at 4 am my time. I love watching the knockout rounds of ju...

Last weekend was a busy one; I had six games between my four teams. The results were 3-2-1. The interesting thing was that the teams were 1-1-1 on Sunday and I LOVED the performance of my teams in every game. My approach was different with each group but I think it really matched with what they needed on the day a struck a balance between too much direction and not enough. Realizing that the balan...

Thanks to an email from listener Kevin I discovered how to allow iTunes to include up to 300 podcast episodes in the feed. I’ve made that adjustment so we have a couple of years before we have to worry about older episodes dropping off of the feed. Thanks Kevin! I don’t usually use guest players for my teams unless we’re very short on players. This weekend one of my teams really...

I followed up the out of town tournament two weeks ago with an in-town tournament last weekend with two different teams. One team played their own age group and the other was playing up. They both faced some good competition and didn’t end up making the finals but they both had great experiences that will definitely help them continue to develop and build on a great start to the year. I talk...

I took one team to a tournament in St. Louis last weekend. This was my first trip to St. Louis in many years. In the past they just didn’t have the same quality of fields that we could find by staying closer to home. The teams have always been very competitive but I just never wanted to play those teams on inferior fields. Now there are a number of good turf field complexes in St. Louis so I...

It was a crazy wet weekend. I know this podcast sometimes sounds like a weather report but it has such an impact on the game and my coaching that it’s an important factor. You can listen to the episode for the details. I’m continuing to experiment with not coaching during running play. I think it’s having a very positive impact on most of my teams. However, one of the teams hasn&...

It was another hot weekend on the soccer fields. I’m hoping that it was the last weekend we’ll have like this before we start to get some relief. I really enjoy the fall season so I’m looking forward to some cooler temps. It also makes it a lot easier on the players. Three out of my four teams played really well. One just wasn’t up for it on Sunday. I’m not sure if it...

Last weekend I only had one game for each of my teams! It seemed like a weekend off The great part about it is that the games were spread out; one on Friday, one on Saturday and two on Sunday. Even the games on Sunday were spread out by a couple of hours so it gave me some time in between. I’ve been trying (sometimes unsuccessfully) to only talk to the players on the field when there’s...

Last weekend I took one team to Omaha for a Labor Day tournament. This is a tournament hosted by Sporting Omaha that is played on a nice complex of grass fields. When we got to our first game we discovered that it was going to be played on a field that just had turf installed. Our players were very pleasantly surprised. We got off to a good start with a win and then came back in the afternoon to p...

I had three teams in a tournament last weekend. As with all early season tournaments in KC it was HOT. Two of my teams were playing in their own age group and one was playing up. The two playing on-age both made the final. One lost on PK’s and the other won. I think the players learned some good lessons from the experience. You can listen to the episode for more details. The team that was pl...

I only had one team in the tournament last weekend so it was almost like having a weekend off. It was nice to focus on just one team for the whole weekend. It was my U12 team that is playing in the U13 11 v 11 division. They’ve really made the move to 11 v 11 must smoother than I thought they would. It’s helped that half of our games have been against other U12 teams playing up so I&#8...

Wow! It’s hard to believe that this is the 200th episode of the podcast. I’m so grateful to everyone who listens and supports the show by commenting, emailing a question or posting a link on social media. Even just mentioning the show to a fellow coach helps to spread the word. This was the first week of games for my teams. Early season games mean that we were missing a few players. Th...

It was great to get back to training with my kids this week. I’ve missed being on the field with them. Everyday this week I’ve enjoyed taking a break from preparing for the rec season and running training sessions. The first session of the week for all of my teams used the Play – Practice – Play methodology. The second session involved some technical training mixed in with...

It’s great to have completed the Director of Coaching course. Last weekend I finished the revisions for my assignments and the reflections on each assignment. Now I’m just waiting to hear if everything I’ve turned in is satisfactory or not. Now my attention has turned to preparing for the recreational league season as well as my first week of training with our competitive teams....

The last week has been crazy as I continue to prepare for the fall season while also finishing the second in person meeting for the US Soccer Director of Coaching Course being held at the Pinnacle National Development Center. We still have a two week development period after the this week as well but the lions share of my work will be finished this weekend. I’ve learned so much about what sh...

Last Sunday was one of my favorite days of this year. I called it, “Soccer Sunday”. With the US Women’s National Team in the World Cup Final in the morning and the US Men’s National Team in the Gold Cup Final that night it provided a great day of soccer. The Women’s World Cup Final was great.  I thought we played very well and controlled the game. The use of VAR for t...

With no coaching last week I could focus on preparing our recreational league for the fall season and take some time to watch World Cup and Gold Cup games. Something I noticed is how VAR was not just being used to correct, “Clear and Obvious Errors”. In some games they seemed to be re-refereeing the game. Reviewing every close play looking for something small that couldn’t be obs...

With tryouts behind me. The focus this week switched to preparing the recreational league for the fall season. We also have our preseason team meeting this weekend so I’m getting ready for that as well. The USYS Presidents Cup Midwest Regionals was hosted by the Scheels Overland Park Soccer Complex last week. That gave me the opportunity to watch teams from a round the midwest that came to c...

There were so many things going on last week that there just wasn’t time to put the podcast together. I had every intention of doing it but by the time Wednesday came around I knew it wasn’t going to happen. Two weeks ago my U11’s participated in Jr State Cup. As you can see from the photo it worked out very well but it didn’t start that way. You’ll have to listen to...