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

I always take a team or two to Chicago over Memorial Day Weekend. This year was no different but unfortunately the weather they had up there was even wetter than we’ve been experiencing in our area. Only about half of their fields are turf so they had to compress the schedule once the grass fields were closed for the weekend. They did the best they could but that left us with four 30 minute...

I had a team play in a tournament that used grass fields last weekend. This is the first time any of my teams have played on grass this spring. In my opinion a good grass field is better than a turf field but it has to be a good grass field. The fields we played on this weekend were good in the past but aren’t what they used to be. We’re just not used to playing on grass anymore. It sl...

We’re starting to wind down the 2018-19 soccer year. This is the last week of practice for one of my teams while the other two just have one tournament left for each of them. I’m always surprised at how fast the spring season goes. It’s no shorter than the fall but it just seems to move so quickly. It may be because we’re in the process of planning the tryouts and looking t...

First of all I have to apologize for not uploading this episode last week. I had everything planned and then my internet connection went down. If you’ve ever had to deal with a cable company you know that nothing ever gets fixed quickly. I wasn’t going to have internet back until Monday so I decide to sit on this episode for a week. There’s two interesting things that happened re...

Each of my teams only had one game last weekend. They all played really well despite only one of them winning their game. One of the hardest things for me to get some parents to understand is that we can play really well and still lose the game. We had worked hard on playing our way out of pressure in tight spaces during the week and did this very well in the games. That was the objective for the...

With just one team in a tournament last weekend I was able to put all of my focus on them and not have a crazy schedule that had me going from one game to the next. Our first game was on Friday night. This team practices on Thursdays so we had a great preparation and came out flying. The team played great and won comfortably. We played two games on Saturday. The first one didn’t start well b...

It was a pretty easy weekend for me. Each of my teams only had one game so I had a lot of time to get some spring cleaning and yard work done. I would have rather been coaching Coming back to league games after a mostly successful tournament weekend can be unpredictable. Sometimes a team can just pick up where they left off in the tournament. Other times there is a bit of a let down. My three team...

I had  three teams that played in the SPORTING Next Gen Invitational last weekend. The event was organized by SPORTING KC for it’s affiliate clubs. The 12 SKC Affiliate Clubs sent teams in the U8 through U12 age groups on both the boys and girls side. The divisions were rounded out by other good local teams Unfortunately, the weather was an issue again. It snowed on Saturday morning with the...

I finally had a normal week of training and games! A few more like this we’ll be able get into the flow of the season. Two of my three teams are playing up an age group this season. The speed and physicality of the opponents is something that is going to take time to get used to. My goal is for us to be able to play our game against the increased pressure which should help us take a big step...

Last week was Spring Break in our area. I’m usually a fan of breaks in the schedule but that’s only when they’re preceded by a long period of sustained effort. Unfortunately, the period between Christmas and now has been disjointed and inconsistent. This week we start our Technical Training Curriculum. I’ve talked about this in previous episodes so you can look back if you&...

We were finally able to play some early season games last weekend. With the stops and starts we’ve had to our training during the late winter and early spring seasons it was hard to know what to expect. Add to that the fact that we were missing a number of players from each of my teams because they got a head start on their Spring Break trips. That gave us the opportunity to bring in some gu...

The high school girls that I coached during the fall and winter had their school tryouts last week. A couple of my best players weren’t picked for any teams at their school. These are Juniors in high school that could have played “C” Team, JV or Varsity. There are players that were selected for these teams that are not as good as the players that were left out. I don’t unde...

I took last week off from the podcast to prepare for our 3rd Grade and older coaches meeting for the spring season. So I spent a lot of time getting the rosters and cards ready for our older recreational teams that play through our local league. That means that I didn’t get to share my thoughts on the US Youth Futsal Youth National Finals that I had two teams in. You can listen to the episod...

Last weekend we had our last Futsal games of the league season. The second half of the season was very choppy because of the crazy weather we’ve had in the midwest but it’s been great to watch the progress of the players. They’ve developed a very solid understanding of how we want to play the game as well as improved their foot skills throughout the winter. Two of my teams will p...

We’re starting to wrap up the winter Futsal season. There’s just two weeks left in the league and then we have the US Youth Futsal Nationals. There are 160 teams entered in the tournament and only 20 of them are from the KC area according to the organizers. It’s always a great event and I’m really looking forward to it this year. We had a loopside game this weekend that all...

We finally got in a full weekend of games without any weather interruptions. The “Polar Vortex” moved in for the week so we weren’t able to train outdoor until Thursday but indoor training went ahead as usual. As I suspected my youngest team were pretty rusty. They looked like they hadn’t played a game in six, which they hadn’t. They had forgotten some of the basic of...

We had the US Youth Futsal Regionals here last weekend. I’m going to talk about my teams’ experiences and tournaments in general in the main part of the show so I’ll save that for later. We had another major winter storm here earlier this week. My teams train on Tuesdays indoor and my oldest team trains outdoor on Wednesday but we lost all of our training sessions this week. I th...

Last week we had a major snow storm in the midwest and it forced the cancelation of games on Saturday. This came at the worst time for me because we just came off of a two week Christmas break and no games scheduled last weekend. Unfortunately, we’re going right into the US Youth Futsal Regionals this weekend. With no game time in the last month it made this week’s training session esp...

It was great to get back to training this week. The break was fun but I’ve missed my teams and working with the kids. There was an interesting comment on last week’s podcast. John said, “ The US has not and will never produce a world class talent because of lack of culture, the fear of over training (even though the kids are having fun and doing what they love), the need to dabbl...

I hope everyone enjoyed their holiday season. I just returned from a great family ski trip. We’ve been going to the same little ski resort in Colorado since I was 16. It’s not crowded and very family friendly. My kids learned to ski and snowboard there and now my young nieces and nephews are going as well. I love want I do and where I do it but I’m definitely on the lookout for ski town where I ca...

Last weekend I had just one game with each of my teams. Really not much to tell. The kids played well and are continuing to make steady progress in the areas we’ve focused on. Looking through my session plans I realized that I haven’t done a shooting session in a while. Striking a Futsal ball is very unforgiving. If your technique is flawed in any way it’s hard to generate any po...

My teams had their first Futsal games last weekend. I love the change in to a different form of soccer during the winter. What’s the old saying, “A change is as good as a rest.”? We’ll I had a rest over Thanksgiving and now a change to Futsal from outdoor soccer. I’m very happy with the way my teams started the season. I’m fortunate this year because almost all...

I really enjoyed my Thanksgiving holiday break this year. It was a great opportunity to recharge my batteries and get ready for the start of the winter Futsal season. The extra time I had gave me the opportunity to observed SPORTING KC Academy Sessions. The quality of the players is obviously very high but what struck me most was the attention to detail from the coaching staff and the high expecta...

My teams didn’t have any games this weekend fortunately because the weather in KC was more like winter than fall. I took the extra time I had to start my player evaluations. I spread them out over two weekends so that I can take the time to focus on each player. The way I plan the transition between the fall outdoor season and winter Futsal season indoor is to make sure that my teams don&#82...

I’m now officially finished with my fall season. Two of my teams played in a tournament last weekend to finish off the fall. I always put this tournament on my schedule but it’s hard to know what to expect from the weather. We were really lucky last weekend as it was mostly dry and not as cold as it’s been some years. Having a tournament at the end of the season is a great way to...