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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...