Coaching Soccer Weekly: Methods, Trends, Techniques And Tactics From World Class Coaching

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...

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...

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...

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 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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...