Filed under: Better Soccer Coaching Blog Guests, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: football coaching, Football Essex League, football player, football season, football teams, Premier League, Sunday football
Hi, my name is Ashley and I have been given the opportunity to post an article here on the blog. I’d like to thank Dwyer for the invite!
I am 26 years old and play Sunday football in a local Essex (England) league. A couple of seasons ago I made the decision to drop down a couple of leagues to join up with my friends and play for a different team. I don’t regret the decision but over this period I’ve noticed clear differences in the standard, football player behaviour and general attitude towards football on a Sunday morning.
This football season has been a disaster to put it bluntly. Bad habits have crept into the team and although we cannot expect Premier League status fitness, wages or TV coverage the simplest things were missing from our team. Our inability to do the simple things on the pitch let us down badly. To coach a football group of adults to do some simple drills, stretches and sprints before the game falls on deaf ears if you do not have a committed coaching structure in place. As the captain of the team I have found it hard to influence others to be as committed throughout the season.
Some of the other teams in the Sunday league include established local footballers who have played and now coach with passion. They organise the team properly, they have planned and structured training sessions, they know about fitness and hydration, they communicate positively from the touchline and they have enough support week in week out to get the team playing.
It’s no surprise that these football teams have hauled in the points this season. I can only think of a couple of occasions where we have matched them for fight and passion. But not having a proper football coaching structure and team discipline has let us down badly. On a number of occasions we haven’t even had enough players or subs to run the line.
I’ve now taken the decision to play for a new team in a different district and what I have seen watching two games with my new team confirms to me that organisation is the key. Although the ability of the players may not be hugely different, it’s the way that they perform as a team which makes the biggest difference. There have a considerable amount of respect for each other and the coaches and this is shown throughout the team.
I’m looking forward to a new challenge but I will miss the social side of meeting up with old school friends on a Sunday. But this football season has taught me that even at adult amateur level basic coaching needs to be applied to get the best results.
Ashley
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: better soccer coaching, Gilberto, soccer games, soccer players, soccer superstars, World Cup
Well not past it, but you know they don’t want to play anymore. It’s a sad time when you see players you
have put such a lot of effort in turn away from the game you have taught them. A lot of my players are the guinea pigs for Better Soccer Coaching sessions.
I was thinking about this when I watched the great Arsenal and Brazil player Gilberto turning in a performance where he was dropping too deep, far deeper then he had done before and so let the opposition come on top of him. He’s a World Cup winning player, a captain of Arsenal. He’s no fly-by-night, he’s the real thing. They don’t give World Cup medals to just anyone.
And yet somehow he is suddenly defending too deep. Although still strong defensively, he seems to have forgotten how to attack.
Early on in the season Arsene Wenger had dropped him. A World Cup winner and former captain dropped. But Wenger has been proved right, so why did he go back to him? Loyalty plays such a big part of these decisions. You can’t cast aside a World Cup winner can you?
I see this happening to young players, not because they burn out or are past it, they just don’t want to play anymore. They outgrow it and they stop reading the game, are too deep or too far forward or just are not there. The buzz has gone and the passion has died.
And I too feel that loyalty. I made a mistake this season with one of my strikers. Michael was obviously much more interested in golf than soccer. He had told me so last season but asked if he could play in some matches this season when he wasn’t playing golf. I agreed but only because he had played so many games for me. He didn’t play well, he missed some easy chances and half way through the season left to take up a golfing career.
This boy was the van Nistelroy of the under 10s but somewhere along the way by Under 15 he was past it.
Gilberto is a wonderful player but he no longer reads the game as well as he did. At the top level, the very top level, he is past it.
And I have players in my team that were once the heartbeat that made the team tick, but as they grew older and other things took their interest and took them away from soccer I too, like Mr Wenger, had to pick other players to take their place, and I too like Mr Wenger wanted to play the players who had played for me since under 4 even though they were “past it”. Their ghosts haunt the pages of Better Soccer Coaching.
The time to be soccer superstars is very short, both at international and at youth levels.
David Clarke, editor, Better Soccer Coaching
