Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: fc dallas, football on golf course, games for soccer, soccer golf, youth coaching
I can remember going along to training when I was young and all we did was run laps around a field or wait in lines to dribble through some conesbefore shooting and being shouted out by a coach hassled by a bunch of bored kids.
One of the best ways to get children to learn soccer is to use games that they find fun and creative. It is a simple fun way to improve skills and to make sure the children come back to your training sessions again and again.
You and the children are getting a higher level of energy, focus and attention – in other words they are learning the game without realizing it.
You probably know the game soccer golf because I’ve featured it in my Better Soccer Coaching newsletter, but I found an another version! Okay I know soccer players are on the golf course all the time but not like this. Watching this clip of FC Dallas players on a proper golf course using a soccer ball made me realize that games are not just for the very young.
We all love a bit of innovation and the challenge that games throw up.
Now I wonder if I could take a bunch of kids to my local golf course and get permission to boot a few balls down the fairway….
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management | Tags: attacking, Celtic, losing games, possession, Skills School, Soccer AM, Tony Mowbray, West Brom
It was refreshing to see that Celtic has chosen a manager not on the latest results his team produced but on the way they play the game.
Relegated from the Premiership at the first attempt, Tony Mowbray’s West Brom have been praised for the way they play. When they won promotion in 2007 from the Championship against teams who played with one up front and nine men behind the ball – Mowbray remained true to his ideals. Much as he has this last season only to see his team fail. But Celtic have recognized in his team the core of something special, something that will excite the fans and bring more trophys.
The words he spoke at the time reminded me of my own experience a couple of seasons ago when I took over an U14s team that hadn’t won a single game for two seasons. Eventually the team was turned around and I can look back on the first 5 or 6 games when we played well but lost every one in the same way that Mowbray does:
“It hasn’t always been easy. There have been times I have been sitting in other managers’ offices having a beer after games and they have been drooling about our style, telling me how great it is and what good footballers I have almost to a sycophantic extent… on the back of them beating us 2-0. That is hard to accept, but you don’t change what you do, you just try to become better at it,” said Mowbray.
I remember well after losing 2-1 the manager and his coaches coming over and expressing surprise we had lost considering how well we had played. We hadn’t won a game all season and their words made us even more determined to play the way I was coaching them, and if you cannot retain possession, master the football, attack on the flanks and in expansive fashion, your team will never progress.
At West Brom Tony Mobray has introduced a culture right through the club that is based on skills, technique and the ability to hold onto the ball. Here is the Academy team at the Soccer AM Skills School:
