Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Fitness, Uncategorized | Tags: damien walters, parkour, tumbling
Thought you should see the latest video from the amazing gymnast Damien Walters…. If he could play football as well he would be rather awesome.
My only worry is one slip and…. ouch!
He’d certainly be warmed up by the time he got to the match on Saturday mornings
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: goalkeeper 1v1, Goalkeeper training, Hope Solo
I’ve just come in from a game at U13s where the two goalkeepers were outstanding.
It isn’t often you see two goalkeepers command their area like the players did today. There were four 1v1s, two on each side and none of them were turned into goals.
What a difference that makes to the spirit of the team and the confidence the defenders have in their goalkeeper.
The defenders on both teams were able to concentrate on defending rather than worrying that the goalkeeper was going to make a mistake.
The only thing that troubled me today was that the referee twice blew up for backpasses to our goalkeeper who picked the ball up. I wanted to go on the pitch and explain that if my players could hit pinpoint passes under pressure at full stretch a long way from the goalkeeper then I would be a happy man.
It was a 3-3 draw and neither of the freekicks for backpasses were turned into goals!
I thought you might like to see this video of how Phil Weddon, the coach of USA ladies national team goalkeeper Hope Solo, coaches the way to control a 1v1. Watch it and take some ideas from it – I have!
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness | Tags: Soccer Fitness
Soccer is a high intensity sport with bursts of speed and power. It a lot of work on the fitness front to make sure players are prepared for matches
The most important aspect of soccer fitness training is that it involves using different patterns – sideways forward, backwards and off the ground.
It will help players at all levels if they have a consistent fitness programme.
This video demonstrates what I mean and it gives some good ideas for setting up your own fitness programme for your players.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Team Management, Uncategorized | Tags: alan shearer, alex ferguson, david batty, eric cantona, gazza, Manchester United, peter beardsley, terry venables, umbro
UPDATED Anyone who loved soccer in England in the eighties and nineties had better take a look at this old Umbro soccer coaching video I have stumbled across.
It features some of the greats – Eric Cantona, Alan Shearer, Peter Beardsley, Terry Venables, Andy Cole, Gazza you name it they are all in this coaching video.
It is split into 8 sections for coaching. I didn’t learn anything from it.
UPDATE: Ok so looking at it again a couple of times I agree with all of you who have contacted me over this…. Yes you could make up a good 30 minute session of coaching from the stuff on here. And if you look beyond the Umbro advertising comments there are some good sentiments… and yes the advert at the beginning of this is good!!
See what you think:
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: Arsenal, coaching, Liverpool, simple, warm ups
Sometimes I think coaches can overcomplicate coaching sessions and warm-ups with young players.
Complicated pass, move around one cone then around another, up to the goal line…. you know the kind of drills I mean, just to get across a coaching point. And the same with warm-ups before a game – I’ve seen coaches spend 10 minutes describing and explaining the drill just to warm-up players.
Often what young players need are simple left foot/right foot passing moves. If you watch these clips of Liverpool training and Arsenal warming-up they show you how simple it all can be.
There are no complicated moves here, just simple left foot/right foot, jumping, running and passing.
It always serves as a good reminder of what young players need to accelerate their soccer education to check out what the big boys are doing.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer Skills, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: david James, England, Goalkeeper training, goalkeeping bloopers, goalkeeping blunders, goalkeeping errors, goalkeeping mistakes, Portsmouth, what to do with your goalkeeper
They are different to all your other players… goalkeepers are a law unto themselves. I was reading the reports on England goalkeeper David James who has let 10 goals in, in just two games for English premiership team Portsmouth. He says in the past he would have been unable to speak to anyone for days. I can sympathise with that – if any of my teams lost two games in a row badly then I was like a bear with a sore head.
But now James says “I try to get on with it, i take the dogs out for a walk and try to move and prepare for the next game. I have a debrief with my psychologist…” PSYCHOLOGIST… now that is where the similarities end.
Coaches of youth teams don’t have psychologists to hand when they lose a game and neither does the under 12 goalkeeper. The goalkeeper will be in the car getting a pasting from dad while your in the bar bemoaning your luck.
But that’s the problem for goalkeepers… their errors are highlighted every time the ball goes in the net, they have nowhere to hide. You cannot let your goalkeeper take the blame or he won’t be your goalkeeper much longer. Protect him and nuture him so that he wants to play in goal no matter what the score is.
At training nights make sure he joins in with all the fun bits – the match, skills, fitness – before you send him into the goal for some goalkeeper practice. It is important for you and the team that he feels part of it all.
You can also get him to be vocal at training to shout at his defenders so in matches you can hear him bossing everyone around.
If you encourage him when he makes a mistake rather than criticise most of the players will pat him on the back and support him… have a go and they will crucify him.
Goalkeepers are vital to your team let’s make sure they don’t go home crying.
Here’s a few goalkeeping errors to show that it happens to even the very best…
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Fitness, Soccer Skills | Tags: coach falls over, injured player, soccer first aid, soccer slip up
It is important you have someone you can call on if one of your players gets injured. There are lots of courses you can send someone on or go yourself. Usually in soccer it’s only minor injuries but I have seen broken wrists and bad cuts from badly looked after cleats.
If you do have to run on yourself to tend to one of your players try not to do it like this poor chap:
Filed under: Dwyer Scullion, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Uncategorized | Tags: Arsenal, Cardiff City, Chelsea, Dave Jones, FA Cup Final, Harry Redknapp, Liverpool, Manchester United, Newcastle United, Portsmouth, Wembley
I love the FA Cup Final. For me it is, and always will be, the most enjoyable day in the English soccer calendar. I fell in love with the game on Cup Final day in 1974 when Liverpool beat Newcastle United 3-0 at the old Wembley. I remember watching it on TV with my father and his friends. It was the first game I had watched all the way through as there was very little live soccer on TV in those days. 
On Friday night I heard a radio pundit bemoan the lack of interest in the Cup Final. There’s little doubt that it no longer grips the nation in the way that it once did. In the old days it seemed as if the country came to a standstill on Cup Final day and everybody – men, women and children – set aside the day to watch it together.
It’s different now. There is so much live soccer on TV these days that it’s just less of a special event. Unless of course you are a Portsmouth or Cardiff City supporter. And for me, that is the true magic of the Cup.
I’m absolutely delighted that none of the Big 4 teams were involved. Manchester United and Chelsea would probably have cancelled each other out and the game would have dragged on for ages. What we got instead was a free-flowing, open and unpredictable game. I don’t care if the Big 4 don’t take it as seriously as they used to. There are over 100 other clubs who do and the FA Cup is as much about them as it is Arsenal and Liverpool. There wasn’t a lot of “beautiful” play but there was no lack of passion and commitment.
And what of the coaches? What do they bring to the party? Never having been in a competition final I can only guess. But I suspect you don’t need to do much in the way of motivating your players. What greater motivation is there than playing in the FA Cup Final at Wembley. Tactically, I guess Dave Jones, the Cardiff City manager, will have identified certain players and aspects of the Portsmouth play that he would look to have neutralised. Harry Redknapp, on the other hand, would probably have told his players just to play their own game.
The other major telling factor in these games is fitness. Cup Finals are notoriously hard work for players. I guess that’s a combination of the intensity of the situation, the determination to fight for every ball from kick-off, the size and nature of the Wembley playing surface, and the level of professionalism of the players. I’ve seen every Cup Final since the age of 8 and what they all have in common is that one team will run out of energy towards the end of the game. If they’re trailing, they just can’t seem to get back into it (as was the case with Cardiff). If they’re winning, they run out of steam trying to protect their lead (West Ham United two seasons ago).
So that’s it for another season. I’m looking forward to the next Cup campaign already. Round 3 in January is where the fun really starts. Let’s see if Havant and Waterlooville can get drawn against Liverpool again and finish the job off this time.
Dwyer Scullion, Publisher, Better Soccer Coaching
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
Filed under: Dwyer Scullion, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: better soccer coaching, Brazilian coaches, Football, Japan soccer club, Soccer Skills, soccer team, The Observer, Zico
I read a fascinating interview with the great Zico in The Observer (English national newspaper) this weekend.
As a boy growing up and becoming interested in soccer, Zico was one of my favourite players. A truly dynamic, impossibly skilful, imaginative forward, it transpires that Zico is an equally inspiring coach.
After spells coaching a Japan club side and then the Japan national team, Zico became coach of Turkish side Fenerbahce in 2006. Fenerbahce’s ambitious desire to become one of the top clubs in Europe doesn’t seem so far-fetched when you consider that they are in the Champions League quarter-final, going into a second leg against Chelsea already leading 2-1.
His coaching philosophy is straightforward and consists of two central principles:
1. Dialogue
2. Teaching through repetition
And unsurprisingly, he does not compromise on how he thinks the game should be played:
“There are too many defensive teams around, with players passing the ball sideways instead of going for it. I like my players to have fun and attack”
For Zico, dialogue means talking with his players rather simply than issuing instructions. He is not concerned with straitjacketing his players or imposing strict roles. Instead, he prefers to give them freedom to make their own choices and decisions. He uses dialogue to show his players their potential then gives them the freedom to go out and reach that potential for the team.
Simple training is the second central principle that Zico applies with his players. Most Brazilian coaches, and indeed most of the top coaches in world club soccer focus their attention on tactics. Zico, however, prefers to emphasize the basics:
“For me, playing football is a mechanical thing, like cleaning your teeth. You need to learn the movements and have them in your head: controlling, passing, shooting, heading, crossing… it is all about training.”
This may seem like a simplistic approach to the game at such a high level, but you can’t argue with his results.
It strikes me that Zico’s coaching philosophy is very similar to what I should be doing as a youth soccer coach. In the past I’ve struggled to make the connection between what, say, Manchester United do, and what we have to do in our own little grassroots universe.
Zico’s approach has made that connection for me and I can see that if I follow that path – dialogue combined with coaching simple core skills – our players and our team will improve and everyone, including our spectators, will have more fun.
Dwyer Scullion, publisher, Better Soccer Coaching
