Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer News, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: ball control, coaching skills, roy keane, shielding the ball, Soccer Skills
Showing your players how to do techniques is a lot easier for them to understand than if you tell them how to do it. Often coaches will tell players what to do then get hot and bothered when the players are not doing it right.
When it comes to shielding the ball it is far easier for you to show the position of a player’s feet and body rather than spending a lot of time explaining what the players must do.
By way of example, watch this clip of Roy Keane showing young players how to shield the ball. Obviously it helps if you’ve played the game, but you can always get out into the garden after work and try it yourself before you do it in front of the players.
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, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: Manchester United, skills, Leeds United, eric cantona, coaching clever players, coaching technique
Young players are always making decisions on the pitch, some simple like putting one foot in front of the other to move. Some are instinctive yet they have been practiced many times. As a coach I am constantly coaching my players to run, pass, receive and move, simple things yet I am always seeking to get them to run faster, pass better, receive better and make better movement.
The same can be said if you are lucky enough to be coaching those innovative and creative players who stand out on the pitch.
I was reminded of this by the release of the film Looking for Eric, about one of the greatest mavericks of them all. Yet the thing about Eric Cantona was that he brought a new era of training to the English game. He used to practice all those touches and moments of brilliance. Every night he would go out onto the training pitch just like he did when he was a young player and went into his back garden, and throw the ball up a 100 times and trap it with left foot then right foot until he could control the ball first time, every time.
One of the skills of a coach is to get the best of their players by coaching the right techniques. Then advance their knowledge by helping them to make the right decisions in the time they have in situations on the pitch. You will have some players who have the ability to see all of their options and chose the right one in a very short space of time.
A good way to coach this is to set up drills where there is more than one right option. You can walk playes through exercises and techniques and increase the pressure slowly so they can get used to the techniques and skills you are coaching and use them in matches.
While I was looking at clips of Eric Cantona to show his technique I came across this old Nike video where Cantona, Ian Wright, Maldini, Del Piero, the old Ronaldo, take on the devil’s team and Cantona dispatches the ball into the net with an “Au revoir”. It is one of my favourite Nike ads so I thought I would share it with you.
I have also put up a couple of clips of Cantona in action showing superb technique in scoring a goal.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: scare the opposition, simple warm-ups, warm-ups for young players
Simple warm ups for very young players need to be just that – simple.
You need to get your players concentrating on the actual matter in hand – soccer.
Sometimes you turn up to a match late and you just need to get a bit of organization going.
Simple can often be best especially with young players. But you could also try something different to impress the opposition. The first clip here shows you the simple way to warm up, the second clip is an impressive show of team solidarity and if you can get your players into the rhythm it will look great!
I haven’t tried the clapping warm up yet because I bet it takes some doing. I’m going to try it because I think it is a great way to warm up and get team spirit going. If anyone else does it please let me know how successful you were.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: Michael Owen, messi, zola, peter crouch, small players, tall players, young in their year players, ronaldinho aged 10, messi aged 5
Watching a young player running rings around bigger boys of the same age I began to wonder if players like Messi, Zola and Michael Owen were brilliant at what they did because they had to try so much harder.
Let me explain.
When I was coaching an all conquering under 9s team one of my best players was a big lad, with a big shot on him. He could tackle and win the ball and looked something special.
When he grew older he found that as the other players caught him up in size he began to lose his ability to win the ball and shoot better than every body else. And because he never had to try hard to be more skilful than everybody else he never developed as a player.
So when he got to the older age groups he became less and less effective and more and more frustrated until one day he gave it all up.-
So back to my question. If you’re a small younger player in your age group it makes sense that you have to be more skilful to make up for your size. In this way you develop as a player quicker – you’ll just never make it as a centreback or a goalkeeper.
Perhaps that is why Peter Crouch will never jump to head the ball because he never had to when he was younger.
Look at messi aged 5 in a video from 1993 the smallest person on the pitch running the game! And one of a young Ronaldinho showing the same skills as an old Ronaldinho.
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Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: Ronaldo, ball control, Kaka, keepy uppies, simple juggling, messi, billy wingrove, freestyle soccer
Getting young players to juggle with the ball is a great way of getting them used to just kicking and controlling the ball and gives them a headstart when they practice drills and exercise that involve ball control.
Showing them a simple way to juggle and how they start off doing it will help them to develop as players. When they watch players like Ronaldo, Messi and Kaka tell them they started off by juggling the ball on their own, and if they want to be players like them they must do it also.
This video shows a simple way to get your players to start juggling the ball. And once you get them going they could end up like Billy Wingrove in the video below.
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: bahrain goalkeeper, best saves, crazy coach, Goalkeeper training
Okay I’ve seen some training sessions in my time but the coach of the Bahrain national team has got one of the craziest.
Shot saving is of course important and you need a good goalkeeper with excellent reflexes at all levels of the game. Coaching reflex saves often involves the goalkeeper moving in a coned of area around 8 yards square with four players trying to get the ball to each other through the cones. I’ve covered reflex saves a lot in my publication Soccer Coach Weekly.
But the Bahrain coach has his own ideas. It involves using his glossy high performance jet black range rover with security windows, a line of players ready to shoot at it and a goalkeeper who must not let the ball hit the car.
Nice idea and it seems to work – although I won’t be parking my 1972 Alfa Romeo Bertone Coupe on the pitch and letting my boys shoot at it any time soon.
Watch it for yourselves…
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 Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: david James, England, Frederico Macheda, Lazio, Manchester Utd, Tom Whalley
How are England going to create players of the future if the future players are churned out like one big supermarket churns out ready meals?
And that’s not my opinion but the opinion of ex-Watford youth team coach Tom Whalley He reckons young players are not given enough time to enjoy the game, and they are not looked after in a way he thinks is important. In the words of David James the England goalkeeper “Football shouldn’t feel like a job to 8-year-olds.
These are the facts – some of the teams in the Premiership have up to 250 8-year-olds on their books. That is astonishing. How on earth do they keep up with 250 players. And these are just ones from England. When they get older they then have to compete with the players that are bought in from abroad. Players like Frederico Macheda, who came over from the Lazio youth system. He has got ahead of the young strikers who have been at Manchester Utd since they were eight.
And what happens to all these bright young players? Of the 250 eight-year-olds that start out how many get left on the way?
I lost a player once who went to an academy and a year later came back, the shadow of the player he had been, low on confidence and low spirited. He hadn’t made it.
Liverpool have 62 first team players – I was worried when I upped my squad to 17 last season, how would they all get a game!
The numbers that now go through the system in England is huge – I just hope these players are enjoying playing football as much as I did when I was 8.
I saw this video and thought it set out well the goals a coach like you and I should be looking for…
