Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Refereeing, Uncategorized | Tags: aggressive coaches, coach hits ref, coach punches referee, respect the referee
I’ve just been to a tournament today and seen all sorts of behaviour. Last week I was pleasantly surprised by how competitive but happy the tournament was. This week I was brought back down to earth by the behaviour of some of the coaches towards the referees.
It’s easy to criticize them – I was left dumbfounded over the match we played where the tournament organizers were playing against us and they hit a shot that hit the post and went past the goal but the referee said it had gone through the net. We bit our tongues.
Referees are human – they get it wrong sometimes and you have to accept it but today there were three occasions where the manager of the teams playing the tournaments went crazy for something really simple like the referee awarding throw-ins against their teams.
There are some coaches out there who ruin it for the likes of you and I.
Watch this clip of Brazilian coach Pedro Santilli losing his temper and punching the referee. Make sure you don’t resort to this kind of behaviour!
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 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 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 Team Management, Uncategorized | Tags: match day food, healthy food, coaches on match day morning, morning coffee
On match day mornings I get as nervous as the players. I usually grab a coffee and eat a banana – I spend the rest of my time hurrying my boys along making sure they eat properly.
I find your mouth gets dry and you need water to hydrate you, just like the players – plus the fact that the Latte Grande I’ve drunk will not help hydrate me.
Bananas are great especially if you are not feeling hungry due to pre-match nerves. And they are good for energy. I usually put a pack of mars bars in my coaching bag for after the match when hungry boys start rooting around for something to eat.
I’m always hungry after the match especially if the team has played well. I’m hoping to compile a list of the top ten eats on match day morning so can you leave comments on what you eat please.
Here’ a bit of advice for all those playing in tournaments this summer, and advice in general for what players should eat and drink on match days:
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 Team Management, Uncategorized | Tags: Phil Brown, Hull, half time team talk on the pitch, Manchester City 5 Hull 1
I was at an U17s game this weekend and boy the air was blue. Everyone was shouting and it seemed to me no one was having a particularly good time.
At half time the coach I was watching just shouted at his players. I cannot believe anyone benefits from actions like this. Humiliating players in front of their team mates is totally wrong and cannot have the positive effect the team needs.
We all feel like shouting sometimes and we all feel frustrated but we must not pass this onto our players because all it will do is frighten them and leave them feeling bad about themselves – which is against everything we believe in and aim to achieve.
In the English Premier League the Hull manager Phil Brown was someone I had a lot of time for until he kept his players out on the pitch and humiliated them with a half time team talk in front of the crowd.
4-0 down at half time he felt it was a positive thing to take his team in front of their own supporters and give them a dressing down. 4-0 became 5-1 but the rest of the season has been a shambles for Hull – I wonder why.
I can remember being 4-0 down playing away from home. We won 6-5. There was no shouting or humiliating at half time – in fact we all had a smile at the blatant penalty we were not given. We felt good about each other and the slope of the pitch and the wind was in our favour in the second half. Be positive not negative when you talk to your players.
Here’s a clip of Phil with his team just click the link below and watch him go.
Phil Brown Half-time Team Talk on the Pitch
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 Coaching, Soccer Skills, Soccer Training, Uncategorized | Tags: Cristiano Ronaldo, AC Milan, Inter Milan, shooting practice, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, dummy and shoot, how to dummy, how to shoot
There are some fantastic attacking players around these days. They can make even the best defenders go the wrong way with a dummy move that gives them space to get off a shot at goal.
Watch Cristiano Ronaldo and he is always selling dummies and finding space where he shouldn’t. I watched Zlatan Ibrahimovic playing for Inter Milan a couple of weeks ago against AC Milan. He was moving and changing direction to put off the defenders.
So how do you go about coaching young players to grow into the boots of these players? It’s all about practice and allowing them to look clumsy as they do it. It isn’t easy because young players can find it difficult to do these sorts of skills, so you have to try, try and try again.
I like this clip of an Australian coach showing his players how to dummy and shoot. It gives you a clue as to how you should be doing it and what to expect.
