Sometimes your players just don’t get the session… well it happens to all of us so don’t think you’re the only coach who has a headache from players not understanding what you mean!

Reinforcing your key coaching points helps players to understand and remember your message.

2. SET OUT GOALS

Make sure you are clear what your coaching goals are for the session. If necessary write them down. Many top level coaches carry notes in their pockets to refer to during sessions.

3. A FEW COACHING POINTS

Limit yourself to three or four main coaching points in a session, and less if you are introducing a new skill or technique. Any more than this and your players won’t take the information in.

4. START WITH THE KEY POINTS

Introduce the coaching points at the start so players know what they are going to be doing. The most effective way to do this is through a practical demonstration either by yourself or using some of the players.

5. REPEAT THE KEY POINTS

Keep repeating the points during the activity. Be positive, highlight good examples to the whole group and give individual assistance to any players who are struggling.

6. A PROPER CONCLUSION

Sum up at the end. Go over the key points again, answer any questions and check the players have understood them.

7. USE FEEDBACK

Use questions throughout to check that players have understood you clearly. It often helps players to have the coaching points put into different terms by their peers and using slightly different language.

8. BUILD INTO THE NEXT SESSION

Revise previous points at the start of the next session. Check the players have remembered what you coached and start with an exercise where they are putting them into practice.

Often it is the simple ideas you see players doing that work the best when I get back to my club and try them out with my team.

One of the hardest ones is working with my goalkeeper pre-match or warming them up in training. There are a great variety of ways to get goalkeepers to dive and to catch and generally get in the right frame of mind for the game ahead.

One of the best goalkeeping exercises I like to use before matches is one that Barcelona use to warm their goalkeeper up.

Click here to go to my blog and watch a video clip of the Barcelona goalkeeper warming up and one of the Chelsea goalkeepers before a match.

Dave Clarke

The top coaches will be on hand to showcase exciting new drills, deliver top coaching tips and make sure that whether you coach an U10’s or adults team, there will be loads of great sessions to motivate and inspire you.

Here’s the type of thing you can expect: Robbie Savage talking about discipline when he was a Manchester Utd youth player:

And this is what happened last year:

Alan Clarke – Leeds Utd and England

Cristiano Ronaldo – Real Madrid and Portugal

Didier Drogba – Chelsea and Ivory Coast

Miroslav Klose – Bayern Munich and Germany

Dave Clarke

They are all aimed at getting the ball into a position to score a goal – Barcelona take a lot more passes than Stoke to get the ball up the pitch.

And for all the clever passing that Barcelona can do sometimes getting one of your players to see a long pass will have much more effect than those short passes. If you can pass to a player further up the pitch why not do so? It isn’t a sin to play a long pass it’s just as skilfull and can be far more effective.

So what makes a player choose a pass? Communication from a team mate, space, time, vision and tactics. There is a lot going on in the mind of a young player when they have the ball at their feet.

They have to practice to give them the tools to deal with these situations and that come from you. Give them the tools show them how to use them then watch as they develop through games.

This is a nice easy drill to get them playing long passes.

Move the ball before you kick it

In a soccer match the ball is moving when you receive it, so when you practice your long kicking make sure you move the ball to make your kicking practice more match like.

The technique you need to teach your players for long kicking:

• Push the ball to the side, slightly in front of the body.

• Put the non-kicking foot next to the ball

• Kick through the centre of the ball.

To kick it long along the floor, you don’t need to follow through after striking the ball. Instead, strike it sharply and stop your follow through just after hitting it.

When I think up coaching drills to be published in Better Soccer Coaching I’m constantly making sure they can relate to match days. If you cannot see a benefit during a match from using exercises in training, either in the individual or in the team, then they are not much use.

So here are my top ten things I look for during a match in each individual player:

1. Making forward passes through the opposition defence
2. Taking chances in the attacking third 3. Passing the ball and moving in support
4. Working hard to win the ball back
5. Communication – calling out names; asking for the ball
6. Making runs off the ball
7. Forgetting mistakes and getting on with the game – keeping their heads up
8. Enjoying the game; having fun
9. Playing until the final whistle – winning or losing
10. Knowing their position on the field (especially for defenders) so they can recover quickly if the team lose the ball

Watch a Real Madrid interview with Mourinho below:

At my club we have worked it so that we have three teams in our age groups with one team playing friendlies and the other two teams matches. In this way we can spread players out and make sure everyone is starting matches to give each player a chance of developing during the season.

The problem is however much we try to make sure players are not always made sub there are still some players (and their parents) who do not like being substituted during the game.

This week we were playing on a heavy pitch and I wanted to change players as they got tired. So at half time I explain to one of our more advanced dribblers that I wanted him to sit out for the first five minutes of the second half and to watch how the defenders were sitting deep. I wanted him to work out for himself how he could exploit that situation.

“That’s a strange decision,” I heard his dad say. The player himself responding to his father’s sentiments threw himself to the floor in a big sulk. Not helping the team at all as the other players went over to see what was wrong. Players must realise from an early age that they must learn to accept substitutions with good spirit. So I kept him off for 10 minutes and explained to him and his father that the team is important and each individual player must help their team mates.

Managing substitutes is hard, and managing parents harder, but if you are fair with players over the course of a season then everyone should be more than happy.

If you go to my blog you can see an example of Wayne Rooney being taken off and his reaction to it. You can also see the substition of Luis Figo when he played his last game for Inter Milan.

In the run up to Christmas Benítez was described by Italian newspaper La Stampa as a man, “walking with a pistol at his temple”. I’m glad I don’t work under those conditions!

Everything a professional coach does is linked to a winning team. Lose and you’re out is basically the message for the top coaches around the world. How different then is this message to the one we preach for young teams and their coaches “winning doesn’t matter”. Everything I am focused on is the development of each young individual that comes my way.

And that should be at the heart of everything we do – playing the game the right way, and that goes hand in hand with winning. Jose Mourinho is seen as a winning coach, but his Real Madrid team got played off the pitch by a team that just passed the ball around them – Barcelona.

The message here is: play the right way and you’ll be a winner.

When I watch these professional games there are two things that stand out in winning teams – creative play and finishing moves.In an attacking sense creative play is vital to give attackers goalscoring chances. And finishing into the net makes the move complete.

Watch the two goals scored by Real Madrid in their match against Valencia. Both goals are excellent examples of playing the game the right way. The first one is a wonderful turn and finish and the second a great move and finish.