Coaching Corner

[Cesar Rodriguez]

Coaching Corner

End of season team dinner tonight, its at times like this when you realize how great this game is and how lucky you are to be part of it. The team mom handed out 8x10s to the all the players and what a great group of kids I was fortunate to coach this season, here is a snap of me giving a team talk:

Love this game!

[Cesar Rodriguez]

Coaching Corner

.

[The Red Max]

Coaching Corner

Allen Iverson wrote:

They look a good bunch of kids, focussed on your every word. I remember those days fondly.

Would you be interested to swap them for a squad of 16 / 17 year old Scots, most of whom are now as tall if not taller than me (I'm 5'11") who give the general impression that one of these days they're going to drag me into the car park and give me a good kicking?

No, I thought not.

[Bored Of Education]

Coaching Corner

Ah, you've reminded me, Allan.

The last post-match team talk I gave the team. See those one listening enraptured? See the number 7 ifnoring me completely and paying attention to something/one behind me? That's my son.

[Cesar Rodriguez]

Coaching Corner

Great snap Bored.

So, to revisit this thread........I coached a middle school this past season and both teams (boys and the girls who I would up coaching as well) won league with 13-1-1 and 15-0 records respectively. We went to the postseason and the girls went undefeated to win the city title and post a 19-0 record on the season. That was the first city title the girls had won in 17 years.

^ Yours truly and some players chillaxing on the bench.

The boys won their first three games in the playoff round robin and got to the final but we laid an egg and were beaten on the day by the better team. Albeit one who we had beaten 6-1 and 3-2 in our two previous meetings this season.

On the strength of all this I just (just as in yesterday) landed my first high school coaching job. I'm taking over a moribund program who haven't had a winning season since 2009 and who were 2-16 last season. The task of rebuilding a team from scratch is a challenge that I am looking forward to. My goal is to turn the school into a magnet for talented soccer players in the Eastern side of town and be regularly competing for league titles within 3 seasons.

[Max Payne]

Coaching Corner

Bored of Education wrote:
However, quite a few that said they were going to sign on for this season turned around and said that their sons didn't want to play. That left me with 11 players registered, only 9 of which I could really rely upon for matches. I spent a fortnight advertising for players and trying to get players on loan to no avail.

Oh man. I'm crap at football but would loved to have played more but nobody ever wants "Just anyone" or this or that team needs you to be some sort of semi-pro. When I read about teams that can't even rustle up the players I think it's a shame. I can't get a game at all in Australia. I am crap in pretty much every department except passing the ball to better players than me, mind.

[Bored Of Education]

Coaching Corner

I was like that but the older I get, the more opportunities I get to play. Maybe it is because all the Saturday and Sunday league players have got injured so, if you are still playing at over 35+, there are less players to compete with.

[Bored Of Education]

Coaching Corner

This is exceptionally good news - girls and boys to play in mixed-gender teams until 16. I had actually missed the move up to 15.

[treibeis]

Coaching Corner

Max Payne wrote: I can't get a game at all in Australia.

I don’t know what the set-up is in Melbourne regarding public spaces and suchlike, but aren’t there kickabout games in the park where you can just join in regardless, provided that you ask politely?

[imp]

Anyone still coaching? This thread died once BoE quit the touchlines and TG tired of mithering us obvious amateurs.

I 'retired' just over two years ago at the start of the pandemic, claiming burnout from running two teams. As frau imp predicted, my retirement didn't last. In late August, a parent from the girls' team I'd founded at my club in Frankfurt called to tell me that the coach who took over from me had quit on the eve of the new season - against an agreement reached among the team at the end of the previous season, he'd entered the team (now U14) into the state league - 11 v 11 on a full pitch, way above their level, and neither the players nor parents wanted the long away trips for an inevitable 15-0 hiding. When they protested, he stepped down. Did I know anyone who might be able to run the team?

I renewed my Uefa C licence last year, no doubt harbouring a hunch that there'd be a chance to come back at some point. Luckily, I love this team, even though we lost our best player, and two or three others. We managed to get put back into a local league at the last minute, which means playing either 7 v 7 (half-field) or 9 v 9 (penalty area to penalty area), depending on the opposition. On the down side, although some players have grown and developed in the past two years, several are still lacking basic technique. Also, the group has mushroomed to over 20 players - while it's great to see the local enthusiasm for the game (in the meantime, the club's now running four girls' teams), training is tough with such large numbers and such a disparity in ability. After a month, I'm shaping up to cut a handful of stragglers, even though I hate to cut anyone at all. But I'm trying to balance the feel of us being a community club against the medium term needs of the team.

The old coach used to make them run laps at the start of training, for 15 minutes. They were surprised and delighted that this would no longer be the case. I've been focused on small-sided games with as many touches as possible, included limited-touch games to instil the concept of pass-and-move. Most of them pass, but won't move. One legacy of the previous trainer was that we were obliged to play Eintracht Frankfurt's U15 team in the first round of the city cup last week (I'd never have entered us for this competition), which gave us ample examples of pass and move, playing 9 v 9 for the first time. I'd thought of withdrawing from the game, but the 6-0 defeat was a real boon - plenty to learn from, but they also defended like tigers and it did tons for team spirit, despite us creating one lone chance the entire game. They're at least not shy of going in for the tackle.

Anyone know a site for good training plans for this sort of level that's not stuck behind a subscription paywall? I'm basically looking for multiple variations on team passing exercises that will improve technique, speed of thought/movement and teamwork all at the same time. I'm a stickler for playing the ball out of the back and avoiding long balls, even though that cost us two goals against Eintracht. But it's hard giving them the confidence to play the ball out of the back and make them understand that it doesn't matter if they fuck up.

[Simon G]

I'm coaching my son's under 12s team and am in my 3rd season coaching them.

When we started we really struggled, losing all but about 3 games, and drawing one of those, but we could see the improvement in them. Last year we won nearly as many as we lost, but as always the focus is still on their improvement and, in my view, that they're continuing to enjoy it.

This season we seem to have stepped up a level. Including pre-season we've won 4, drawn 1 and lost 1. The game we lost we were, by far, the better team but it resulted in our team being more determined in training, which I love.

I do tend to write up about our games on the weekly matchgoing threads.

Regarding training, we tend to give them a fun warm-up game for 10 mins, then the other coach and I will split the team into two and each do a drill - though sometimes we may need a big squad drill so work together - we then usually finish with a game to try and implement what we've been working on.

I find Facebook is usually good for some training plans. I liked the Grassroots Football page, and it has an offshoot page which has drills and plans on it:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/588616707977775

[imp]

Thanks Simon, though I renounced Facebook after the Cambridge Analytica scandal, and unlike my coaching/playing career, it's an area where my resolve won't weaken.

Keep making it fun, otherwise there's just no point. It's a fine balance between enough repetition for the players to pick up the skills, but not too much to make them bored. I remember at school we used to do nothing but 'two-touch possession football in the squares' and we hated it because it was all we ever did, week after week with no variation, and all we wanted to do was play a game.

This is a quick summary of Rondo variations, and an elevated version of what we've been working on.

[JVL]

I’ve got involved in coaching with Mahone Bay Utd over the last couple of years, having started off playing 5-a-side with a few friends there and helping to organise practices for some kids. Over the last couple of years, that small group has jumped in size to 200+ spread across all ages from 4-14.

We just started our winter indoor sessions last weekend, and I am coaching one of the three U11 groups. As imp mentioned above, trying to encompass the range of ages and skills can be a bit of a challenge but we don’t yet have any competitive teams so that’s not such an issue and we can be pretty flexible in accommodating the various levels in the groups.

There are other clubs within the Soccer Nova Scotia structures in this region that offer competitive football against teams from Halifax and other regions. My son and a few of the other boys play in that as well as the MBU teams, the difference being that the official pathway charges $400 to participate, while we make our programming free of charge and available to as many people as we can reasonably accommodate.

As of this year, more of us are getting official Canada Soccer training and working towards accreditation, as well as using the Canada Soccer training session plans so that we all work from the same templates (last year was our first with over 100 kids and we quickly realised that we were all using different sources and wasting a lot of time and effort re-inventing the wheel and coming up with plans each week), but those are not freely available online.

I’ve found some useful ideas in the DFB training plans online, and Ontario Soccer post a lot of training sessions and templates for the U4-U12 age groups:
https://www.ontariosoccer.net/grassroots-practices

[DPDPDPDP]

I don’t coach any more but have many very fond memories of coaching both my boys at under 7, 9 and 11 a good few years ago. Most of the kids were great; so enthusiastic and keen; regardless of their ability.

[Simon G]

I’ve got involved in coaching with Mahone Bay Utd over the last couple of years, having started off playing 5-a-side with a few friends there and helping to organise practices for some kids. Over the last couple of years, that small group has jumped in size to 200+ spread across all ages from 4-14.

We just started our winter indoor sessions last weekend, and I am coaching one of the three U11 groups. As imp mentioned above, trying to encompass the range of ages and skills can be a bit of a challenge but we don’t yet have any competitive teams so that’s not such an issue and we can be pretty flexible in accommodating the various levels in the groups.

There are other clubs within the Soccer Nova Scotia structures in this region that offer competitive football against teams from Halifax and other regions. My son and a few of the other boys play in that as well as the MBU teams, the difference being that the official pathway charges $400 to participate, while we make our programming free of charge and available to as many people as we can reasonably accommodate.

As of this year, more of us are getting official Canada Soccer training and working towards accreditation, as well as using the Canada Soccer training session plans so that we all work from the same templates (last year was our first with over 100 kids and we quickly realised that we were all using different sources and wasting a lot of time and effort re-inventing the wheel and coming up with plans each week), but those are not freely available online.

I’ve found some useful ideas in the DFB training plans online, and Ontario Soccer post a lot of training sessions and templates for the U4-U12 age groups:
https://www.ontariosoccer.net/grassroots-practices

Thanks for these JVL - I'll definitely be using some of the resource.

[JVL]

Enjoyed a real highlight of my coaching 'career' (for want of a better word) yesterday - as part of what we hope will be a long partnership with HFX Wanderers, we were lucky enough to have two first-team players and two members of the club's coaching team come to Mahone Bay to host a session for our spring soccer group.

It was a brilliant experience for the 40 kids involved: the excitement had been building for a while and they were not disappointed. The Wanderers team had set up their session to fit in with what we've been doing over the past six weeks and enjoyed passing on their knowledge for 90 minutes before signing shirts, footballs and anything else that the kids had to hand - plus, all of us MBU coaches were able to watch and get plenty of ideas for our training sessions to come.