I was told from RCa to post this in the Coaching forum so the link is below. My thoughts on Coerver Coaching. As I began discussing in the forum in the Players section, Coerver is not the end. It is a means to an end. We all know the players with good feet who make little impact on the game. http://www.empoweredathletes.com/coerver-coaching-is-it-worth-it/
The "dance moves" just scratch the surface. There are a ton of passing drills that teach passing and receiving, passing and movement, finishing etc—basically any thing you do on the pitch. But "Coerver" doesn't teach these skills the coach does. There are many details that the videos don't teach that a coach must acquire elsewhere and HOW all the drills fit into creating a cohesive and successful (read: improves players) training session. Take a move like the scissors. -you gotta ease off the gas a bit as you approach the defender -"scissoring" foot should brush the tops of the grass -at one point both feet will be off the ground -take the cut wide (wider than feels normal) -accelerate after you make the cut -shut the door on the defender as you speed away Plus all moves are multi-step actions, so the coach knows the steps to each. For example, the Maradona: 1. Step on 2. Switch feet on the ball 3. Pull back Finally, as you point out: it's about impact on the game, influence on the game. I've had a few of those players who were great individual players with no positive impact on the game. So, again, if the player doesn't solve it on his own then the coach has to bridge him from fancy moves to how he can make a difference in the game.
Three "big" dribbling plays I recall making in matches were all done with simple moves: an inside cut, a change of speed (acceleration), and 2 180 turns back to back. The first two I sold with fakes pulling the defender the wrong way. I was 10 yards gone before they turned around. The last one I beat 3 defenders thinking they had me boxed. All three moves got me space to make a final pass into the attacking third. Playing wing, I used mostly inside and outside cuts to run around players or cut inside. Once in a while a 270 turn to cut inside into space. But in competitive soccer, I was hurting because I didn't have more moves besides a stepover. Coaches wisely kept me in wide positions where I could run at people and put the better dribblers inside. This illustrates two points. 1) Tactics: how a player uses his skills makes him effective. 2) Having some skill is good, but more skill is better.
As in the other thread, where I'm absolutely raving about a book on deliberate practice model. The authors talk about rote practice (similar to the ball mastery and some drills associated with Coerver). In the US we see rote practice of anything as creativity killers, what the authors found is that rote practice is the gateway to creativity. Mastering a skill through rote means embeds it into your brain, you don't have to think about it much like how you turn a door knob or shift from the gas pedal to the brake pedal when driving. Putting skills on autopilot frees up your brain to do higher level thinking and more creative thinking.
That must be a generation thing. My generation was more familiar with music. Playing drums, I learned a lot about practice methods, discipline and working with others. Practicing rudiments (equilent to scales) gave me the tools. Most popular music doesn't have drum parts. Just a tempo and a 1-2 word description of the style. Drummers make up their parts. That model is how I think about soccer. Technical training followed by games. You have to provide players both experiences. Most musicians love to jam.
could be but I think I was in the last group of that previous generation—we actually played football in the streets kinda thing. I like the music analogy but it's also prevalent in the visual arts. Photographers back in the day had to learn the technical aspects of film development, aperture/shutter speed, printing. All very technical and procedural actions but you could never show your full potential as an image maker without mastering those. Same is true with painting and drawing and sculpture.
We have leagues where kids from other teams/clubs can come in and get trained by our coaches. Some are just playing with us but some are from other clubs and are here getting extra work. I had a kid the other day try to make fun of me for not knowing a "coerver" name for something. He then started bragging about how his club was doing it. Kid can't do scissors on the run but he's damn good at doing it stationary*. So yeah, I guess it's a start to something but from my experience it's a waste of time. There are better ways to come to the same end. Just my opinion though. *mind you, in our game last weekend he asked why he needs to do a skill (a requirement for our club) to beat a defender when he could just run past him. So take the kid's ability with a grain of salt.
Ah yes, the one kid anecdotal sample. I have a kid who can do 40 some moves and keeps getting call backs to U.S. national camps and college coaches are already sending letters and has tryouts with EPL clubs this past summer.
I cannot follow your pronoun usage. What is a waste of time? Practicing skills? I don't understand why you commented about the kid's dribbling skills. Obviously if he had not trained previously, he would not have been able to do stationary scissors. While I am not a Coerver coach, I start off with stationary skills and then over time add more challenges, such as movement and pressure. Just like any training exercise. And the progression doesn't stop with a simple 1v1. (I believe that forwards should be able to beat 2 defenders regularly on the dribble.) Surely you are not proposing that training start off by doing moves at full speed under pressure? Also I am curious. Do you require your players, who are dribbling for penetration, to dribble directly at a defender? IMO that is a valid tactic to force a defender to commit when trying to create more space for a pass to a team mate. But my personal experience is that in dribbling for penetration it is best to approach obliquely to force the defender to move, so that then you can wrong foot him with a cut. (If the defender doesn't commit, then you should just run by him.) If you approach directly, the defender can stay balanced on both feet, making it much harder to beat him. Also you cannot just simply dribble over the top of the defender, so that means that you must change direction once or more in order to penetrate--which is tactically slower and easier to defend. I consider the angle of approach to be part of technique, just like acceleration after the move and "closing the door." While I have imposed a lot of restrictions during training, I do not impose restrictions that require bad technique.
Put it this way, the Coerver method doesn't hurt. If used the right way, it can be extremely beneficial and is all about the technical aspect of the game. It's all about the amount of touches that they're getting and by showing them some moves, it does enhance there arsenal of attacking moves they can make but most importantly also gives them confidence in the game. Like every coaching method, there's positives and negatives and you'll take bits and pieces from each method to form a full practice schedule for the season. In my experiences, it's most beneficial in the U8-11 ages because you'll have that high technicality at the U12 level and start to focus on your weaknesses of the game (learning tactics, awareness, growing into your body) where 90% of other players are still working on the technical stuff which is probably the hardest to improve on the older you get.
Yes. Is it useful or worth it? Kind of. If you attended a seminar on karate for a weekend would you know how to take a "fighter" to a black belt level? It's part of a body of knowledge that you'd have as a coach not all of it. Say, a coach bought the video and tries to implement it with his team but doesn't see much effect. You could go to the diploma and ask questions and see the stuff in person. Would you be better at improving your players? I'd hazard, marginally better (but honestly not much). I've taken USSF and did it their way and wasn't producing the players I wanted. I looked around and saw in my area that the players I liked were all coming from a Coerver club. They were good 1v1 players that were rarely dispossesed and could use their skills to be able to look up and make passes. Is that limited to Coerver clubs? No way, but IMO, in other clubs that type of ability is limited to the top one or two players per team. If you have a weekend, want to play soccer and learn about another teaching method and have a few hundred bucks to spend? Go for it. Is it life changing? Hardly. I find now that courses, if you're doing a lot of self study, you're not going to find a lot of new things. BUT I go for the "nuggets" and the "gems" of information that you pick up. But like in any endeavor, the first 90% of knowledge acquisition is relatively cheap. The last ten percent starts to get pricey.
there's a youth diploma course fairly close to me this summer. i think i'll sign up and go. it looks like the price of the course includes all the videos and books and, of course, a fancy tshirt so the course itself isn't too expensive if you were going to buy the videos anyway.
Good stuff. Make sure you get a shirt size one or two sizes big because I ordered medium (which I normally wear) but these are the super snug shirts. Unless you have sub 5% body fat.
How is there a pronoun issue? If you read it in context it makes sense. Thank you for putting words into my mouth too. I've said nothing about how we train other than I find the money spent on Coever stuff to be a waste, but again, I DID state it to be my opinion. I'm just saying it's not an end-all-be-all and it's way too much money and time when it all can be done better and cheaper. And no, that was not a "one kid anecdote" as it's actually the norm from what I've seen at that club (and was supposed to be funny based upon his comment but I guess that didn't come across in text). Then again, around these parts almost all clubs are the kick-and-hope variety for all ages so I guess any bit of ballwork is a plus in the grand scheme of things. Now if only I could stop hearing coaches yell at their kids for trying a skill and losing the ball...
I still don't know what you mean by "Coerver stuff." Coaching education materials? I have copies of the original Wiel Coerver tapes, which for a coach I think are well worth the money and time spent watching. I also have the SoccerU DVDs which build on Wiel Coerver's coaching method. They are excellent too. I haven't taken one of the Coerver classes, although I have considered it. They do cost time and money, but so do NSCAA and USSF coaching courses. Or player training? I have recommended many times Dennis Mueller's Daily Footwork Drill (a/k/a 1000 touches), which builds on Wiel Coerver's method. It is a free download on the internet and costs players only 20 minutes of their time, daily. Used in conjunction with pickup and organized play, I cannot think of a more effective use of 20 minutes. If you are talking about player training sessions run by coaches using the Coerver method, then your criticism should be directed at the coach doing the training, not at the Coerver method. I will point out that without daily practice, paying for the Coerver lessons IS a waste of time. Just like piano lessons. Paying the piano teacher to teach your kid to play the piano is a waste of money and time if the kid is not going to practice the lessons. You shouldn't blame the coach or the piano teacher for the failure to improve if the child is not practicing. If you are condemning the techncial training sessions because they do not cover the tactical aspect, you could also condemn SAQ training sessions for the same reason. Tactics should be trained too, but there is no efficiency gained making every session about tactics. Conventional thinking starts out a team training session with pure technical training while players are fresh, followed by mixed technical and tactical training. (I think of the mixed training as "applied" technical training.) And I see nothing wrong with clubs holding separate technical training sessions to expose more players to the club's best skills trainers. It is a good strategy.
I'm not sure where this "too much money" bit is coming from. The DVDs, which I agree are of questionable value if the coach doesn't know how to use it—it's akin to being shown different ingredients but not being shown how to bake a cake. But the DVDs are the same price as any other soccer DVDs. The courses are expensive IMO but less expensive than some USSF courses. Club-wise, we are less expensive than neighboring clubs. "Better" is a value judgment, but I believe we develop better players top to bottom with Coerver than our competitors. Just because a team or coach is affiliated with a Coerver club a) does not mean that particular coach uses the methodology, b) knows how to use it effectively. Put the same yeast, water, flour in front of a novice and a master baker and you'll get vastly different results.
Pretty sure I wasn't discussing tactics but ok. USSF and NSCAA courses cost a fair share of money, we do agree on that. Neither though really address the area of technical ability and thus, where I said these Coever courses cost more money than needed. You're really reading too much into what I said. Our club doesn't use Coever, USSF, or NSCAA material nor do we really do the 1000 touches (which I agree I do like aspects of it and until I moved over here, I really liked) or SAQs yet we still produce some of the most technically gifted players in the area. That's all I'm saying. I just don't feel the need to spend extra money when there really isn't a need to. We do it all in-house with our own curriculum that we don't charge anyone inside or outside of the organization to use. We have our material online and ready to go. Why? It's not about the money, but the kids. But that's another topic. Just wanted to give my 2 cents on why I felt that was overrated. Didn't say anyone had to agree with me.
Thanks for the explanation. Not everyone has the ability or time to develop their own training materials independently, which is why some of the clubs will help pay for the courses taken by their coaches. Your club has an ideal situation for the coaches.
Not gonna lie, we really do. Not sure why more clubs don't come up with at least their own guidelines. Isn't that what makes each club unique? Or should be?
This is just me talking, but I have read coaching books widely since the 1970s and played adult rec with and against players from all over the world. I think most organizations do develop their own philosophy, a/k/a mission statement. But for teaching fundamentals, I don't think much has changed since the 1970s. While vocabulary varies widely, I see essentially the same approach common to everyone, which was influenced by the Dutch and Brazilian schools of thought given importance worldwide after the international successes of those countries in the 1950s to 1970s. From the Dutch we get an emphasis on generating a large number of touches and including decision making in drills. From the Brazilians we get an emphasis on small sided games (futsal). The essence of the Coerver method is to teach sport specific movements by breaking them down into component pieces. While this was a ground breaking approach to soccer technical training, it was not a new coaching method. Vince Lombardi championed this approach to teaching movements in pointy football. I think it has also been used in other sports previously. For instance this is how dancers learn routines. When I was in a h.s. marching band in the 1960s, we learned our field programs in component parts. I do see differences in tactics. The most glaring difference I see is US clubs and coaches ignoring the Brazilian (I used to call it latin style) emphasis on diagonal passing. I think this is an example of what happens when coaches and clubs "reinvent the wheel." The hope is to invent a better wheel, but the danger is that the wheel will not be as good as it could be if the clubs and coaches had built their program by "standing on the shoulders" of their predecessors. I am referring to the Dutch and Brazilians for historical perspective, but their ideas became so widespread by a generation ago, that they have lost their national identity. Good coaching knows no political boundaries any more.
Our area is all kick and run. It's about the pass and really nothing more. I guess that's our identity.