First time coach: tips/suggestions?

That's easy let the kids that have played in their countries coach the team and run the practices. Have stations in each station do a different skill. Have the kids who have played and are the best in the skills in each station run the station to teach the others in each station. Stations one for dribbling, one for passing, one for shooting, one for pull backs a defender is on them they pull the ball back to keep it away from the defending. That should help.

You have no idea what facing game pressure is about. To really know what it is like you have to play so find some guys in a park and play. Also work on the skills of the game you have to be able to them yourself or you won't be respected by your players.

On the kids who have played. Use them in the middle of the field. One is a center back the guy you see who falls back when the team loses the ball. The most skillful player make him a center mid so he can help on defense and in the attack when the team is attack. If you find you have guys who love to score and can score bigger one is the up top striker, the smaller one players behind him. The two should work together.

New kids when they are on the field put them up top all they will do is not score. That's better them playing in the back and letting in goals.

The guys who are just learning they don't need a lot of skill when they don't have the ball. Try to find a guy who will always be up when the ball is up. He has to do it naturally. Then work with him on putting the ball in when he is near it. He has to get some part of his body on it and then stay with the ball until he puts the ball in goal.

The thing you never want to see is someone from your team with the ball all alone isolated with no help. The more help he has the better chance you have not to lose the ball. You want someone on your team behind the player with the ball to back pass to. You want someone on your team to be close enough to pass to with no one on him. They call that player the second attacker.

When does a team mate run? When the dribbler has the ball. The team mate runs when he sees the dribbler get his head up. Then he can pass before he gets his head up he can't pass. Wait for him to get his head up that means their will be less offside. Plus when the team loses the ball the less their recovery run will be until they can get behind the ball on defense.

Don't expect to much it takes time to build a team. Take notes on any weakness you see from your team. Then tell us that weakness you think you saw. Maybe we can help fix that weakness in later practices.

Good luck your going to need it

 

I started coaching for the first time a little over a year ago....My daughter was 12 years old at the time and was playing again for the first time since she was about 5. So really she was starting from scratch. I signed her up for a recreational league and they had no coach...so I was the sucker. I quickly fell in love with it though...although I never coached, I played up through high school and knew the game fairly well.

We played fall, winter (indoor) and spring in the rec league. Then I had an opportunity to jump to a club team with the girls and kind of join rosters with an existing team and continue helping as an assistant coach. So I took the 9 girls who wanted to make the jump and we actually wound up now with two full rosters of players.

Anyway. My take is this...with a newer team and mixed experience levels like that...keep it simple. Get them a lot of touches on the ball. Try to identify where you want players to play - first off - find a keeper or two.

Figure out your defense and offense and see where you have more players and more talent. BUild a formation around that to start with. Of course you can move kids around to different positions...but I find if you tell them this is your main position, and here's how I want you to play it - they really like knowing that and then they can see themselves progress at that position, etc.

Don't waste your time on fitness. The more you keep them moving at practice, the fitness will come with it. And that's why you have subs. But if you only have 1 or 2 practices per week...fitness isn't going to matter at practice. You can have them run a mile, but if they only run a mile once a week - their fitness isn't going to get better anyway.

It's fine to do some fitness stuff but don't make it a focus - you want to have them run sprints at the end? Fine. But work on touching the ball and maybe some agility. Other thing I would do is small sided games and build that up at the end to a larger scrimmage - what I like to do is set up an offense v defense scenario as a bigger "scrimmage" and that allows for a lot of coaching opportunities within that game...stop play at various points and say "Ok - here's why you got beat on defense and here's what I want you to try next time." Then you make a note and build some drills for next practice around what you see.

Sorry for the rambling answer...

 

quick side note - keep the majority of the practice doing things where everyone gets a lot of touches on the ball - the more they touch it - the better they will get. Keep in mind that scrimmages are fine for the end of practice (that's what I do anyway) but that in those scenarios - your strong player are going to dominate and the lesser players will get less opportunity to receive the ball, dribble, pass, shoot, etc....so they are not going to improve their basic skills by watching 4 players dominate.

That said - scrimmages are great for teaching movement and how positions are played, where to go, etc...and there is value in that as well.

 

It seems we haven't quite answered this question yet.

The normal first step is to decide on a system of play, including how it is organized defensively and offensively. Understanding a system of play means you understand what all 11 players are supposed to do in and without possession of the ball. Most coaches have a favorite system. If the coach only understands one system and one way of playing, then the choice is easy

The second step is to teach the system to the players. With advanced players video clips and chalk talks will work, but even with advanced players, including world cup teams filled with professional players, shadow play is very effective at teaching a system of play. There was a couple of movies of Arrigo Sacchi training Italy in preparation for the 1994 World Cup Finals. I will try to find them.

In this one he uses shadow play without any opposition and with half pressure (e.g., markers closing down but no tackling).


I cannot find the video I wanted. It showed the exercises that Sacchi used for both offense and defense. In particular I wanted to show you the shadow play exercise he used to teach the back four to play a flat back four zone defense. using shadow play.

There are literally hundreds of videos on the net about coaching systems of play. Some are better than others. Some are outstanding. If you tell me what system you want to teach, I and maybe some other posters will link some for you.

 

something that worked well with my girls...I bought a magnetic clipboard...it's got a soccer field on it and magnets to signify players...something about that made having tactical talks with them very simple and they really clicked with that versus a dry erase board.

I still keep those talks short and sweet...simple things...but it's very easy to slide the magnets around and show them - "When this happens, you may want to try and slide out this way" and then you can slide the other magnets around and show them passing lanes, etc.

You just never know. I bought it because I was tired of constantly erasing the dry erase markers but the girls were all like "this is awesome" and it was easier to illustrate my points.

And like rca says above...lots of videos on youtube....it's a great tool.

 

To the OP, here are links to two old threads on teaching team tactics in general.

http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads/resources-for-teaching-team-defense.1997495/
http://forums.bigsoccer.com/threads...diamonds-triangles-and-squares-oh-my.1998108/

The search function is your friend

 

You notice in practice your always playing against high pressure on defense. So the attacking team is getting used to playing against defensive pressure. Not against no pressure or some pressure.

So they are also getting ready for real game pressure. You also have to warm up against real pressure so you are at game speed before the start of the game. So your not flat in the first 15 minutes of the game.

That is how you can use a reserve team in practice with your team.

 

Showing them on a clip board or telling them is different from actually having do it on the practice field in a functional way through actual demonstration.

 

Agreed. Sometimes though it helps to visually see it. Someone had mentioned diagramming and X's and O's I believe so was just saying what method worked for me when it comes to that. Sometimes when they see it like that!it can help them understand.

But yes nothing beats doing it and demonstrating it.

 

The warmup serves several different purposes. Generally speaking it prepares the athlete for activity mentally and physically to improve performance and reduce the risk of injury. The effects you want are to raise core temperature, increase circulation, gain full range of motion and gain mental focus so that at the beginning of the activity, the athlete is ready to perform at 100% of capacity. Intensity should increase progressively, physically and mentally. IMO a key point is that it takes 15 minutes of exercise at a minimum for the knee joint to reach full strength. Full intensity movements should not take place before the joints are at full strength. Most of the ACL injuries I have seen over the years did not result from contact.

I like to include unopposed technical exercises in the first half of the warm up to give the players touches on the ball while they are still fresh. A common practice is to have the players do movements that improve running technique as dynamic stretches. The last part of the warmup--after knee joints are strong--I like to use small sided tactical games to gradually increase intensity to 100%, mentally and physically. Using soccer specific warmup activities has a bonus of improving performance in the game.

Take something simple like a vertical jump as an example. Athletes will jump higher if their warmup includes some vertical jumps.

What you want to avoid in a warmup is fatigue. For that reason static stretches are not used in warmups. Static stretches fatigue muscles and it takes 20-30 minutes of rest to recover full strength. In as short as 5 minutes of rest, players can lose the benefit of the warmup, so static stretches defeat the purpose of a warmup. The other thing to avoid is ballistic movements (like shooting balls at goal) while the muscles and joints are cold. Much better to start with some easy random dribbling.

YouTube is full of clips showing warmups:

 

I have middle school teams, and here's how we do warm-ups before practices:
1. Jog around the field in 2 lines. I make them keep organized lines and stay together as a team. This gets the kids mentally focused and ready for practice (in theory).
2. 5 Minute Drill. This is a passing and receiving drill that the players do in pairs 7-10 yards apart. We do 2-touch passes, thigh traps, chest traps, headers (once each week), foot traps, and 1-touch passes. Each player does 10 reps of each skill. The idea is to get lots of reps and passes in. We stress good first touch when receiving and firm passes on the ground when passing back to the partner after receiving.
3. Dynamic stretches. We have a list of 12 or so exercises that help loosen up their whole bodies, not just their legs.
4. Footwork: we alternate between two types of footwork exercises. I set up enough lines to have 3 or 4 kids per line so we don't have too many standing at any time. One day we will work on static footwork and 1v1 moves. Static footwork would be things like shuffles, toe taps, roll overs, etc. Coerver Coaching has a good free app with lots of different stationary moves to work on. For 1v1 moves, we have them treat cones as defenders and work on 3 or 4 different moves. Our second day we will work on dribbling around 5 cones using both feet, each foot separately, and the different surfaces of our feet.

It's a routine that everyone knows by this point in our season so we can give more coaching points on technique instead of just worrying about making sure everyone is doing what they need to do. By the time we're done, the players are loosened up and ready for conditioning and whatever we're going to work on that day.

 

Notice stretches are the 3rd item listed. Stretches should not be done first.

 

Q1. Depends on what your teaching objective for the practice session is. Notice Coach Stevenson included a 5 minute low intensity ball drill right before stretching in his example. Half your players are novices so they need to work on ball skills. This won't make them as good as club players, but 3-4 weeks of technical work will return a lot of improvement in novices compared to what they could do originally.

Q2. Static stretches are no longer used in warmups. A static stretch is where the stretch is held for a significant length of time, say 20 seconds or more. Holding a stretch for only a few seconds is not considered a static stretch. Ballistic stretching is also disfavored at any time. Static stretches are fine for the cool down.

Q3. I suggest you review Nick Laino's first post on how he would manage the team. Some great advice there.

I would be concerned about the middle also. I have never coached high school, but my understanding is that there is a large variation in the ability level of teams from league to league and within a league. Y0u may run into a team full of club players. Pulisic is still only 17 and can accurately cross, so it is possible you will run into highly skilled, gifted players. I expect that most teams you face will not contain any future professionals. Even if you faced Pulisic, he would find it easier to cut inside and score than play from the touch line. Come to think of it, encouraging their best player to play out by the touch line sounds like a good game plan to me.

My thinking is that the zone defense is the Great Equalizer in team sports. Some matches are winnable and some are not.

 

i put the 5 minute drill in there to help get their bodies warmed up a little more than they would be from just running a lap. it's low intensity, but they are moving around and getting loose.

 

Hi, Here is a good small sided soccer game called 4 Goal Chaos

http://coachestrainingroom.com/small-sided-soccer-game-4-goal-chaos