Hi coach, This was the best blog yet! I really enjoy the honesty and openness of your discussions, it’s refreshing. So often too many coaches have “all the answers”. It’s nice to see a coach who is eager to learn just as much as he wants to help others. I loved the analysis work with your friend as well. I learned from this and will continue to watch the blogs and spread the word. Don’t stop and keep them coming!
Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate your feedback. This blog is all about helping all of us become better coaches, that is the beauty of building a soccer coaching community.
By the way, I visited your website and I am very impressed with both iSoccer and the Sandlot soccer, fantastic, well done. Please keep us informed as to how those programs are working out.
I appreciate you spreading the word, I am really excited as our soccer coaching community grows each week. We have so many exciting things we want to add to the community, if you have any ideas, please share them with me.
hi Coach Paul
I was wondering how did you improve your college team from 1-10 to 8-5 in only four years. I was reading your blog about Whittier and it seems you really turned it around the soccer program. in terms of training or preparation what kind of changes did you make? How much time did you need to make this team more competitive in your conference? I might coach college soccer someday so really appreciate your feedback about your experience.
thanks
Anthony
Thanks for visiting my blog and asking a great question. I will be covering in depth over the next few weeks what I did to turn the program around. It was a team effort and the credit really needs to go to the players, they were the ones who worked their tails off to make the program competitive.
Basically it was a combination of increasing the fitness of the players, having the team organized, recruiting good players and then getting them all together as a team and motivating them to work their socks off. Again I will go more into depth about each of these things.
Please make sure you spread the word via the social network buttons and of course sign up for the Free Report on How To Organize Your Soccer Practice.
Thanks again for visiting and becoming part of our soccer community. I hope that you do get the opportunity to coach college soccer someday.
Hi Coach,
Good stuff. Thanks for the info on warm-ups. Liked the match analysis of the Carling Cup final. The last goal Birmingham City had was a good coaching point for teams, always go at the Keeper after a shot you may never know when you can easy get that garbage goal.
The question of the Carling Cup vs. FA Cup: The Carling Cup has fewer teams entered in it, teams from the Premier League and the Lower Football leagues. The FA Cup has the Carling Cup teams as well as even lower Football leagues in England and Wales, including amateur teams. I enjoy watching a lower level team play well against the big boys.
I would too be interested in how you turned around you last teams record in a short while. All the Best!
My dad always taught me to “Follow Up” after a shot because you will score some “Tap ins” just like Martins did. It is amazing how many goals you can score over a season by just being there ready to pounce on a mistake. Make sure that your players do this at every opportunity.
Thanks for answering the Question Of The Day. It is great to see “Giantkillers” in the FA Cup. Just look at how far Crawley Town made it and had the ultimate prize of playing Manchester Utd at Old Trafford. Fairytale stuff.
I am glad you liked the info on warm ups. Again, no scientific formula, but just opinions, still something I need to work on more though. What I found last season was that I would back away from the warm up, let the players focus on it while I gave thought to the game ahead. I used to get very nervous and stressed during the warm up if I thought it wasn’t going well. Now I am more relaxed about it.
I will cover in depth what I did to turn the program around, however, the next couple of videos will be from an interview I just completed with Ralph Perez from the University of Redlands. There is so much useful advice in that interview it is incredible!
So, thanks again for being part of our community here at http://www.soccercoachingblog.com. Please spread the word and, Let’s Talk Soccer!
thanks coach for your reply. I m looking forward to hearing more about how you did turn the program around. just curious in terms of fitness how did you proceed? did you make them run miles? because every time I make my young players run they hate it! just wondering if you have any tips to give me so my club team can improve their fitness. last question do you think fitness has an impact to win games at the college level? A
I used to absolutely hate running at soccer practice, so please do not make your players run miles.
I prefer conditioning that has lots of different coordination exercises such as using ladders, speed rings, hurdles etc. I was very fortunate in that my assistant coach, Jerome Millet was brilliant with the players and he ran some very good fitness sessions with them.
Again, all credit to the players, they worked hard through the summer and we were delighted by how fit they where when they arrived to pre season training.
We would run a very comprehensive fitness session on Monday nights once the season was in full swing. Then on Tuesdays we would have a lighter practice because we played games on Wednesdays.
On Thursdays we would do a recovery run and on Fridays again a lighter session because we played on Saturdays. On Sundays we would give them the day off.
I will cover in more detail what we did regarding conditioning, but hopefully this is enough to keep you going for now.
I absolutely believe that fitness is a major component of success at the college level. We had a number of games go into overtime and we needed our players to be fit enough. I also do not like to make a lot of substitutions during the game, so all of my players need to be fit enough to play 90 minutes plus overtime at full game speed.
Thanks again for your comments and questions, watch upcoming videos so I can discuss fitness in more detail.
hi coach
i m coaching a club team U17 boys and dont have time to work with my gkeepers as I do primary the team twice a week. what should I do with them? how did you do while coaching your college team. I am aware keepers should stay sharp but I m by myself and really dont know about coaching gk! so any advice would be helpful!
david
Thanks for the question about coaching your goalkeepers. Unfortunately many coaches are in the same position as yourself and I feel for you and your keepers who probably feel a little neglected.
I was fortunate coaching at the college level in that I had a fantastic goalkeeping coach who really worked my keepers hard. In the first season we only had one keeper and he did a great job and we were very grateful for him. We built it up to a pool of 4 keepers by the 4th season and they worked harder than any of the outfield players.
So, the main thing to do is to keep the keepers included as much as possible. They need to do all the ball work exercises that your outfield players do because it is very important to work on their footskills as well. To make them feel like they are the keepers, let them wear their goalie gloves even if they are just working with the rest of the players on passing, controlling etc.
I would encourage you to devote half of your practice to exercises that finish with an attempt on goal, it makes sense for your outfield players and it will give your keepers lots of work.
If you have no idea whatsoever on how to coach goalkeepers, the best advice I can give you is to make sure your keepers spend a lot of time at each practice facing crosses and shots. Not only will that give them lots of opportunities to build up their confidence and skills, but it will also give your team lots of practice on finishing, so everybody wins.
The worst thing you could do is to isolate your keepers and try to spend 10 mins with them, they won’t appreciate that.
Ideally, if you could recruit some help to work with your keepers, maybe a former goalkeeper or a college keeper who is home from school, that would be great. You could probably rustle up a small amount of money to pay them, or even better, find a keeper who wants the experience and will do it for free.
Hope this helps and thank you for visiting http://www.soccercoachingblog.com. Please go ahead and sign up for the Free Report on How To Organize Your Soccer Practices Vol. 1
We are building this community each day and if you could spread the word using the social networking buttons at the top of the page, that would be fantastic.
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog and watching your video. Question for you; how do you promote your players falling more in love with the game? I love soccer, and I want to see our professional league supported to grow and become stronger. What have you done in the pass to help your players fall in love with the game enough to watch it and support it.
I’m a huge fan of the EPL, especially Everton, and I’ve also enjoyed watching PSV and Ajax play. But growing up in a foreign country you learn that national pride is everything in soccer, and since I’ve moved back to the USA I’ve supported the MLS. I think it’s a crucial step to soccer growing like it should.
Thanks for visiting the blog and leaving a comment!
I’ll try to feature your question on a future episode, but for now, I can totally relate to your thoughts.
In terms of promoting to my players how to fall more in love with the game, I would spend time telling them stories about my experiences as a player and a supporter in England and Scotland. I would try to convey the passion for the game, the history of the game and the importance of the game in everyday life.
We are now lucky in that we have tremendous soccer coevrage on tv especially with the Fox Soccer Channel, one hour every night is fantastic. The show is good but it doesn’t really express the passion for the game, but at least there are highlights and news every night.
I encourage my players to attend MLS games and we took them to one as part of our pre season, we went as a team with the women’s team to a Los Angeles Galaxy game.
I think that at whatever level you are coaching, you should take your team to as many pro or semi pro games as possible. All it needs is for the players to suddenly have role models and someone to look up to and it will make a huge difference.
Have some fun with it, create some rivalry in your team by encouraging the players to not only support their local MLS team, but to also pick a favorite team from another country and create some banter and competition within your team. Give them quizzes about teams all around the world, have them do some research and either ask questions at every practice or bring a funny story or a big story to each practice about different teams.
Instead of splitting your teams into reds vs blues at scrimmage, call one team Liverpool and the other Everton, then next week the reds are Bayern Munich and the blues are Schalke etc.
Give your players nicknames after famous players, such as Messi (to your best leftie) or Van Der Saar to your goalie… you can get really creative with this.
I agree with you that it is important to support MLS. It has come along way in the last 15 seasons and all credit to everyone involved. We need to creaet excitement at games and fill the stadiums and take the players more than once per season.
Hope these ideas help for now, I am sure I will think of more and please let me have your ideas as well.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment and please keep coming back and become an active player in our soccer coaching community.
“I want to thank you for the time and energy you put into coaching me. thank you for the incredible progress that this team has made with you as our coach. I will always remember all of the jokes and laughs, as well as the ups and downs of the season.” David Diaz.
Hi coach, This was the best blog yet! I really enjoy the honesty and openness of your discussions, it’s refreshing. So often too many coaches have “all the answers”. It’s nice to see a coach who is eager to learn just as much as he wants to help others. I loved the analysis work with your friend as well. I learned from this and will continue to watch the blogs and spread the word. Don’t stop and keep them coming!
Thanks for the comments, I really appreciate your feedback. This blog is all about helping all of us become better coaches, that is the beauty of building a soccer coaching community.
By the way, I visited your website and I am very impressed with both iSoccer and the Sandlot soccer, fantastic, well done. Please keep us informed as to how those programs are working out.
I appreciate you spreading the word, I am really excited as our soccer coaching community grows each week. We have so many exciting things we want to add to the community, if you have any ideas, please share them with me.
Cheers!
hi Coach Paul
I was wondering how did you improve your college team from 1-10 to 8-5 in only four years. I was reading your blog about Whittier and it seems you really turned it around the soccer program. in terms of training or preparation what kind of changes did you make? How much time did you need to make this team more competitive in your conference? I might coach college soccer someday so really appreciate your feedback about your experience.
thanks
Anthony
Hello Anthony,
Thanks for visiting my blog and asking a great question. I will be covering in depth over the next few weeks what I did to turn the program around. It was a team effort and the credit really needs to go to the players, they were the ones who worked their tails off to make the program competitive.
Basically it was a combination of increasing the fitness of the players, having the team organized, recruiting good players and then getting them all together as a team and motivating them to work their socks off. Again I will go more into depth about each of these things.
Please make sure you spread the word via the social network buttons and of course sign up for the Free Report on How To Organize Your Soccer Practice.
Thanks again for visiting and becoming part of our soccer community. I hope that you do get the opportunity to coach college soccer someday.
Cheers
Hi Coach,
Good stuff. Thanks for the info on warm-ups. Liked the match analysis of the Carling Cup final. The last goal Birmingham City had was a good coaching point for teams, always go at the Keeper after a shot you may never know when you can easy get that garbage goal.
The question of the Carling Cup vs. FA Cup: The Carling Cup has fewer teams entered in it, teams from the Premier League and the Lower Football leagues. The FA Cup has the Carling Cup teams as well as even lower Football leagues in England and Wales, including amateur teams. I enjoy watching a lower level team play well against the big boys.
I would too be interested in how you turned around you last teams record in a short while. All the Best!
Thanks again Wes for the comments.
My dad always taught me to “Follow Up” after a shot because you will score some “Tap ins” just like Martins did. It is amazing how many goals you can score over a season by just being there ready to pounce on a mistake. Make sure that your players do this at every opportunity.
Thanks for answering the Question Of The Day. It is great to see “Giantkillers” in the FA Cup. Just look at how far Crawley Town made it and had the ultimate prize of playing Manchester Utd at Old Trafford. Fairytale stuff.
I am glad you liked the info on warm ups. Again, no scientific formula, but just opinions, still something I need to work on more though. What I found last season was that I would back away from the warm up, let the players focus on it while I gave thought to the game ahead. I used to get very nervous and stressed during the warm up if I thought it wasn’t going well. Now I am more relaxed about it.
I will cover in depth what I did to turn the program around, however, the next couple of videos will be from an interview I just completed with Ralph Perez from the University of Redlands. There is so much useful advice in that interview it is incredible!
So, thanks again for being part of our community here at http://www.soccercoachingblog.com. Please spread the word and, Let’s Talk Soccer!
thanks coach for your reply. I m looking forward to hearing more about how you did turn the program around. just curious in terms of fitness how did you proceed? did you make them run miles? because every time I make my young players run they hate it! just wondering if you have any tips to give me so my club team can improve their fitness. last question do you think fitness has an impact to win games at the college level? A
I used to absolutely hate running at soccer practice, so please do not make your players run miles.
I prefer conditioning that has lots of different coordination exercises such as using ladders, speed rings, hurdles etc. I was very fortunate in that my assistant coach, Jerome Millet was brilliant with the players and he ran some very good fitness sessions with them.
Again, all credit to the players, they worked hard through the summer and we were delighted by how fit they where when they arrived to pre season training.
We would run a very comprehensive fitness session on Monday nights once the season was in full swing. Then on Tuesdays we would have a lighter practice because we played games on Wednesdays.
On Thursdays we would do a recovery run and on Fridays again a lighter session because we played on Saturdays. On Sundays we would give them the day off.
I will cover in more detail what we did regarding conditioning, but hopefully this is enough to keep you going for now.
I absolutely believe that fitness is a major component of success at the college level. We had a number of games go into overtime and we needed our players to be fit enough. I also do not like to make a lot of substitutions during the game, so all of my players need to be fit enough to play 90 minutes plus overtime at full game speed.
Thanks again for your comments and questions, watch upcoming videos so I can discuss fitness in more detail.
Cheers
hi coach
i m coaching a club team U17 boys and dont have time to work with my gkeepers as I do primary the team twice a week. what should I do with them? how did you do while coaching your college team. I am aware keepers should stay sharp but I m by myself and really dont know about coaching gk! so any advice would be helpful!
david
Hello David,
Thanks for the question about coaching your goalkeepers. Unfortunately many coaches are in the same position as yourself and I feel for you and your keepers who probably feel a little neglected.
I was fortunate coaching at the college level in that I had a fantastic goalkeeping coach who really worked my keepers hard. In the first season we only had one keeper and he did a great job and we were very grateful for him. We built it up to a pool of 4 keepers by the 4th season and they worked harder than any of the outfield players.
So, the main thing to do is to keep the keepers included as much as possible. They need to do all the ball work exercises that your outfield players do because it is very important to work on their footskills as well. To make them feel like they are the keepers, let them wear their goalie gloves even if they are just working with the rest of the players on passing, controlling etc.
I would encourage you to devote half of your practice to exercises that finish with an attempt on goal, it makes sense for your outfield players and it will give your keepers lots of work.
If you have no idea whatsoever on how to coach goalkeepers, the best advice I can give you is to make sure your keepers spend a lot of time at each practice facing crosses and shots. Not only will that give them lots of opportunities to build up their confidence and skills, but it will also give your team lots of practice on finishing, so everybody wins.
The worst thing you could do is to isolate your keepers and try to spend 10 mins with them, they won’t appreciate that.
Ideally, if you could recruit some help to work with your keepers, maybe a former goalkeeper or a college keeper who is home from school, that would be great. You could probably rustle up a small amount of money to pay them, or even better, find a keeper who wants the experience and will do it for free.
Hope this helps and thank you for visiting http://www.soccercoachingblog.com. Please go ahead and sign up for the Free Report on How To Organize Your Soccer Practices Vol. 1
We are building this community each day and if you could spread the word using the social networking buttons at the top of the page, that would be fantastic.
Cheers!
I’ve enjoyed reading your blog and watching your video. Question for you; how do you promote your players falling more in love with the game? I love soccer, and I want to see our professional league supported to grow and become stronger. What have you done in the pass to help your players fall in love with the game enough to watch it and support it.
I’m a huge fan of the EPL, especially Everton, and I’ve also enjoyed watching PSV and Ajax play. But growing up in a foreign country you learn that national pride is everything in soccer, and since I’ve moved back to the USA I’ve supported the MLS. I think it’s a crucial step to soccer growing like it should.
Thanks for visiting the blog and leaving a comment!
I’ll try to feature your question on a future episode, but for now, I can totally relate to your thoughts.
In terms of promoting to my players how to fall more in love with the game, I would spend time telling them stories about my experiences as a player and a supporter in England and Scotland. I would try to convey the passion for the game, the history of the game and the importance of the game in everyday life.
We are now lucky in that we have tremendous soccer coevrage on tv especially with the Fox Soccer Channel, one hour every night is fantastic. The show is good but it doesn’t really express the passion for the game, but at least there are highlights and news every night.
I encourage my players to attend MLS games and we took them to one as part of our pre season, we went as a team with the women’s team to a Los Angeles Galaxy game.
I think that at whatever level you are coaching, you should take your team to as many pro or semi pro games as possible. All it needs is for the players to suddenly have role models and someone to look up to and it will make a huge difference.
Have some fun with it, create some rivalry in your team by encouraging the players to not only support their local MLS team, but to also pick a favorite team from another country and create some banter and competition within your team. Give them quizzes about teams all around the world, have them do some research and either ask questions at every practice or bring a funny story or a big story to each practice about different teams.
Instead of splitting your teams into reds vs blues at scrimmage, call one team Liverpool and the other Everton, then next week the reds are Bayern Munich and the blues are Schalke etc.
Give your players nicknames after famous players, such as Messi (to your best leftie) or Van Der Saar to your goalie… you can get really creative with this.
I agree with you that it is important to support MLS. It has come along way in the last 15 seasons and all credit to everyone involved. We need to creaet excitement at games and fill the stadiums and take the players more than once per season.
Hope these ideas help for now, I am sure I will think of more and please let me have your ideas as well.
Thanks again for taking the time to comment and please keep coming back and become an active player in our soccer coaching community.
Cheers