Last weekend I coached 18 Futsal games from Friday to Sunday. That made for a long weekend for me but it was great for the teams to get a chance to play four games each in one weekend. There is no better way to start the season than we a bunch of games one after the other so that the players can build from one game to the next. By the end of the weekend the kids were back in 'Futsal Mode' and really playing well. We had our first outdoor practices canceled … [Read more...]
#260 2020 Soccer Year Review
#259 Technical Training in Game Like Environments
I had a fun weekend with my two older teams playing the last of their outdoor games for a while. The 2009's won one and lost two competitive games in another 2007 division. more important than the score, they played really well. They struggled a bit to score but that's to be expected against the bigger stronger players they faced. My 2005's had their first game since coming back from quarantine. They also played great but couldn't finish their chances. The … [Read more...]
#256 Analyze your Opponent
Well, We had a tough three games in State Cup last weekend. The level of competition and athleticism was just two much for us. We didn't help ourselves with some unforced errors that cost us goals at key points in the game. We also didn't create as many chances as we needed to in order to give us a chance to stay in the games. It was a four team group and two of the team were clearly better than the others. We were very competitive with the third team in the … [Read more...]
#255 How to Prepare Meaningful Player Evaluations
My schedule has really slowed down in the last couple of weeks. The end of the fall always brings with it a much more relaxed pace. I'm grateful that we were able to complete our season. That was definitely not guaranteed when we started back in August. This weekend is State Cup for my 2005's. This is the one tournament all year that I focus on winning. If we're successful we have the opportunity to go to regionals and that will put the team in front of … [Read more...]
#254 Do You Need a Coaching License?
Last weekend should have been State Cup for my 2005 but it was moved to the November because the facility that was supposed to host it was closed to all non-professional sports. I had blocked out the whole weekend for my other teams so they didn't have any games scheduled. We ended up moving a reschedule game for my 2005's into the empty weekend. That gave me just one game last weekend and that one wasn't until Sunday afternoon. It gave me lots of extra time to … [Read more...]
#253 Encourage Creativity and Confidence in Your Players
One of the benefits of coaching as many teams as I do is that I see just about every situation you can imagine. Last weekend I had eight games from Friday through Sunday. Two games Friday, two Saturday and 4 on Sunday. Today I thought I'd pull out one takeaway that I had from each day. On Friday one of my teams had an opponent that relied almost exclusively on aggression and physicality to play the game. Their goal was to simply to force us into mistakes … [Read more...]
#226 Dealing with a Season Postponed by COVID-19
Well, I can safely say that it’s been the weirdest week I’ve ever had during a spring season. Things seemed to be changing by the hour not just by the day. At the end of my intro last week I said that I hoped to be back on the field in two weeks. Now it’s looking more like two months would be a more realistic time frame. The local league, and also our club, have canceled everything through April 30. There's at least a chance that May will end up being … [Read more...]
#225 The Art of Using Guided Questions
My games last weekend were really a tale of two entirely different days. On Saturday my teams played well and were very successful. Part of that could have been due to the fact that we played teams that were were just better than. On Sunday the games were very challenging. Especially the game with my U12 who played a very good U13 team. There's such a big developmental difference between U12's and U13's that it was like young women playing little girls. It was … [Read more...]
#222 The Importance of Normalizing Errors for Your Players
The Futsal Nationals took place in Gardner Kansas last weekend. I had two teams competing. One team missed out on the semi-final due to a close loss in their third game. The other team reached the final but lost on penalty kicks. I go into detail about the weekend in this episode. It was a great event that included teams from across the country as well as at least one from Canada. Our preparation for the tournament went well. The focus on defending that … [Read more...]
#220 Five Year Review
The last two weeks have been crazy; I finish the second meeting for the Grassroots Instructor's License Wednesday afternoon through Saturday afternoon. The first meeting back in November covered the course content for the Grassroots In-Person Courses (4v4 through 11v11). The second meeting was focused on presenting the D License Course. The D is like getting an advanced degree in the Play - Practice - Play methodology. It involved applying this to not only one … [Read more...]
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