Coaching Soccer Weekly

Coaching Soccer Weekly

A Podcast that Shares Training Sessions, Interviews and Commentary from WORLD CLASS COACHING

Coaching Soccer Weekly is a podcast that gives you an in-depth look at the methods, strategies and techniques used by a youth soccer coach working full time with players of every age and skill level. This includes training plans, team management and planning ideas, the latest trends in soccer coaching and education, as well as approaches to deal with challenges.

The podcast also includes interviews with other soccer coaches and trainers that are on the cutting edge of modern soccer development.

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#103 Why Your Players are Bored

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Coaching my games this weekend and covering for a couple of other coaches the "kickball" being played by some of the teams we played against was killing me. It was hard to play against because anytime we build the play up if the opponent won the ball they just kicked it as far up the field as they could. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that my way of coaching the game is the only way. We've had coaches on this podcast that have a wide variety of methods … [Read more...]

#102 Differentiated Coaching

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The weather was so bad in the midwest last weekend that we weren't able to play most of our games. It rained pretty much non stop from Friday morning through Sunday morning. They had it even worse in St Louis where many of their fields are built in 100 year floodplains that flooded much more recently than that. These are photos of the St Louis Soccer Complex during the flooding. Obviously many people were impacted by the flooding and I don't mean to … [Read more...]

#101 What to Do When You Need a Goal

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First of all, thanks to everyone that sent me an email, left a comments on the site or provided a rankings and reviews on iTunes about the 100th episode of the podcast. I truly appreciate everyone who takes the time to listen each week and I love hearing from you when you have a question or comment. Doing this podcast has forced me to evaluate what I do and your feedback has helped me improve the way I coach my teams. THANKS! We're not moving into the … [Read more...]

#100 Double Box Training Environment

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100 Episodes! When I started this podcast more than two years ago the idea of getting to 100 episodes seemed so far off. Just producing the first three was a huge challenge. Now thousands of coaches listening to each episode. There have been more than 690,000 downloads of the show since I started. I owe all of you, the listeners, a huge THANK YOU! I appreciate you listening each week and sharing your comments and suggestions online and directly to me … [Read more...]

#099 Playing Up

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In the last month my teams haven’t played every weekend due to spring break and a number of local tournaments that took up field capacity. One team hasn't played in three weeks. This has given us time to do some concentrated training. We've been able to work on improving some areas of our play without worrying about having a game on the weekend. I've this has helped us developmentally but at this point the players are getting a bit antsy. They're looking … [Read more...]

#098 Creating a Cohesive Defensive Unit

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Last weekend I had a game on turf Friday night, a game on very rough outdoor field on Saturday and then back to the turf for our match on Sunday. The grass field was so uneven that it made it very difficult to try to play the kind of soccer we normally attempt. I decided to take the pressure off my players and give them permission decide when they could play to feet and when to play more directly and just get the ball forward. They did a great job of making … [Read more...]

#097 Diving and It’s Effects on Youth Soccer

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I actually spent more time refereeing last weekend than coaching. I’ve always enjoyed refereeing. Especially when I get to work with new referees. I can see why so many young referees quit. It takes a level confidence that most kids just don’t have naturally. Experience and success breeds confidence but we don’t give them a chance to develop confidence so we lose young referees who could be very good in the future. I talked about this way back in episode 7 A … [Read more...]

#096 Play Quicker!

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Last week I talked about what you should and sometimes shouldn't say during your team talks. Planning that episode made me realize that most of my effective pregame, halftime and postgame team talks followed a similar pattern. If you didn't have a chance to listen to the show last week I'd suggest that you go back and listen if you can. This week’s question is from Tony Tony says: “One aspect with my team I've been having trouble finding consistency … [Read more...]

#095 Planning Valuable Team Talks

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We had great feedback to last week's episode on checking your shoulder. The combination of the description, diagrams and actual training video really helped to paint the picture and show how the exercises are organized. If you haven't had a chance to listen to that one or see the videos in the show notes I would check it out. This has been a crazy spring break week in the midwest. Our training sessions were canceled on Monday and Tuesday because of the … [Read more...]

#094 Check Your Shoulder!

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Technical Training for our club started this week. Once a week all of the teams, U12 and below, complete the same training session. It's focused on a particular technical topic. I talked about how we structure our technical training back in episode 18 - Creating a Technical Training Plan. It's a great way to make sure all of the team in an age group are being exposed to the same instruction on the most important technical topics. Our spring outdoor league … [Read more...]