Last weekend was a busy one; I had six games between my four teams. The results were 3-2-1. The interesting thing was that the teams were 1-1-1 on Sunday and I LOVED the performance of my teams in every game. My approach was different with each group but I think it really matched with what they needed on the day a struck a balance between too much direction and not enough. Realizing that the balance needed by each team will be different and that sometimes even … [Read more...]
#209 Experiencing Different Soccer Cultures
Thanks to an email from listener Kevin I discovered how to allow iTunes to include up to 300 podcast episodes in the feed. I've made that adjustment so we have a couple of years before we have to worry about older episodes dropping off of the feed. Thanks Kevin! I don't usually use guest players for my teams unless we're very short on players. This weekend one of my teams really need a couple of guests because of illnesses but none were available to we had … [Read more...]
#208 Ways to Encourage Your Players to Compete
I followed up the out of town tournament two weeks ago with an in-town tournament last weekend with two different teams. One team played their own age group and the other was playing up. They both faced some good competition and didn't end up making the finals but they both had great experiences that will definitely help them continue to develop and build on a great start to the year. I talk more about their experience in the episode. There's a Grassroots … [Read more...]
#206 Choosing the Best Size Field for Your Small-Sided Games
It was a crazy wet weekend. I know this podcast sometimes sounds like a weather report but it has such an impact on the game and my coaching that it's an important factor. You can listen to the episode for the details. I'm continuing to experiment with not coaching during running play. I think it's having a very positive impact on most of my teams. However, one of the teams hasn't reacted as well to it as the others. I talk about the details more in this … [Read more...]
#202 The After Effects of the Heading Ban in Youth Soccer
I had three teams in a tournament last weekend. As with all early season tournaments in KC it was HOT. Two of my teams were playing in their own age group and one was playing up. The two playing on-age both made the final. One lost on PK's and the other won. I think the players learned some good lessons from the experience. You can listen to the episode for more details. The team that was playing up had an up and down weekend. At times we played great, at … [Read more...]
#201 Formations for U13’s Transitioning to 11 v 11
I only had one team in the tournament last weekend so it was almost like having a weekend off. It was nice to focus on just one team for the whole weekend. It was my U12 team that is playing in the U13 11 v 11 division. They've really made the move to 11 v 11 must smoother than I thought they would. It's helped that half of our games have been against other U12 teams playing up so I'm sure it will get more challenging but it's been a good start. Today’s … [Read more...]
#191 The Techne App – Individual Training made Simple
I had a team play in a tournament that used grass fields last weekend. This is the first time any of my teams have played on grass this spring. In my opinion a good grass field is better than a turf field but it has to be a good grass field. The fields we played on this weekend were good in the past but aren't what they used to be. We're just not used to playing on grass anymore. It slows everything down so much that it's hard for the players to get their … [Read more...]
#190 Owning Your Development with Yael Averbuch
We're starting to wind down the 2018-19 soccer year. This is the last week of practice for one of my teams while the other two just have one tournament left for each of them. I'm always surprised at how fast the spring season goes. It's no shorter than the fall but it just seems to move so quickly. It may be because we're in the process of planning the tryouts and looking toward next fall already. During this time of year I do a lot of multi-themed … [Read more...]
#188 Why Your Session Isn’t Working
Each of my teams only had one game last weekend. They all played really well despite only one of them winning their game. One of the hardest things for me to get some parents to understand is that we can play really well and still lose the game. We had worked hard on playing our way out of pressure in tight spaces during the week and did this very well in the games. That was the objective for the week and we accomplished it regardless of the score of the … [Read more...]
#187 The Benefits of Building Out of the Back
With just one team in a tournament last weekend I was able to put all of my focus on them and not have a crazy schedule that had me going from one game to the next. Our first game was on Friday night. This team practices on Thursdays so we had a great preparation and came out flying. The team played great and won comfortably. We played two games on Saturday. The first one didn't start well but improved as the game went along. In the second game we played … [Read more...]
- Prev Page...
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- 5
- …
- 10
- ...Next Page