SoccerBlogs

On Saturday I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing Ralph Perez from the University of Redlands. I am very grateful to Coach Perez for giving up some of his valuable time to pass on his advice and knowlege to our soccer coaching community here at www.soccercoachingblog.com.

The interview lasted over 30 mins and covered topics such as practice exercises, use of time and space, use of video, advice for college recruits, and ideas for recreational, club and high school coaches.

I am delighted to announce that I had the honor of interviewing coaches Dean Wurzberger and Carlos Juarez over the weekend. Both coaches were kind enough to let me have some of their valuable time as they were staffing the USSF National B license at the Home Depot Center in Carson, California.

Husky coach Dean Wurzberger resigned on Dec.

On Saturday I had the honor and pleasure of interviewing Ralph Perez from the University of Redlands. I am very grateful to Coach Perez for giving up some of his valuable time to pass on his advice and knowlege to our soccer coaching community here at www.soccercoachingblog.com.

The interview lasted over 30 mins and covered topics such as practice exercises, use of time and space, use of video, advice for college recruits, and ideas for recreational, club and high school coaches.

OK so this is the time of the year that we review the year just ending and set our goals for next year. We all start the new year with resolutions, but how many of us stick to them?

The problem with setting goals is that they are so easily brushed aside once we get into the meat and gravy of the year.

So, everything has been going so well with our pre season, but today we suffered an injury setback.

One of our new international recruits, went for a ball and landed awkwardly and dislocated his elbow. Ugly injury, but fingers crossed it is not going to be too bad. We are hoping that he will only be out for a couple of weeks.

Ok, after 10 months of hard work, we finally met all the players today as they reported to the first day of pre season training.

It was great to see all the players, to say hello to the returners and to meet the new recruits. We took care of all the NCAA requirements, then brought them all in for our first team meeting.

OK, so if you have read Tip #1 regarding equipment and Tip #2 regarding the Warm Up, your players should be organized, in the right gear and warmed up ready to go.

Now if you are coaching club players, high school, college etc, you will then go into the "meat" of the practice and work on technical and/or tactical (functional) sessions.

OK, I have written 5 Tips for a new coach about to carry out the first soccer practice. I know that it is a daunting task running a soccer practice for the first time, I ran my first practice 26 years ago!

Tip #1 concerned equipment and also covered a couple of ways of taking control of the practice as well as setting the tone of the practice.

OK, so you volunteered to be the soccer coach of your kid's team, only problem is, you've never coached a soccer team before...YIKES!

Not to worry, we are here to help.

I will be posting 5 Tips to help you get through your first practice...

Here is the first one:

TIP #1 Equipment

Cleats must be soccer cleats, no baseball cleats.

I have put together a very simple survey which will take you 60 seconds to complete.

The theme of the survey is about planning soccer practices.

Please click on the link and take 60 seconds of your life to answer 6 basic questions.

Click here to take survey

The results will be analysed and it will help me help you with your planning of soccer practices.

So here we are waiting with bated breath for the FIFA World Cup Final to begin tomorrow.

Can you imagine how the players are feeling right now? I wonder what they are thinking and how they are preparing both physically and mentally. Can you imagine being in their shoes right now?

So, if you are preparing your team (at whatever age or level you coach) what kind of things do you do to prepare your players?

Last night's practice was a little disappointing. It is amazing to me how much I must be aware of the level of motivation and effort both at each practice and throughout the practice.

The players seemed to be going through the motions a little too much and it started to have an atmosphere as just a kick around and a fun scrimmage.

Last night at practice I put together a drill that worked on 10 different topics:

1. Side foot driven pass
2. Sprint
3. Body shape
4. First time lay off
5. Movement after the lay off to follow up
6. First touch
7. Driven shot
8. Rebounds and first time finishing
9.

We finished the regular conference games this weekend extending our unbeaten run to 11 games. We have only conceded 6 goals in the last 10 games, so our defense deserves a lot of credit.

When I say our defense, I should really say our defensive play. We have to defend from all positions all over the pitch and the hardwork our forwards put in pressurising the opponents in our attacking third deserves as much credit as the defenders working hard in and around our penalty box.

Saturday saw my college players win 7-0 against conference rivals. We made the decision over a week ago to devote at least half of each practice to finishing and set plays. As a result we have scored 12 goals and conceded 4 in our last three games.

I have a number of effective and demanding drills for shooting and finishing and the players really enjoy them.

After losing on Wednesday 1-0 away from home, we decided to dedicate Thursday and Friday's practices to shooting and finishing...boy did that idea pay off!!!

We played away against a school who had a record of 19 wins and 1 loss against us over the last 10 years. In that time we only scored a total of 4 goals to their 80 goals!

OK, we are now two games into pre season and we came down to earth with a bump last night.

We played against a school with three times the enrollment we have, a school that has had its best start to a season in their history, a team that was 3-0 and had scored 14 goals conceding none....we lost 4-0.

Ok, so we are now well into our pre season training and the team is looking good. I gave the players the rest of the day off today as they are looking a little beaten up.

The shape of the team is coming together and our starting line up is beginning to emerge.

Today we worked on our midfield play both attacking a defensively.

OK, we just completed our second day of pre season soccer training.

Here is the format:
8.15am-10.30 Practice #3 Topic, Running with the Ball and Beating Players

1.00pm-2.00pm Team Meeting #3

2.30pm-4.30pm Practice #4 Topic, Crossing and Finishing

7.00pm-8.00pm Team Meeting #4

The format for the team meetings were as follows:

Housekeeping
Review of the previous practice including Key Points
Briefing on the upcoming practice
Watch 20 minutes of a tape of Man Utd's Treble Winning Season 1998-99

I can outline the practice plans for both of the above, simply send me an email and I will share them with you.

In order to control the soccer ball successfully every time here are the 5 Easy Steps:

1. DECISIONS:

TO CONTROL OR NOT TO CONTROL?

Before you attempt to control the soccer ball, decide if you even need to control the ball in the first place.

Here are the 5 important steps to beating a player in soccer:

1. ANGLE OF APPROACH

As the player with the ball approaches the defender, he needs to look for the space he wants to exploit. Remember to dribble with the head up. Then the player attacks the defender with such an angle of approach away from the desired space so that he makes the desired space even bigger.

OK, so we now have World Cup Qualifiers to watch over the next few days. Some of them will be great games, some of them will be a formality. All of them present us with opportunities to learn more about the game so that we can take this new found knowledge onto the practice field.

Here are my Top 5 Things to look for in a soccer game:

1.

My assistant coach who is responsible for conditioning as well as the goalkeeper training has asked me to order some new equipment for next season.

He does an incredible job of not only getting our players fit, but he does it in a way that is both challenging and fun for the players. Although the players always complain and moan before his sessions start, they have to admit that they really enjoy the sessions and the results of their work can be seen in games.