Soccer Skills:

Does Your Soccer Team Have fun...and Win?

Learn to develop players and dominate teams

Tactical

Soccer Tactics are the strategy behind the game. It is “X’s and O’s” of how you will implement offense and defense. All tactical articles will be identified with the green panel of the soccer ball (shown left). While soccer tactics can be explored on a general level, it is best if we examine what is appropriate on each age level as players become more capable as they become more aware as people and as players.

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Fitness

Fitness and nutrition becomes the top of the pyramid where performance can be impacted by training and is only appropriate at older ages where mastery of ball and tactics, as well as a developed body make sense. While we can all eat healthier and become fitter as adults, it’s important and fundamental to understand that fitness – as a concept – isn’t age appropriate until you reach eleven.

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Technical

This is really the core of our work as youth coaches. How do we help develop the necessary technical skills within our players? What are the best drills and where should we start? Dribbling, trapping, heading…it’s all so overwhelming.

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Psychological

If we strive to understand our players and their capabilities, we are fundamentally in a better position to meet their needs and connect with them as people, so we can motivate and inspire them. One of the biggest mistakes that we make is that we approach the game through our eyes – not our players’ eyes. As a result, we treat kids as “little” adults instead of, well, kids.

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Team Management

Before you even meet your players or step onto the field, you are managing the team. This area encompasses all aspects of the game because you are the director. Not only does this include the four on-field aspects of the game, but also all the things that need to happen off the field: coaching philosophy, team meetings, paperwork, interfacing with parents, quickly disseminating information, injuries, tryouts, etc.

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Coaching Sphere

We developed the CoachingSphere as a framework to help you visualize your role as coach and to cultivate the best development of players and teams. The five areas are: team management, player psychology, technical skills & drills, soccer tactics and fitness & nutrition. Utilizing this framework enables us to easily break down each of the five building block components and examine them individually and in context for the team and the player for maximum player development.

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Who do you coach

Discover Age Appropriate Soccer Information for your Team

Soccer Skills

Find Fun Soccer Drills that Will Challenge your Players

Free Soccer Drills
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Soccer Skill:
Agility

Freeze Jump

As a foundation for agility, the ability to land safely and effectively is a critical skill to be mastered. Being able to land competentlywhen jumping different distances, heights and angles can significantly reduce risk of injury whilst providing a solid base for rapid direction changes and deceleration. Freeze jump is a simple game that can be played with players of all ages to help them develop their landing competence.

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Soccer Skill:
Agility

Balance challenges

A few progressively more difficult balance challenges to help your players develop a solid base of balance and stability as the foundation for safe and effective soccer skill development.

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Soccer Skill:
Warm-Up

Movement Based Warm-Up Part Three

These Movement Based Warm Ups provide a general framework for organising and structuring warm ups for your young players, and as such can be simply adapted or modified to include and challenge a variety of different football and movement skills alongside the development of teamwork, co-operation, decision-making and communication skills. Each of the three parts shown here illustrate a few of the large number of skills that can be practiced through this warm up framework.

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Soccer Coaching Blog
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Mental Toughness in Soccer: Interview with Simon Hartley

The concept of “Mental Toughness” is a tried and true rallying call for most teams. Every coach wants players who are ‘mentally tough’, but really what does that mean? I had the opportunity to interview Simon Hartley, our resident Soccer Psychology Advisor, about this hot topic. Simon provided his thoughts in an earlier article about “What [...]

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Ian Barker new Director (Photo: NSCAA.com)

NSCAA Concludes Year Long Search for Coaching Director

Directing the largest coaching organization in the world is a big deal. Those reigns were handed over to Ian Barker today when the NSCAA concluded its year long search to replace Jeff Tipping who resigned last January. We’re delighted to see the NSCAA finally replace an influential figure in its organization. After all, it is [...]

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What Does Mental Toughness Look Like?

Many coaches talk about mental toughness, but do we really know what true mental toughness looks like? Simon Hartley, Soccer Psychology Adviser to Soccer Classroom, tackles this topic.

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Julian and Zarek

Oreo Prose: The Maturation Of Zarek Valentin [A must read serious, funny, tear-jerker]

  This morning I woke up and did my normal Wednesday routine; hit snooze about three times, made way to the kitchen for my shaker and my pre-workout supplement, and hopped on Facebook before going to the gym.  Usually I scroll through and read dozens of posts from people I don’t even talk to anymore, shake my head thinking [...]

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Are you Part of the Player Development Revolution?

Occupy Wall Street, political upheavals of countries around the world…and now, a soccer revolution. We like it. The guys over at Soccer Plus, led by Tony DiCicco, have put together an amazing series of webinars with truly the best minds in the game – check the resumes of these guys. These free webinars cover a [...]

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