There are three thinks that I think contribute to the formation and system that coaches choose to play with. The qualities and personalities of the players on the team is most important. If you have a lot of attacking personalities then a system like the 4-3-3 makes sense. If you have a forward who holds the ball well and can play with their back to goal then you could use a 4-5-1 effectively. But each system can be played with a different style; possession, direct attacking, counter attack, etc.

The second contributing factor is the coaches preference. Most coaches Continue reading ‘Developing a Style of Play’ »

More and more teams at every level from youth to professional are playing with a 4-2-3-1 system. The first stage in the process has coaches trying to figure out how to play with formation and how to teach it to their players. The second stage is for coaches to break down its strengths and weaknesses so they can decide how to defend it.

This latest book from Stevie Grieve breaks down the 4-2-3-1 in all Continue reading ‘Beating the 4-2-3-1’ »

The June edition of the WORLD CLASS COACHING magazine that is part of the Member Drills Database will have a session from Elmar Bolowich, Head Men’s Coach at Creighton University. He presented it during the 2013 Nebraska WORLD CLASS COACHING International Seminar. The focus is on Continue reading ‘Attacking in the Final Third’ »

We’ve had a lot of games rescheduled this season because of the crazy weather had. We even had snow the first weekend in May that caused the fields to be closed.

My U14 girls play in a local league as well as the Midwest Regional League (MRL) in addition to the occasional tournament. But all of that leads up to the most important tournament of the year, State Cup. The winner of State Cup goes to Regionals to play the 21 State Cup Champions from our Region. The winners of each of the four Regions in the U.S. progress to the USYS National Championship which will be held at the Overland Park Soccer Complex this summer.

I originally arranged our schedule so that the games were spaced nicely with sufficient time for training, rest and recovery but the rained out games have piled up and now we’re looking at about 15 games in 27 days. Warm-ups, cool-downs and Continue reading ‘Recovery Session’ »

A recent email from a local club renewed an ongoing discussion in our community about over-coaching. The email discussed the upcoming, “Silent” Coaching Weekend. Here’ the email that the Director of Coaching sent to coaches and parents in the club:

“Silent” Coaching Weekend this spring is May 11 and 12. This is our second weekend after a successful effort in the Fall.

 The goals we had for the Fall were to empower the players to make decisions for themselves without being micro-managed by the coaches (and parents) for every decision throughout the game. We want to continue that theme and provide another weekend to give the game to players.

Our expectations for coaches are that they will Continue reading ‘“Silent” Coaching Weekend’ »

If there’s one standard possession game that just about every coach uses it must be 5 v 2.  It’s a great introduction to possession play because the intensity of the defending is easily controlled by the size of the area. The attackers have enough of an advantage that they can gain confidence from being successful but it is still a challenge. Once the players achieve a certain degree of comfort you can put a limit on their touches and challenge their ability to think quickly and read where the open pass is.

The most common way I’ve seen the game played is with five offensive players Continue reading ‘How Do You Play 5 v 2’ »

We recently asked coaches to submit their favorite defending drills and small-sided game. We picked one from all the entries as the winner and the coach received a $200 gift certificate to our site. The winner was Gabriel Celante for his Transitional Defending Game. Here’s a look at the game.

Transitional Defending Game
This Transitional Defending Game focuses on developing and practicing defending cooperation, defensive pressure, and specific decision making while defending. This small sided game also focuses on developing transition to Continue reading ‘Defending Small-Sided Games and Drills Competition’ »

This weeks post is inspired by a post from our Soccer Conditioning Expert, Scott Moody with Soccer FIT. He talks about the spiral that occurs as a result of a player either being confident or lacking confidence. Players that lack confidence will also lack motivation, be more reluctant to try and as a result have perform low level of skill. This will confirm the players lack of confidence and the spiral continues. But we, as coaches, can turn this spiral in the opposite direction by encouraging them to attempt a small part of the skill, praise them when they Continue reading ‘Developing Confidence in Young Players’ »

One of the factors that always kept me from moving away from the 4-4-2 was a concern for how to cover the wide areas using a 4-3-3 or a 4-2-3-1. Once I understood how to teach my players to recognize cues and cover for each other I saw how the systems could be used to teach players more about the game. Requiring them to make decisions is the best way for them to learn rather than just putting them in a formation that has strictly defined roles where they just, ‘do their job’.

Stevie Grieve’s latest book, Coaching the 4-2-3-1 Advanced Tactics, does a great job Continue reading ‘Defending on the Sides in the 4-2-3-1’ »

An article caught my attention recently. It isn’t specifically related to soccer but to physical education in general. The study that the article is based on looked at public school physical education programs in England. The finding that caught my attention was that PE teachers were spending too much time talking and this was taking away from the kids opportunity to develop aerobic fitness and conditioning.

We have probably all seen this problem in soccer coaching as well. I’ve often heard coaching instructors say, “No Laps, Lines or Lectures”. But we still see too many times when players spend too long listening and not enough times playing. As I was reading the article below I kept thinking, “Telling is not Teaching”. Hopefully this article also gives you some food for thought.

Ofsted: PE Lessons Slammed By Ofsted For Too Much Talk, Too Little Sport

Many PE lessons are failing to improve pupils’ fitness, while not enough youngsters are playing competitive sport to a high level, inspectors warned on Thursday.

In a new report, Ofsted raised concerns that many schools are failing to push their sportiest pupils, or help those that are overweight.

It warned that in some PE lessons there is not enough physical strenuous activity, with pupils spending too much time listening to teachers.

Overall, PE lessons are not up to scratch in around a third of primary schools and about a quarter of secondaries, the inspectorate said.

The report, based on inspections of PE in schools over the last four years, concludes that in general the subject is “in good health”, with significant investment in the last decade.

But it warns that in more than a quarter of schools, PE teaching did Continue reading ‘Too Much Talk, Too Little Sport’ »