To improve the enjoyment and development process for players, it is important that they have the opportunity, initially, to achieve success in the football training session. That they have lots of realistic, match like scenarios to practice the skill the soccer coaching session is promoting. This will increase and develop the players’ confidence and self belief.

But, after a suitable period of time, the players will need be tested and challenged, so that their enjoyment, learning and decision making process and technical execution under increased pressure are challenged.

This is where challenges and progressions become so important in training players. The challenges need to be suitable for the age and ability of the players and need to be judged by the soccer coach as suitable for the needs of the coaching session. By developing challenges and progressions in the session, a coach will be making the session more enjoyable and challenging for the players and assist in their learning and development.

Too much of a challenge so that the players cannot achieve success, the challenge might be too much and drain the players confidence. So the trick is small, progressive, bite size progressions and challenges that test the players, but allow them to succeed more often than not. Then build upon their success with a further progressions and challenges.

Player Skill Competition – Turning Circle

For example, a coach can set the players the challenge of facilitating a skill game for themselves and provide them with a challenge within that skill game.

In this video, taken from the online coaching website www.grassrootscoaching.com, the players are set a skill turning challenge. The challenge is for the players to co – operate together and complete the turning challenge in the quickest time they can. The players can have as many goes at this challenge as they want, which will allow them to discuss ways in which they can improve their self learning and work out ways, without any coach intervention as to how they can improve their performance. A further challenge is for the players to test themselves against another pair of players and see how they can complete the challenge in the quickest time. The players will have to work out for themselves the need for speed against success.

Download PDF – Player Skill Competition – Turning With The Ball

Imagine a situation where students go to school and there aren’t enough schools, classrooms, facilities and a lack of qualified teachers who can motivate, inspire and teach the students. Would it come as any surprise that the whole education system would suffer and that students would fail to gain an adequate education and that the country as a whole would suffer.

This is the situation we find ourselves in at the grassroots level of coaching football.

Children can no longer play jumpers for goalposts football on the streets, or in the parks, unsupervised. Socially, the world has changed and that can’t happen any more. But, these kind of informal small sided games are where players develop their love and enthusiasm for the game and through a natural self learning process, develop and improve their football techniques and skills.

So what is the answer? We need more qualified football coaches, who in the first instance, can safely organise and facilitate small sided games for any and all young players who want to play, not only a grassroots clubs, but also at schools, in school holidays, at the parks and clubs around the country.

A programme like this would provide a platform for young players to enjoy playing football and learn through their own experiences and self learning process. As the players then develop, better qualified soccer coaches can then gradually provide better coaching to improve players understanding, techniques and skills

In all fairness, the FA provide very good coach education courses, starting at Level 1 and progressing, for most Grassroots coaches to level 3 – UEFA “B” qualification. They have also just started rolling out youth appropriate courses, which help coaches understand the very special needs and learning requirements  of young players.

The problem isn’t with the courses that are available; it is with the number of coaches who go through the coaching qualification process.

There are a number of reasons for this, the main one being the direct and indirect costs of the courses, which in the vast majority of cases are borne by the individual coach. For example a Level 1 course can cost between £150 – £250, a level 2 course between £350 and £450 and a Level 3 course / UEFA B course between £800 – £1,000. In addition, the coaches have to take time off work, which requires more money and commitment.

As a result, in comparison to other European countries we have far fewer qualified coaches. At the last count, in 2008, Germany, Italy, Spain and France had 100,000 coaches of UEFA B licence standard and above, while England had fewer than 3,000.

Gérard Houllier, the former Liverpool manager, now French technical director said, “There is a domino effect, you want better players, you need better trained players; that means better trainers; that means a better coach education system.”

It is probably no co – incidence that in the last 15 years or so, France have a far better record at National level than England  and that so many French players are playing in the Premier League.

There is more than enough money in the football industry and within sport government led funding to address this issue. If the football authorities and the sports ministers were serious about improving the standards of grassroots football, as they constantly purport to do and addressing the lack of sport being played by young people, then it shouldn’t be beyond them to put a grassroots tax on TV payments. For example in 2007 – 08, the Premier League received £1 billion in TV money. A 1% levy on this would generate £10 million or enough to pay for 20,000 coaches per year at a cost of £500 per course.

But these things are still happening, week after week. The football authorities have managed to impose a rule that players are now automatically booked for taking off their shirt when they celebrate a goal! But fail to act on blatant cheating, gamesmanship and poor sporting behaviour.

I think there is a very simple solution. Just like the rule for booking players for taking off their shirt, there should be a rule that says, every time a player tries to influence the referee to get a player sent off, they should receive a yellow card. If, in the referees view a player is guilty of diving, then they should be booked. Yes, some referees do this now, but not all of them and not with any consistency.

In addition, any player that is booked during the game for diving or attempting to influence the referee, should also receive an automatic two match ban and a one week salary fine, with the money going to charity

If this came into effect, let’s see how many players dive and try and influence the referee!!

We try to get the football coaches to understand the basic principle of defending. Once possession is lost, the team look to get behind the ball, get a defensive shape, which is narrow and compact and allows players to adopt positions in relation to where the ball is.

Defending in team play starts from the front. So when the ball was in possession of the opposition defence, we worked with our two strikers, to get them to understand how to react quickly when the ball was lost, to recover behind the ball and to work and defend as a pair. They needed to recognise if the player on the ball had good possession, then there was no point in trying to pressure the ball as they would easily be passed by. Their roles were to try and stop the ball behind passed forward into key attacking areas and to try and force play across the pitch and to keep the ball in front of them. They had to work as a pair communicate and react together as the ball was passed across them.

Once the strikers understood this initial role, we moved onto work with the midfield. They had to communicate and encourage the strikers, move as the strikers moved and ensure that if the ball was played into the opposition midfield players, they were in a position to apply good pressure and get tight, with the second midfield player providing cover.  They also needed to understand that they also had to adopt positions that made it difficult for the ball to be passed into the opposition’s strikers and to track any runs from the opposition midfield players.

The forwards now had to link with the midfield, so that if any pass went past the forwards, they turned, recovered and applied pressure from the front.

The third unit we coached was the defending unit and the GK. The first thing we looked at was their positions as a unit and individuals in relation to where the ball was and how they reacted and moved as the ball moved. We got them to move and communicate together as a unit and ensure that there were no big gaps between them and that they were in a position goal side of the strikers so that if any ball was passed over the top or past them, they put themselves in a position to win any race and that they kept their shape and discipline. The GK also played a big part of this defensive unit, communicating and positioning themselves in relation to their defenders and the ball.

Any time the ball was played forward we made sure that one of the defenders applied pressure on the ball and the other two dropped and provided cover

This was then linked to the midfield, so that whenever the ball was played forward towards the opposition forwards, there was pressure and cover from the defenders and recovery runs from the midfield and forwards, to be first to any knockdowns

The game was then allowed to flow and we talked to the coaches about the need to observe the play and watch the whole team to see if they were applying and working towards what they had been coached. As the game progressed, we got the team to understand the need to compact play as the ball was played forwards or sideways.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMuBTiL39RA