17: Grow Coach Newsletter
Football Coaching: 6 More Tips to become a better Football Coach.
A warm welcome from JustCoachMD. We are happy to have you on board. We are looking forward to providing you with helpful content.
Here is what to expect:
Education: 6 More Tips to become a better coach.
Activity 1: Wall passing to score.
Activity 2: Phase of play-creating chances from cutbacks.
Session Commentary: What to coach and what to look for.
Coach Project: Reading triggers to take action.
6 More Tips to Become a Better Football Coach
Today's Grow Coach Newsletter focuses on 6 more tips to become a great coach. They are subtle ideas that you can integrate easily. The changes will greatly impact the quality of what you produce.
Respect others: Respect those whom you work with and value their input.
It is not about you: Put the player’s needs ahead of your own.
Keep the ball rolling: Aim to maximise ball rolling time to about 80%.
Develop Empathy and Patience: Show empathy toward failures.
Make it competitive: Look out for ways to turn activities into competitions.
Create a safe environment: You will get more from payers who trust you.
In last week’s letter, we provided 6 tips to help improve the quality of your coaching. Here is the link:
6 More Tips for Coaching Greatness
1. Respect Others
This is a relatively short but important tip, respect those whom you work with and value their input, this includes players, other coaches, and parents. Respect their values and beliefs.
You don’t have to agree but it is important that you at least listen with intent and acknowledge their input. Match days, in particular, allow you to show respect and set a good example for your players.
For example, greeting the away team coaches, respecting the referee’s decisions, and respecting anyone else who may be on sight or at your ground when you arrive.
In football, you never know when you will come across the people you have met again. It may be for a new job role you wish to get or a team you aspire to work for.
People always talk, it is important when people talk about you it is for positive respectful things not because you have been disrespectful of a person, team, or opinion.
Tip: Be the first person to show respect to the other person. Remember you are leading by example, say hello, shake hands, ask a question, and provide a compliment.
2. It’s Not Always About You
The best coaches understand that they should put player needs ahead of their own. For example, you do not need to put on a show for others. Stop trying to make yourself look good. Make the environment player-centred.
Yes, it is important to be ready and organised but don’t get carried away with your development ahead of player needs. Coaches are there to develop the player, think about this before you're about to stop the practice, is it helping or hindering things?
If it hinders progress then you need to think, is it worth saying? Or stopping the session?
Don’t make too many stoppages because you feel a need to show the parents or other people watching what you know about the game.
Be genuine in your stoppages and ensure they are for the players that need them most.
Take the players to the edge of struggle and encourage them to embrace the challenge.
3. Keep the Ball Rolling
Keep the ball Rolling: Good coaches can successfully maximise the ball-rolling time for the players. Players will learn more from being involved in practice than a coach talking to them about it.
Initially, it may not seem that much of an issue working off a 70% ball rolling time in a 60-minute session but 18 minutes a session would be lost which soon adds up across a few weeks of training.
If you have a 60-minute session, a good ball-rolling time to shoot for would be around 75 – 85%.
This equates to players being involved in practices with the ball for a minimum of 45 minutes if aiming for 75% or 51 minutes if aiming for 85% ball rolling.
A good way of measuring this would be to ask an assistant or parent to start a stopwatch each time the players are not involved in an activity or the coach is talking.
The total minutes where players are not practising can be taken off the overall training minutes to give you your total ball-rolling time.
There does need to be some coach talk and guidance to the players. The 15% of the time you are talking, be clear with your words and make it count. The concise coaching detail needs to be there and the coach’s knowledge of the game needs to be evident.
Tip: The quicker you make coaching points the less likely you are to lose the players. A piece of advice I once received from a coach was to keep coach-speak interventions during practices to under 45 seconds at a time.
This ensures that you do not lose the players or confuse them.
4. Develop Empathy and Patience
Empathy
This attribute is vital when coaching, especially when working with young children. You must show empathy towards failure, losses of confidence and adversity in whatever shape it takes for the player.
Your job is to help, develop, and support. Actively look for moments when you can achieve this.
Try not to be too hard on players when things aren’t going so well, instead find things they are doing well, or help to break down in simple terms what is going wrong. Thus giving the players the tools to fix it.
Tip: Use the words ‘I love that you are’ then tell them what you like about their performance. Follow this up with some supportive information.
Be Patient
Patience is another key attribute of successful coaches they understand that players learn and develop at different speeds and rates. Some players will be more long-term prospects. Keep this in mind and be patient with this when coaching.
Physically developed players can dominate games in young and teenage age groups. The less developed players need their coaches to be patient. Give the players time to grow into their bodies.
If a coach asks a player to attempt more forward passes, don’t expect this to happen in a week, or even two weeks. It may take months to make this a part of their game. Your patience and support are required and you must give it to them.
At times being patient may not pay off. The player fails to make the level, but they will appreciate your support and know you have helped them as best you can. They will understand that you at least allowed them to achieve.
5. Make It Competitive
Competition is the secret sauce that seems to propel players and teams forward.
Coaches should be on the lookout for ways to make their players and practices more competitive.
A simple drill can become an excellent drill through the introduction of competition. Competition seems to ignite something in all of us and therefore coaches must keep finding ways to make practices and games competitive.
This can be in the shape of practice conditions, double goals, points, etc.
On each practice, have a go at delivering it without competition, add a competitive element, and see how much it changes the dynamics of the session.
One thing I have introduced to my sessions for a while now is competition evenings where everything in training is a competition. It has helped our players develop a competitive edge. Players thrive in competitive environments and love the challenges of practice.
Tip: Here are a couple of ways a competitive edge has been created in my practices:
Double goals for first-time finishes.
Achieve a pass total to score.
Defenders hit an interception/ tackling total.
Bonus: Purchase a counter/clicker to help you keep track of the competition for each team.
6. Create a Safe Environment
Good coaches know and understand that you will often get more from players if they trust you and feel safe in their practice environment.
A coach’s job is to create this feeling amongst the players and help them to develop security. Players should be comfortable messing things up and making mistakes without a coach giving them a hard time for attempting to take risks.
Creating this type of environment takes time because you have to build trust through your communications and demonstrate consistency in your actions, so players are clear and aware of how you can help and support them as well as how you will react to their adversity.
You need to make use of challenges regularly in training which stretches players in competitive situations. It would help if you praised players for their attempts and efforts to achieve their challenges not always the outcome.
Players need regular feedback so they can get a sense of how they are doing within the environment you have created. The more consistent you are with your actions, communications, and feedback the quicker players will start to thrive in their environments.
As a coach, you can control the environment so players respond positively to it.
you could also, through your actions create a negative environment where players are performing through fear of your responses. This sometimes works and has been used many times over the years, but young players placed under these pressures regularly will crack and lose their enjoyment of the game.
Players should love the game, you must question yourself as a coach if players regularly come away from your practices and they have not enjoyed it, it is one of your main responsibilities to make it fun regardless of age.
Tip: Use the statement I love the way you… then finish the statement with a positive comment about a player’s performance.
Activity 1: Wall Passing Drill | Race to Score
Created on:@TacticalPad
Aim: Combine in pairs using the wall pass technique.
Space and Set Up: 20 by 20-yard pitch with 4 mini goals (1 in each corner). Four manikins are placed a few yards in front of each mini-goal. The players are placed between the mini-goals. 🔴’s position themselves on the left and lower sides of the square and the ⚫️s are positioned on the right and upper sides of the square.
Play the Game: ⚫️s v🔴s Each player has a ball when prompted they dribble around a mini goal then play a wall pass with the 🟢 support player.
After the wall passes it’s a race to the opposite goal. The first player (⚫️or 🔴) to score earns a point for their team.
Activity 2: 8v6 Phase of Play | Attacking Wide Areas | Cutbacks + Crosses
Created on: @TacticalPad
Aim: Combine in wide areas and create scoring chances using crosses or cutbacks.
Space and Set Up: Half pitch: Funnel pitch toward mini goals. 3 Mini Goals in a line centrally. Approx 5-8 yards from the centre circle. Attacks are alternate. ⚫️s try to combine and score in large goals. 🔴s build-up and score in mini-goals.
Play the Game: 🔴s defend the large goal and score in any of the 3 x mini goals. They line up in a 1-4-3. ⚫️s score in the large goal and defend the 3x mini goals.
⚫️s line up in a 3-3 but they have 2xFB operate on the diagonal lines of the pitch. The FBs are behind the attack to recycle the ball for the ⚫️s.
Notes: Encourage ⚫️s to use 2 and 3-player combinations to get behind the 🔴s defence. Playing wide is a preference but if the 🔴s offer a clear central route to goal, use it. Wall passing, Set passes, Overlaps and Underlaps are great moves to help players create chances.
Flip the roles of the players to allow them to practice attacking and defending.
Session Commentary
Wall Passing Activity:
Player Intention: Use wall passing technique to escape pressure.
Coach Pay Attention to:
Quality and speed of the wall pass.
Do the players dribble at the manikin before playing the wall pass?
Are they able to disguise their intention using front-foot passing?
Notice how:
Players use their first touch to get the ball out of their feet.
The size of the touches when players are running into space.
The changes in speed coming out of the wall pass.
Combining in wide areas activity:
Player Intention: Collective combinations to create cutback opportunities in wide areas.
Coach Pay Attention:
The decision-making of the player on the ball.
Runs, patterns and combinations to create space to deliver crosses?
The speed accuracy and type of cross used to create the chances?
Notice how:
Players lose their markers to get on the ball.
The types of runs players make - overlap, underlap, and diagonals.
The speed of the pass and the timing of the run
Coaching Points:
Spread Out: Create width and depth to stretch opponents.
Share and Speed: Pass the ball to a teammate then threaten the space behind the opponent.
Set Up and Score: Deliver the ball early and attack the key areas of the box.
‘"A good coach will make his players see what they can be rather than what they are.’’
(P, Jackson)
Coach Project
Triggers to Act:
Objective: Establish and Anticipate the next action by understanding game-related triggers.
Notes: Players who can read the triggers to take action develop high-level anticipation skills. They can predict with relative confidence something that will happen next. Each action in the game has triggers. Can you note down what these are?
Question: One trigger for each action has been done, can you think of any more?
Triggers to:
Press: A poor touch,
Move: You win back the ball,
Pass: The player can see the teammate’s feet or a space to pass into,
Dribble: Space at the sides or behind a defender
Shoot: Defender drops off,
Once you have established some triggers:
Share them with the players as they occur to improve their game understanding.
Start activities using them so your players get to practice reading them.
Remind players if they miss them.
Get players to think about the opposite (Disguise). If opponents are reading triggers then the player needs to get better at disguising their intentions.
Please feel free to get in touch or share your ideas, actions, and interventions. We would love to hear from you. If you have any questions, post them here; we will do our best to answer them.
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