18: Grow Coach Newsletter

Football Coaching: Raising standards.

Apr 25, 2024

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: Hidden responsibilities of football coaching.
Activity 1: 1v1 - Connect and combine to score.
Activity 2: 4v4 possession practice with target players.
Session Commentary: Tips and advice on how to coach the shared activities.
Coach Project: Create a coaching language.

Hidden Responsibilities of Football Coaches

Football coaching is about positively influencing the participant and their performance. Coaches must develop technical and tactical practices that allow players to learn. It’s much more than just planning. There are some hidden responsibilities that you may not have considered.

Football Coaching Responsibilities

Effective coaching involves the following:

Guidance, motivation, and support
Planning, organisation, and delivery
Teaching, learning, and help

Guide, Motivate, and Support

Guidance comes in the form of demonstration, explanations, and visual information. A goal is to help the performer understand the outcomes and expectations of each practice.

Guidance can be in the form of coaching points or challenges that show or give the player the ways to progress, problem-solve, or move forward. Don’t confuse guidance with always giving a performer the answer or solution.

Player development tip: Let the players sink a little before you throw them a ring. Before providing any answers let the players problem-solve and find solutions for themselves.

Soccer Coaching and Motivation

Motivation coaches must be motivated to coach. They must enjoy their work and be passionate about helping, developing, and improving players. This is a must and an essential need.

If a coach lacks motivation, players, parents, and peers will notice, making it difficult for you to develop effective relationships because they will see your lack of motivation to help them progress.

Coaching requires highly motivated people. An efficient way for a coach to motivate would be to focus their attention on the performer.

They should:

Offer praise for a performer’s intent to complete a task.
Encourage effort and application to practice.
Use of kind words of support to acknowledge the intent of the performer.

Coaching and Support

Support comes in many forms, it could be as simple as a well-done, to more complex support, such as breaking down a skill to help a player learn it. Spotting where and when support is needed is a skill that comes with the experience of regular coaching.

Sometimes the support is not technical or tactical. It could be a social or psychological thing, such as a one-to-one chat with a parent or child about how things are going. The coach can seek ideas about how best they can support them and their needs.

Key Tip: Even the best performers need support. Just because a player is doing well in the technical and tactical sides of the game it does not mean they do not want praise. Recognition and feedback from you can show the performer that you are always watching. This can motivate them to do even more.

A keynote around support is to always be watching. Some important times to observe include:

When do the players arrive for the session? (What do they do? Is it helpful to them?, Do they look happy to be there?)
When the players are leaving? (Do they look happy, does it look like they enjoyed the session)
If they win? (are they humble or do they gloat?)
If they lose? (do they cry or get upset? Or do they support and lead?)

Each of these moments is a chance or opportunity to give support and each of these opportunities is a chance for you as a coach to develop player relationships that will improve motivation.

How to improve motivation?

Spot opportunities to guide. How many people can you serve without offering the answer? Posing questions or setting challenges is far more powerful than just telling. If you want to speak, keep it brief, ball rolling and decision-making activities will teach players far more than you could ever tell them.
Be passionate about what you do, your learning and development. Do the course, read the book, learn from others, and be a student of the game. You do not know everything so don’t be ignorant to knowledge you can learn from others.
Remember support comes in many different formats, kind words, breaking down a technique or skill. Set a challenge, give a problem to solve, and be creative with this.
Offer support off the training field. Conversations, meetings, and recognition of performance. Acknowledge effort in other sports or academics is all part of showing that you care. Take an interest in the person.

Plan, Organise and Deliver

How does this work?

Planning is the bread and butter of why you coach, it is where a large portion of your motivation to coach may come from. Take pleasure in breaking down the elements of the game into practices and activities that help to influence performance.

Planning and being on the field will take up most of your time.

As the old saying goes “failing to prepare is preparing to fail”.

It can take upward of 30 minutes to plan a session. This is especially true if you are working with limited experience, from a limited session library or you have limited coaching knowledge. When planning sessions you need to organize your coaching activities so they flow seamlessly between various practices and activities.

The first step to planning a session is identifying a topic or theme for your session. This can be as complex or as simple as you want. It should reflect the ability and needs of your players.
Decide on the number of activities in a single session. This will relate to time constraints and ability level.

Simple Rules of Planning Sessions

A general rule of coaching and from my own experience. I would be inclined to plan for two to three activities followed by a full-pressure game.

Each activity is usually chunked into 15 to 25-minute blocks of time. The players are there to play so leave enough time for a game at the end of a session.

Tip: Think in the future, plan in blocks. Aim to plan for at least a week in advance. This makes you think about the player's needs rather than making up random sessions each time you arrive.

Think about what the players need. Technical work, skills practices, conditioned games, Do they need to improve attacking or defending? As coaches, turn these needs into coaching points you can use them to support player understanding.

Practical Coaching Advice

Don’t be afraid to repeat blocks of coaching. This can consolidate learning and allow the coach to check learning. The coach can do this by asking the players to retrieve information from previous weeks of coaching.

Have your full session set up, then take cones out of the full area as each practice progresses. This will save time between each activity in the session.

For example, set up your pitch ready for the games at the end using say white coned discs. Set up your other two or three activities within this practice area in different coned-coloured areas.
Your first practice may be set up using yellow coned discs, and the second practice using red coned discs. After each drill finishes the discs can be picked up and the next playing area is ready.
This idea is not about the colour-coded area it is more about having each practice ready. This saves time and helps to maximize the ball-rolling time.
If space is not an issue, then each practice could be set up in an area of the field and the players can move from one area to the next.

Tip: An organised coach should be at training before the players. Set everything up to ensure a seamless flow of activities.

Session Delivery

There is no right or wrong answer concerning how much technical, tactical, or individual work a player/team needs. Observe and make decisions based on the level of ability and the amount of pressure the players can cope with.

An easy way to think about it would be in terms of pressure and decisions.

You can design activities with no, limited, or full pressure.
With decisions, you can have the same decision to make, a choice of two decisions to make, or multiple decisions to make.

The combination of pressure and decisions will help the coach to decide on activities for the practices as well as challenge the players based on their ability levels and needs.

Here is an example:

Your delivery may start with a dribbling practice with no pressure and the same decisions to make. In this case, the players attempt to master sets of skills.
The next aspect of the session may be a limited pressure practice. The players now have a decision on what skill they feel is suitable to beat the defender (the coach could fix the position of the defender).
Another activity before a game could be a full-pressure 1 v 1 practice. The players would have multiple decisions to make based on the position of the defender.
The last activity could be a full-pressure game with multiple decisions in a 3 v 3, or 4 v 4 format.

The small-sided games were chosen last because the topic was dribbling and research has proven that players receive more touches in these formats. Thus more opportunities to dribble.

Take-Home Messages:

Identify a topic or theme (passing, dribbling, defending, etc.) – Is it in possession or out of possession? Outline the key points the players need to know about each theme or topic.
Decide on some activities (2 practices then a game, 3 practices then a game).
Decide on the amount of pressure and number of decisions to impose on the players per activity.
Organise the playing area to maximize ball rolling time (colour-coded cones and discs may help).
Have a plan for the day and try to plan at least one week to create a balanced range of activities for the players.
Always leave enough time for a game: The players are there to play.

Teaching, Learning, and Helping

A key responsibility of a football coach is to help the performer be better through teaching, learning and helping them.

There is a major difference between teaching something to someone and just setting up activities and letting the players get on with it without any interference.

Part of coaching is to create an environment to learn through practice. The coach must create decision-making moments, challenges, competitions, and games that provide the players with valuable lessons.

What can the coach teach the players?

Technical skills, like passing, receiving, dribbling, shooting, and running with the ball.
Tactical skills such as attacking and defending, switching play, and pressing.
Physical skills such as movement, coordination, changes of direction and changes of speed.
Timing and spatial awareness: The timing of the run and pass, losing markers, and creating space.
Mistake management skills such as positive responses to setbacks can also be taught.

For the above, the coach can encourage the player to think in stages. Discuss pre-, during, and post-actions.

What are they doing before they get the ball?
What will they do when they have it?
How will they react once they have moved the ball on?

Students of the Game

Coaches must be students of the game. They must begin breaking down the skills and techniques that professional players/teams use to gain an edge. The coach should then repackage this detail so the player can understand it.

Football coaches should take care of their learning so they can share it with the players and self-develop. This takes time, trial, and error to get right and even when you think you know everything, you don’t, it’s a constantly evolving process.

Be prepared to keep learning and sharing. That way everyone gets the opportunity to benefit from each other.

Sharing a message

It’s important to simplify the information-sharing process and not get too caught up in overloading the players with too much detail.

It may look and sound good on your behalf but the players will forget most of it.

Messages need to be clear, simple, and concise. Having a learning objective or theme for the session helps maintain the focus of the coach and the players.

If a coach is working on an attacking theme for example:

To develop a range of attacking techniques that individuals/teams can use to beat opponents.

Using the learning outcome above I would suggest thinking about what this looks like for the individual first.

What technical things would the player need to beat the opponent?
What tools can they use to attack better? Dribbles, Passes, good receiving skills, shielding skills.

The coach can then choose one, two, or more of these technical ideas and run with them.

Session Sequencing

The topic and technical aspects have been chosen now the coach must decide on a suitable session sequence.

Some semi-opposed technical work on receiving, passing, and dribbling in a limited pressure drill with a finish into a mini-goal might be useful.
This could move into a 2v1 or 3v2 situation in favour of the attackers, this allows the players the opportunity to practice the technical skills mentioned above.
This could be followed by a conditioned game or wave-like practice of constant 3v3 or 4v4 in a multiple decision-based format.

Sharing Coaching Points

Once the session activities are running the coach can start to coach the topic.

Help the individual with their attacking skills. Teach scanning before the ball or share some ways to overcome their opponents using skill, strength or deception.
Followed this up with details for the receiver of the next pass. Get the player to think about the movement required to lose a marker or create space.
Finally, share some tactical details such as combination play, runs and rotations or spaces to empty and fill.

Remember it is not always about telling players the answers. You could tell, but you could also show, challenge, constrain, or provide options to help the players learn what works best for them.

What if it doesn’t work?

The role of the coach is to assess the learner and see what type of coach support works best. Sometimes you will get this wrong, don’t panic, just try another way until you get through.

Sometimes you may not get through to the learner but it is important to recognise what you are doing is not working and attempt some other ways.
Failure will speed up the learning process. If players are comfortable doing what you have asked with hardly any errors or mistakes, you may want to revisit the rules, pressures, or decisions you have chosen.
If it is too easy: Look closely at the drills and think of ways to make them harder. Don’t be afraid to adapt this as you go rather than just leave it as it is.

Mistake Management

Encourage players to take the learning from mistakes and setbacks. Ask them about their failures, and question them on their errors. You are checking if they are learning from their mistakes. Observe the player closely after their responses.

Look for the answers to transfer into actions on the field.
The learning process varies from player to player. Good learners can implement tips immediately whereas learners with less ability may need a few sessions to implement them.
Poor learners may not implement.

Be consistent and stick with this process of observing, asking and checking. It will help accelerate learning. Revisiting talks you have with performers around their game will help to reinforce the coaching points, tips, or challenges a player was provided with.

A good time to do this would be on a repeat of a session or when you are delivering the same topic again.

Tips on being a good teacher !!!

Be a student of the game and understand the vast array of knowledge you can provide to performers to help them learn.
Share your knowledge with players and others so you all can benefit from the information.
Use a learning objective in your sessions to help maintain your own and that of the player’s focus.
Break the objective down for the individual and the team and use this detail to coach the players.
When helping a player learn, use a range of ways, tell, show, and give options, and use challenges, conditions, or constraints.
Experiment with ways to get through to a learner. Remember people learn at different paces so be patient.
Don’t make things too easy, failure speeds up the learning process, and get a nice balance between success and failure.
Ask players what they learned from their mistakes and check they transfer their answers to at least attempt to put it right in game situations.
Revisit mistakes, setbacks, and coaching points to see what players remember and to remind them again before they revisit a theme or learning outcome.

Activity 1: 1v1 | Connect and Combine to Score

Created on: @TacticalPad

Aim: Combine with spare players to escape pressure.
Space and Set Up: play on a 30 by 20-yard pitch with 1 mini goal at each end. Create 4 x small 3 by 3 squares and place a target player in each one.
Play the Game: ⚫️v🔴s play 1v1 and try to connect with the two targets then score in a mini goal.
Some game variations include: Find two targets of the same colour and score. Find two different coloured targets before scoring. Targets move to a different shaded square after they receive a pass.

Activity 2: 4v4 (+1) | Possession Practice | Find the Spare Player

Created On: @TacticalPad
Aim: To work on progressive possession finding the spare players to move from target to target.
Space and Set Up: 20 by 20-yard square. 2v2 plus (1) 🟢 in the main playing area. Each team has 2 target players who are fixed into the corners.
Play the Game: ⚫️s vs 🔴s plus 🟢. To score players must work the ball from target to target. The Defending team wins back the ball ⚽️ and they become the attacking team trying to find their corner targets. 🟢s cannot pass into the target 🎯 corner players. They can only link with the central players.
Notes: ⬆️Progress by having the target player who receives the ball must bring it onto the pitch. The player who passed the ball out becomes the new target player.
⬆️ Can also make it a transitional practice so that when a team loses possession their corner players become the new defenders.

Session Commentary

1v1 Combining Activity:

Player Intention: Spot the correct time to take opponents out of the game using the spare players.

Coach Pay Attention to:

The disguised passing, using the front of the foot to lend the ball to a teammate.
Are the players with the ball controlling the game tempo? Do they spot the correct time to speed up or slow down the game?
The attacker’s willingness to make forward runs to get back on the ball?

Notice how:

Players pause on the ball before making explosive passing movements.
The attackers use their bodies to hide or reveal the ball to dominate the duel.
The changes in speed coming to get beyond the defender.

Possession Practice:

Player Intention: Retaining possession of the ball using the spare player.

Coach Pay Attention to:

The player's decision-making: Draw in pressure before releasing the ball.
Combinations to create space, such as wall passes, takeovers, set and slide passes.
Support play around the ball to help the ball carrier?

Notice how:

Players pause on the ball to tempt the defender into a press.
Support players help the player on the ball by providing angles to connect passes.
The speed of the pass and the timing of the run to get the ball from target to target.

‘"A good coach can change a game, a great coach can change a life.’’

(J, Wooden)

Coach Project

Coach Helpsheet:

Objective: Establish a framework for teaching players a key skill related to the game.

Notes: Pick a skill such as wall passing then break it down into three key points, key questions, common faults and key pictures.

Key Points:

Create a language that helps you remember what you want to coach
Make the language short, snappy and memorable. If the phrases and words can link or start with the same letter that can make it easier to retain.
The power of 3, most people can recall three key messages, condense your coaching points into 3 clear parts.

Key Questions:

Turn the coaching points into questions that get the players to think about their actions.
Use what, when and how questioning to get players to think deeply about their actions. There is often more than one way to achieve success.
Consider turning the question into a challenge, can player X achieve 3 wall passes using the front of the foot in the next practice?

Common Faults:

What are the most common mistakes the players make?
Be sure to have some fixes or tips to support.

Key Pictures:

Relates the different types of situations when a player could use a wall pass and the different types available to them.
Establish these and design an activity that allows opportunities for this to happen.

Create a worksheet/framework, like the one below to help develop a coaching language that you can use to be consistent in your coaching. You could repeat this process for several skills related to the players you coach.

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.