Coaching For The Brave

Seven Deadly Sins of Coaching Coaching is a noble pursuit. Everyone who takes up the role is offering help. That offer should be welcomed, recognised and celebrated. Yet everyone who ends up with the role of Coach is doing it for different reasons. They may want to help their sons and daughters progress in a sport they love, they may want to give back to a sport that offered them so much or they simply be generous and want to volunteer for a great cause. Some, we have seen, do it for themselves. It's about rewarding themselves or being seen in a certain light or emulating people they believe are role models. So as we all come to the role of coach for different reasons, we can all fall for the obvious traps when circumstances allow. We can't avoid them altogether, we're only human. However, we can be more aware of them and try to swerve them when possible. Mainly as a prompt for myself but also for anyone else reading, here are the Seven Dead...

These words were inspired by a recent touchline conversation I had with an opposition coach. It was so weird it started me thinking, has the pernicious "win at all costs" approach been replaced by a "develop at all costs" approach? Let me try and set the scene: Its a blustery Saturday morning about 10:30 am at my home pitch on the Fylde coast. The under 9's are engaged in a very competitive, close encounter and the score is 2:2. Stood 3 metres away is the opposition coach bellowing out commandments to his team. Few, if any are responding and he seems to be getting more and more frustrated. He asks if he can leave his area and stand level with his back line and coach them mechanically. "Matt, two yards back. Joe, five to your left and watch their number 7" Matt and Joe, start to follow his every word. Until, one of my team breaks through directly on goal with just Matt and Joe in the way. He bears down on goal and both d...

Futsal and Youth Football I've hesitated in writing this for a few months now but after spending sometime mulling the subject over, I thought I'd bite the bullet and suffer the flak that will inevitably find itself my way. Twitter is my University of choice. It's where I find ideas and swap opinions with like minded fellow Football Coaches. It's amazing, I am constantly surprised at the level of resources out there and more importantly the generosity of many of the people I come across. It's also chock full of people determined to see every exchange as a battle that must be won. This is why I've hesitated. For months now I've been engaged in exchanges about Futsal and in particular why it's a great development tool. Throughout these discussions, I've asked one simple question: Why? Now some have taken this innocuous enquiry at face value and tried to explain the reasons why they feel it works so well, some have just trotted well us...

The Football Association recently asked local FA's not to publish the results of Child Friendly matches. This seems like a simple request but oh no, like everything the FA tries to do it was criticised as much as applauded. More evidence of the seemingly impossible job the games custodians have. In an age when virtually everyone has acknowledged that our National Game needs to evolve it seems that some cant see the wood for the trees. The FA's comments were published in the press and quickly picked up by pundits and ex players and predictably, I've yet to see one positive comment from them and yet coaches Online seem to agree its a good step. So what's the issue? Currently, most County FA's play two phases of fixtures for Under Eleven teams. One Phase is Competitive and one Phase is "Non Competitive". Games in Non Competitive phases can not have results published anywhere. You'll still see teams put their results on Twitter etc but they sho...

How long can the despair continue? There is something very wrong at Manchester United. Following Sir Alex Ferguson at Manchester United was always going to be difficult. Whoever took over, under whatever circumstances would never be able to measure up to his 25 years of success.  We all knew that but what we didn't know was the level of incompetence Sir Alex was managing to paper over. His ability to coax the title back from City now looks nothing short of a miracle.  It's only when Sir Alex surprised everyone and decided to leave that this incompetence has been laid bare for everyone to see.  It could even be argued that some of the blame must lie with Sir Alex but we can't really be sure. For some time, this blog has bemoaned Ferguson's lack of quality signings towards the end of his tenure. This was particularly evident in Midfield. A midfield that has looked lightweight and lacking quality for more than 5 years. Ferguson was never able...

Frank Lampard Frank Lampard Plays For England Shock! With all that is wrong with England at the moment it seems strange that journalists and fan's have questioned Lampard playing against Costa Rica. "England games shouldn't be seen as testimonials" cries one expert, "Play the kids" demands another. How ridiculous. Despite England failing to live up to the lowest of expectations at this World Cup and being woeful in both games, the only thing we've got angry about is one of our established players being picked for the final game. unless this is a serious attempt to deflect any real blame from the current National set-up I'm confused by the commotion. Firstly, no one complained when Lampard was picked for the squad. In fact, I remember many fan's and experts insisting he should go to bring back up for Gerrard and guidance for the youngsters. He's Vice Captain for Christ's sake. So, if he is good enou...

England versus Uruguay Formation  Its been nearly a week now since England fell to Italy in their first group match of the 2014 World Cup. We explained in our last edition  Should England Drop Wayne Rooney?    the real reasons England failed and today we show what the England Versus Uruguay Formation should look like. It's a must win game for both teams so expect either a cagey affair with so much at stake or both teams slugging it out toe to toe. We've taken both situations into account and built a team to get the performance from the personnel available. Oh and yes, Rooney does start! England Versus Uruguay Formation As we showed last time, England's downfall was a ridiculous selection of four forwards who all gravitated to the centre of the pitch. This was a classic case of picking players and then worrying about a system. None of them had the discipline to do the job they were picked for and they ended up stifling each other. So, what's the...