Boot Review: Adidas Copa Mundial

When asked if I could try a pair of football boots out and review them on my blog I immediately selected the Adidas Copa Mundials. Look around any football pitch on a Saturday afternoon or Sunday morning and I’ll guarantee you’ll see at least one pair of Mundials on show. Why? Well, as I found out this old classic is the closest you’ll come to comfort perfection in a football boot.

Wikipedia tells you all you need to know about the boot – released in 1979 for the 1982 World Cup, the boot has survived generations of football boot redevelopment despite the massive variation in football boots that currently exist in the market place! You used to choose between firm ground or soft ground but now you choose for control, accuracy, speed, touch, power and then there’s the case of the colour, choice of studs and model but still the Copa Mundial is one of the best selling boots around.

Having played in this boot for 4 games now I can fully understand why it’s withstood the test of time. It’s immediately comfortable, it’s stylish and it gives you a great feel for the ball when controlling, passing or shooting. It also has a subtlety which means I wasn’t fearing that the opponents brute of a centre half was going to stick me 4ft up in the air because of my choice of football boot.

So, if you’re looking for a new pair of football boots I’d thoroughly recommend checking out a pair of Adidas Copa Mundial’s from Sports Direct.

A club development philosophy

How many of your grassroots football clubs have a development philosophy when it comes to young player development? If you have one in place, what does it look like? If you don’t have one, have you tried to implement or is it something you haven’t considered?

It strikes me that many clubs have good organisation, setup & qualified coaches but no unified approach to developing young players. The aspect is, quite rightly, on ensuring the kids have fun but should we link in development to give our players the best chance of success whilst we have an opportunity to do so?

Coaching Day 22: “Combining To Score With One Touch”

I’d decided to use a session which I’d seen on Dan Wright‘s blog recently tonight because I felt it provided a training exercise which was game realistic, which (as Dan describes) provided the players with lots of decisions to make and which works on some of their core footballing skills (pass, dribble, control, find space).

The session as Dan described can be found here. I altered the session slightly and used an end zone instead of goals which meant players needed to stop the ball in the zone rather than shoot. We play on a multi-pitch all weather surface so the area I used was actually a tennis court with the zone being the service line to the base line (and the singles sideline) which actually provided a good playing area.

I had 2 groups of 8 players and spent 10-12 minutes with each which realistically only provided enough opportunity to give each player a go as a defender (approx 3 each) whilst allowing time for tears, tantrums and a couple of opportunities for me to talk to the players where they did something very good or I felt the need to explore a decision they’d made.

The session actually works very well as it forces the players to frequently decide whether to pass or dribble, they need to find space, they need to be able to control the ball to score a point and the defenders HAD to get the ball to me on the side in order to score a point so there was lots going on and lots for them to take on board.

In addition to the attacking/possession aspect to the session it also provides the defenders with good practice. They have to defend 1v1, 2v1 and 3v1 and once they get the ball they HAVE to do some with it in order to score a point which gives them a focus.

Definitely a session I’ll use again and there are progressions which can be added if I have more time in the future. I’d certainly like to use this and then progress to a 4v4 game to see how it compares to a conventional 4v4 game at an Under 8 age group.

Off-topic: Movember

I’m taking part in Movember, an excellent idea which seeks to raise money for cancer research and helps increase awareness of men’s illness and cancer – such as prostate and testicular forms.

The requirement’s are simple, you do away with your usual choice of facial hair style (if appropriate), grow a moustache for the month of November and people then sponsor you for this hardship and help provide funds to some great causes.

 

To find out more go here: http://uk.movember.com/?home

To sponsor me or visit my movember page go here: http://mobro.co/simongodfrey

Coaching Day 17: Skills corridor with goals

Tonight’s session

• Energy levels: Medium
• Concentration levels: Moderate
• Behaviour: Poor

Joke’s aside – tonight was one of those sessions where an influential minority have the ability to bring down the group – and by bring down I mean influence the group to misbehave. Generally our squad of players are pretty good but tonight, for some reason, we had one of those nights where a higher than average number of players seemed either tired & grotty, fed-up or intent on mis-behaving and as a coach this provides you with challenges.

 

It’s a challenge to keep the group’s attention when you’re trying to explain the next game, it’s a challenge when you have to spend time encouraging or paying attention to players who’re mis-behaving (rather than helping to improve those who are paying attention) and it’s a challenge to try and prevent the player(s) from adversely influencing the rest of the group.

 

I’ve found that ignoring a player who’s mis-behaving works quite well in terms of stopping the other kids from being influenced by it. If that doesn’t work then I’ll try to find the trigger which snaps them out of it but if they aren’t listening then it’s off to sit on the side of the pitch (if behaving badly).

 

Anyway, to tonight’s session. Having worked on 1v1 last week I wanted to focus on ball work and skill development tonight so I’d been thinking about different sessions which I could try – using YouTube and blogs to also provide inspiration. In the end I decided to amend the skills corridor game from the Youth Award Module 1 and use that.

Following our usual warm-up routine we split the players in to two groups and I had a group of 8 to work with.

 

Setup (apologies for quality of image!)

 

• The white cones set out the perimeter of the skills corridor
• The players started behind the goal and would dribble in to the corridor (1)
• I asked the player to try a trick or skill in the corridor (2) and then demonstrated a turn for them to try when they reached the third cone (3)
• Once they’d performed a turn I asked them to try another skill or trick on the way back (4)  before shooting in to the goal
• I then progressed the session by adding two cones (light blue) and asked them to try and skill and take it round those cones before shooting
• Finally,  I added a defender (5) to operate in the area and asked the players to beat the defender with a skill before shooting

It worked quite well and the players were trying a number of different tricks and skills whilst in the corridor. Some points I made/observed during the session:

• I encouraged and praised the skill or trick attempted, no matter how adventurous
• Without thinking about it, the session progressed from unopposed to semi-opposed and opposed which felt quite natural
• As some of the players started becoming a bit bored I added challenges and awarded double-points for completing the challenge. For example, I demonstrated moving the ball past a cone by rolling their foot over the ball and said they’d get double points if they could score a goal doing it. This meant they all wanted to score double points and reinvigorated the session.

The players surprised me with their inventiveness during the session and despite the usual requests of “when are we having a game” I felt it was a worthwhile exercise as you could the players improving as they progressed during the session. That is, for some player simple turns were becoming more effective whilst others were doing turns with more speed.

 

I’ll continue to focus on 1v1 and ball mastery in the coming weeks but would welcome any ideas or suggestions for sessions which cover these competencies at this age-group (under 8).

Coaching Day 16: 1v1s

We returned to training last week with our players a year older, the coaches a year wiser and both appeared energised from a summer break. We have a fixture list this season as we’re now at the under 8 age-group and I had thought that might mean we’d have a squad of 14-16 players but we actually ended up with our usual 20-21 players.

As mentioned in a previous blog I’m planning to do a lot more 1v1, 2v2 and ball mastery this season having had last year to get used to the players, settle as a coach and learn a bit more about coaching this age group. I therefore used this as the basis for the session last Wednesday and our session ran like this:

Warm-up

• The players lined up along the side of our mini-soccer pitch with a ball each
• They dribble across the pitch with no conditions
• They they dribble across the pitch under the following conditions:
• Right foot only
• Left foot only
• Both feet (e.g. dribbling by moving the ball from left foot to right foot and back to left foot)
• We then introduce a defender and the players dribble across the pitch, trying to avoid the defender. If the defender makes a tackle the tackled player becomes a defender. This continues until only 1 player is left and we repeat 2-3 times.

We then split the groups in half with each coach taking one set of players. As I wanted to start using 1v1 games to develop dribbling, turning & comfort on the ball I used the following game…

• I had a mini-goal set up with 1 player in goal
• I had 7 outfield players who I rotated between being either a defender or attacker
• Coaching points:
• Encouraged the defending player to make sure they played a good pass to the striker
• Encouraged the attacker to take the defender on
• Encouraged the defender to keep their eye on the ball (otherwise they have a tendency to hack at U8!)

The game worked well. I took brief time-outs so I could have a quick chat with the attacking team and got them to think about how they could beat the player and also spoke to the defending team to emphasise the importance of a good pass and to get them ensuring they watched the ball.

The only downside was that there were times where the inactive players lost concentration and this is something which is difficult to avoid unless each player is actively taking part in the session. I kept the rotation happening quickly to keep any waiting to a minimum.

 

I also had an interesting occurrence whereby a player started to cry when it was his turn. “What’s wrong XXXX?”, I asked. “Why do I always have to play against YYYY?”, he said. Player YYYY is quite a good player, both technically & physically and I hadn’t noticed that player XXXX had been paired with him each time and had no doubt not had much success which caused this frustration. I changed it around so he had a different partner and he was happy to continue but this was yet another reminder of the importance of fairness to players of this age and the need for me as a coach to be aware of who is/isn’t having success during a game.

 

Whilst we were doing this the other half of the players were playing a 4v4 game which allowed them the obvious benefits which come with an SSG, such as lots of touches & dribbling/passing/shooting opportunities. It was just a shame I couldn’t observe the two groups to see if there was any difference between the group who played the SSG before 1v1 and those who played after, i.e. did the group after attempt more dribbles or have more success?

 

We then ended with a game which we always use as an opportunity to coach & encourage the players within a match situation.

Looking for a new kit? I know a company who can help…

I’m going to make a habit of plugging companies on this blog but I wanted to repay a recent favour by publicising a business who recently provided a fantastic service to our football club as we desperately looked for a new kit.

Having been let down by another company, I was put in contact with Bolam Premier Sportswear and they were excellent from start to finish.

They were able to:

• Quickly provide a list of possible kits which matched our club colours
• Meet our requirements around a sponsor and club logo
• Provide quotes and timelines for delivery (and meet them)
• Make a last minute change which required a redesign of the sponsor logo

The company contact (Kevin) kept me up-to-date throughout this process via email and phone which ensured I had confidence we were in good hands.

So, if you’re in need of a kit and want excellent service look no further than Bolan Premier Sportswear – highly recommended!

Observations from an U7s tournament

Just before I went to India at the end of April our under 7s played their first match and at the time it was obvious that the team we played had a lot more “match experience” than our boys & girls. Whilst I’ve been away the team have played 3 different games (which I missed) but we had a tournament on Saturday afternoon and I went along, excited to see if they’d improved whilst I was away.

The “tournament” was split in to two groups of 6 teams and was stated to be non-competitive, but this hadn’t stopped the organisers included a semi-final and final. We fielded two teams who were evenly matched (names picked out of a hat) and played games against teams from the surrounding towns and villages.

Whilst there I made some observations and I’ve listed these below. I’m sure others who coach the same age group will empathise with these whilst some are no doubt seen at all levels of youth football.

Goal kicks are an issue in Under 7 football

I expect there’s some debate to be had about what is right or wrong here. But across all teams I saw a high proportion of goals being scored following goal kicks which were going straight to the opposition. I guess you can coach this to your players but at 7 years old do you really want to teach them how to play out from a goal kick? I’m not convinced, and would prefer some way of restricting the opposition so that teams can play out from the back.

Minimal amount of standout talent

As well as our games I also watched a number of other matches whilst at the tournament and found that there were only 3 or 4 players from across 12 teams who really stood out for me. I think this demonstrates that 7-8 years old is the starting point for real advances in player development.

Minimal physical difference

 As with the technical ability, there wasn’t too much physical variation amongst the players. There were a couple of players who were larger and a couple who were smaller but 90% of the players in those teams were similar in both height & build.

Lots of teams were rotating goalkeepers

There are very few children who want to stay in goal throughout a tournament. Of course it’s been said that there’s good value to be had in allowing players to experience playing in different positions during their development (and I agree with this) but the amount of changing of goalkeepers (including during games) was very noticeable.

Teams found it hard to get out of their own half

It was very evident from the games I watched that a lot of teams struggled to get out of their own half if the opposition had managed to get down their end for a shot/corner.  There were exceptions but I saw a large number of teams camped in their own half because they struggled to pass or dribble their way in to the oppositions half.

Too many instructions from the sidelines

This was the first time I’d seen, first hand, the impact of numerous instructions being given out from the sidelines to young players and I now fully appreciate the need to manage this, where possible. Young players are keen to impress everyone and therefore they were listening to everyone (parents, coaches, Joe Bloggs) which only meant they were getting confused. I very much adhere to the principles of improving decision making and so will only shout questions such as “Who can you pass it too?” or “Can you pass it?”. Unfortunately those questions were sometimes lost in amongst the “shoot!”, “get rid!”, “pass it to Tom!!” instructions from others around me.

Summary

First and foremost, I was delighted that our players had improved since 6-7 weeks ago. They’d clearly benefited from some more game time and their increased concentration, awareness and “match intelligence” was great to see.

Being at the tournament gives me food for thought ahead of forthcoming training sessions. From Wednesday I’m looking at developing skill & technique because the players who had the most success on Saturday were those who had a the better technique and were more comfortable with the ball at their feet.

I’m also going to work with Phil (the manager) and look to play more 4 or 5-a-side games in training and use Q&A or Guided Discovery coaching styles to help the players improve their decision making in games.

5 coaching blogs you should be reading

Being a writer of a blog myself it’s only natural that I’m a keen follower of what other coaches write and with that in mind I wanted to share 5 blogs which I think any coach should be reading write now.

Mike Trusson’s Grassroots Coaching Blog 

I think this is a fantastic blog, especially for those who are just starting out. Mike’s blog covers a range of different games which you learn across a variety of FA courses but what makes this blog stand out is the excellent way in which Mike explains progressions and includes a video demonstration with an audio description. A great resource.

Dan Wright’s Football Coaching ideas, Concepts & Sessions 

Dan’s blog is another great resource which is full of coaching ideas. I’ve tried plenty of Dan’s ideas & games in my own sessions and he’s not just reciting the FA’s material, he’s coming up with new ideas. An excellent blog which will get you thinking about how you can adapt different games to suit your team or age group.

Pavl Williams Better Football 

Pavl’s blog has always been full of insightful coaching material and session ideas but he’s just recently added a podcast in which he interviews Gareth Southgate and the FA’s Nick Levett on the topic of youth development in the UK. I know Pavl is looking to add to that initial podcast and I think that’s a great reason to keep tabs on this website.

Chris Gooch’s Quest to Coach Blog 

If you harbour ambitions of coaching professionally then this is a blog you’ll both love and completely empathise with. Chris is working hard towards his ambition of coaching on a professional level and this blog is a living diary of his progress towards that most ultimate of goals. However, in addition to his story the blog also contains some excellent material around sessions and ideas which he’s tried or implemented and that makes this an essential read.

Hugo Langton’s ‘Langton Coaching’ blog 

My final blog recommendation is for a site which is very new to the coaching blogosphere but I think it’s definitely one to keep an eye on. Hugo’s got tons of coaching experience at both a youth & adult level and he’s started this blog to “discuss and debate football coaching issues”. The first two posts have been really interesting and I certainly think it’s a blog which is going to contain lots of strong opinion and very valuable advice as it evolves.

Off topic – I’m in India

Those of you who don’t follow me on Twitter won’t realise I’m currently working in India (day job, not coaching unfortunately) and therefore I don’t expect to be updating this blog until I’m back in 4-5 weeks time. As with other blogs, I don’t want people thinking this one’s gone to the grave because it’s not been updated in a while so hence the post.

In the mean time, enjoy a few pictures I’ve taken whilst out here!