Does Your Soccer Team Have fun...and Win? Learn to develop players and dominate teams We developed the CoachingSphere as a framework to help you visualize your role as coach and to cultivate the best development of players and teams. The five areas are: team management, player psychology, technical skills & drills, soccer tactics and fitness & nutrition. Utilizing this framework enables us to easily break down each of the five building block components and examine them individually and in context for the team and the player for maximum player development. Sometimes well-intended coaches take tons of practice time lining up their players on the field like pieces in a World Chess Championship. What’s the end result? A big fat waste of time! Understanding the capabilities of the U6 player, we know that players at this age group have: No sense of direction No sense of boundaries No soccer vision – they are only aware of their most immediate surroundings Given those characteristics, does it make any sense to try and setup your players on the field? We don’t think so either.

Team Management Before you even meet your players or step onto the field, you are managing the team. This area encompasses all aspects of the game because you are the director. Not only does this include the four on-field aspects of the game, but also all the things that need to happen off the field: coaching philosophy, team meetings, paperwork, interfacing with parents, quickly disseminating information, injuries, tryouts, etc. We will explore in depth the ways in which you can efficiently become the CEO of your team to ensure everyone’s success. Ultimately, the goal is to ensure that everyone has more fun on the field and develops – including you as the coach!

Technical Skills & Drills This is really the core of our work as youth coaches. How do we help develop the necessary technical skills within our players? What are the best drills and where should we start? Dribbling, trapping, heading…it’s all so overwhelming. At younger ages, soccer is mostly an individual sport. Yep, read that again. Think about your son or daughter at age five, six or seven. Do they naturally share? And why don’t they? They’re naturally selfish and because they don’t get the play toy back. And, so, armed with this information, it is foolish to emphasize passing.

Soccer Tactics This area encompasses the all the strategies behind playing: formations, set plays and restarts, positions and spacing. Many times, coaches spend far too much time on this area – at the youth level – instead of the more fundamental technical skills. It is curious and looking inside our sports culture provides some insight.