r/SoccerCoachResources

Basically what the title says. Did anyone feel the same before starting their course? I signed up because I love football (soccer) and competition and I would like to do something in the sport, but when I watch games I only manage to see formations and some very basic patterns (like fullbacks overlapping).

I am also very afraid that I won't be able to come up with the drills to train the things that I would like to train.

Hi everyone, hoping for some advice with my U9’s.

I have a travel level team on the East Coast, and I think I have a pretty high-level team. We played in the rising stars cup last weekend and played swag (Philly Union’s preacademy) and lost 2-0. Just so people understand the level, my group is talented (I got lucky with a lot of them joining my club).

However, my team is very very poor at any movement off the ball. They’re not great at identifying open spaces, or moving in a way that loses defenders to be able to receive free and then progress. I know that they’re U9’s and the movement gets better with time. But are there any activities anyone has run that seem to get the movement piece down? More importantly, what are the constraints on those activities, coaching points you’re making to highlight and emphasize the behavior, references and cues you can have players looking for, or slogans you can keep repeating so players keep doing it? Or any other resources that are worth looking into? My end goal is to get the moving into open lanes to turn into a habit, something that the players do without even thinking.

Side note, I want to start getting into more technical sides of the game, and coaching those pieces. Right now, my way of coaching on that side is give them 1 simple point, and do a lot of reps and it’ll get better over time. This is mostly because I don’t know the very specific technical aspects that help players. If anyone has ideas or resources, would be super helpful to connect.

Thank you to all!

Background:
I have a 9-year-old son who plays for a competitive club and trains four times a week. Because I play the sport myself, I understand the game well. In an effort to help him improve, I also enrolled him in private 1v1 coaching sessions twice a week. Sometimes I do some drill with him on top of those sessions.

The Challenge:
Despite a total of six training sessions a week, I am seeing minimal progress. More importantly, I don’t see the internal drive in him to get better compared to other kids his age.
For example, before every single training session, I remind him to focus on key game habits (like scanning the field). He always agrees, but when he gets on the field, he does not apply it. I dont also him applying any of the things he doing in 1v1 coaching. I dont even see him trying his best during coaching.
When I ask him if he truly wants to play, he always says yes. However, I am beginning to worry that he is only saying "yes" because he has made close friends at the club, rather than out of a genuine passion for the game itself.

My Questions:
1. Should I stop the extra sessions? Should I cut out the 1v1 private coaching and just let him focus on having "fun" during his regular club training?

2. Should we scale back his competitive level? Would it be wise to ask the club to move him to a lower division, or start declining invitations to travel games? That way he wont feel the pressure of needing to be good?

In my case, I’d like to know if my way of supporting him in this sport is actually hurting him or maybe I just continue and maybe it would just click one day.

I used to do sports analysis and recently switched over to web dev. I was chatting with a school director the other day who asked if tracking data or analysis could genuinely help kids improve, and it got me thinking about the massive disconnect that often happens between coaches and parents.

For the Coaches:

When you’re dealing with 20 to 30+ kids a week, you obviously notice the small stuff—someone’s first touch getting cleaner, better passing, or just general confidence on the pitch. But tracking things like technical ability, physical changes, and decision-making over a six-month period can easily turn into a massive admin headache.

When a parent inevitably comes up and asks, "So how has my kid actually improved this year?", what do you do? Are you just relying on the eye test and memory? Jotting things down in a notebook? Messing around with Excel or some clunky app? What does your actual process look like, and how do you avoid drowning in admin work?

For the Parents:

You invest a ton of time and money into these seasons. When you ask a coach how your kid is doing, what are you actually hoping to see? Do you just want a quick 5-minute chat on the sideline about their effort and attitude? Or do you genuinely want to see tangible "data," progress tracking, and specific things they can work on at home?

It feels like coaches want to give good feedback but just don't have the time, and parents want to know how to help their kids but don't want to be "that overbearing parent."

I’m super curious to hear from both sides of the pitch—what is currently working for you, and what do you wish was easier?

Because I know immediately where we need to focus. But I have to give credit to the kids- their effort was there. I never felt for one second they gave up. The other team was stellar- we play u10- they were extremely well trained, had boys who nail the ball in the net from the top of the box and an all around solid team.

My team gave effort. Really good positive effort. We’re still very disjointed and playing like individuals on a team, versus a team. So I’ll take suggestions on how to really get better at holding space on the field versus “it’s just me and I have to take the ball all by myself” style of play. And positions- I’m thinking of breaking it down to assignments per position in a way they understand versus throwing them out there during the game (which happens) and they (the kids) end up lost.

I suspect the lack of cohesiveness comes from not knowing where to go. Am I right? All help needed please.

Also using scoreboard soccer to guide my sessions. Other ideas welcome. Again u10- competitive rec. (we travel regionally)

My son is a strong tennis player for his age (currently playing at county level and making steady progress every week). He also plays football, but we’re at a bit of a crossroads with his position and schedule, and I’d love some perspective.

Aged 7/8: Started as a goalkeeper. His team folded, so he moved to a new club as a midfielder**.**

That team also folded. He wanted to get back in net, so I got him 1 coach to 5 children goalkeeper training with a former pro keeper. He did really well compared to the older children, but because it was mid-season, no local clubs needed a keeper.

He joined a solid local team as a winger. He’s done really well, scoring plenty, passing well, and his fitness is really good (hitting 9-10 on the bleep test). His best friend plays keeper for this team, so he was happy on the wing. Around this time, he also developed a fear of getting hit in the face by the ball, and his team training overlapped with his keeper training session, so we dropped the keeper training.

He’s now talking about wanting to go back in goal again.

I’ve always felt he was a natural keeper, I bought him a full size goal (age appropriate) and I used to struggle to score past him in the garden, and I love practicing with him. That said, I’m not sure what the best move is. I’d love for him to restart his goalkeeper training, but I don't want him to lose his winger spot on his current team, where he's thriving and playing with a couple of his school class friends.

Has anyone seen a strong carryover between playing tennis and goalkeeping (footwork, reaction time, reading angles, etc.)? And for coaches or parents who've been here: how would you balance keeping his outfield spot while re-introducing goalkeeper training?

Its crazy as he does 10 hours tennis training a week, where football is 1 hour training. The football level he is playing at is all parent led, so volunteers.

Hi,

I'm not a coach but looking for advice from coaches on defending principles on a certain scenario. The red team is attacking with the winger carrying the ball inside shown with arrow direction (ball is the gray circle). There is another red team attacker open in the inside, and a blue defender after the red attacker. If I am the blue team defender shown with a star, what should I do?

Do I hold my ground and let the winger decide between passing to middle or taking a shot? Or do I go towards the attacker to challenge/intercept the ball?

Any thoughts are appreciated. Thanks !

https://preview.redd.it/oqflytfqk1kh1.png?width=995&format=png&auto=webp&s=187e92119e46170d20ede202cf1fe233e6956776

Ok, so I'm in need of some advice. I'm coaching my son's 3rd/4th grade very very very rec team in the US. This team has some kids who know soccer, some who have played but haven't been coached on skills, and at least one who has never played before. I'm torn on the best approach to make it fun and have them learn some skills. 

This is the first age group of this league where players should try to stay in position and we play a goalie and 8 on the field, for background info.  

First I'm looking for some general advice, what formation do you think makes the most sense for this age group (we played a 323 in our first game)?  What skills should be the main focus for the season? Any other helpful tips.

A specific question:

In our first game, it felt like the ball would fall into the no-man's-land in front of our defenders but they didn't have the confidence/awareness to come up and kick the ball back out wide to a teammate/open area of the field. Is this a teachable skill? Does anyone know a good drill to work on strong kicks from the defense?

I have been "nominated" with the opportunity to coach a soccer team full of 4 year olds. I played a little rec soccer growing up but really have no idea how I should coordinate our 4 pre season practices.

I don't plan on going over 25 minutes each practice. Chances are, my team will have 6 or so players. Should I just split my players and simply let the kids scrimmage each other or could I actually split time on a few drills? How would you organize this?

:
I’m 17 years old and have rarely played football in my life, although I used to play at an academy when I was 12. During school, I didn’t participate in any sports activities, but I also had the chance to play at a small academy when I was 15, mainly for fun.
I’ve been thinking about playing football again over the last few days because I have a lot of free time, and I’d also like to meet new people and make friends. However, whenever I think about going to try out at a new academy, I get nervous about making mistakes and feeling socially awkward.
I’m in pretty good shape, and the academy I’m interested in has players between 13 and 18 years old. However, I’m worried that I won’t feel welcomed because everyone might already have their own groups, and I’m not very confident socially.

Drills?

Medium/small sided games?

Possession games?

Set pieces?

white boarding or walkthourghs?

Hi all, first post here

I'm the manager of an u16 boys team with 22 players in the squad, I had no option but to have a large squad like this as the club had registered all 22 players before I knew what was happening. For the next 6 weeks we are playing in a grading league to see what level we are at and after that we will be put into proper leagues for the rest of the season..ie major league, division 1, etc.

For the grading league we will have 20 to 22 players at each game and give everyone as much game time as possible but when we start in our proper league we can't make 11 substitutions. I have a few options

1. Pick 11 of the best players and rotate the other 11 as subs each week, bring one group of 5 as subs one week then the other 6 the next week, this would be my preferred option but obviously it wouldn't be popular with the parents of the fringe players

2. Split the squad into 5 groups, 4 players in 4 groups and 6 players in one group, rotate which group doesn't get to play every week.

What's people's opinion of this? Are there any other options? Thanks

Retired/former coaches: I'm looking to purchase your old soccer/football coaching materials — handwritten notebooks, binders, practice plans, session diagrams, tactical notes, coaching-course materials, match notes, loose papers, etc.

I'm particularly interested in large collections accumulated over many years. They do not need to be organized, neat, modern or professionally produced. Old handwritten material is actually preferred.

If you've got boxes of coaching notes in an attic, garage or filing cabinet that you haven't looked at in 15 years, that's exactly what I'm looking for.

Collections from youth, high school, college, club, academy, semi-pro and professional coaches are all of interest. US and international material considered.

Please message me with a few photos and a rough idea of how much material you have.

This weekly thread is the ONLY allowable place for requesting people check out your app, channel, study, groups, blog, or general content that isn't sub sponsored. ONLY content meant to serve as a genuine resource or future resource to coaches should be posted. The goal of the sub is still dialogue and support for coaches. If a post or comment appears to be primarily marketing, brand building, or if general sub/reddit rules are broken your post may still be removed and you may be banned.

If you think a post falls somewhere in-between this and the main sub's criteria you can message mods.

To users: be careful with random links; hope this helps with spam some!

GameTime Manager VS SubTime app. Has anyone used both (or either one extensively) and can give some feedback on the paid full versions?

I want to be able to track playing time, assists, goals at a minimum. Do either of these apps allow you to track playing time and stats at specific positions long term, make individual player notes that can accumulate and easily be copied or printed?

There’s obviously a ton you could keep track of—stats, film, attendance, positions, development, past teams, etc. I’m curious what coaches actually find useful during a season versus the stuff you rarely look at or don’t really care about.

EDIT: Thanks to everyone who's commented so far, your thoughts and advice are great to read. I'm still not sure what I'm going to do yet, but there's plenty of time for that decision. The first thing I'm planning on doing is making sure the last training and match are as fun as possible for the kids. They deserve it after the year they've had!

I've been coaching my son in an U8s rec team over the season (Australia). We've got our final game of the season next week.

To say the season has been a struggle is an understatement. We have won a single game 1-0 and drawn 2, out of 16 games played. Over those 16 games, we've scored a total of 6 goals, and conceded 85. I've put my heart and soul into coaching these boys, but something just isn't clicking for them. I try constantly to shift focus onto things other than scores/results but they aren't dumb, they're 7/8 year old kids and they know that winning feels good and losing sucks.

I don't yell at them or berate them, I really try hard to be positive and encouraging during training and match days, focusing on getting passes or winning 1v1s, etc. but this last half of the season you can see the moment they switch off after they're a couple of goals down, as if they know there's no point putting in the effort any longer.

I've coached the whole season solo, no other parents have stepped up to help assist coaching at training, my manager just handles subs for me and nothing else. I'm feeling burned out and dejected. I feel like the advice given online about not worrying about goals and results is great for teams who have at least some success, but it's just loss after loss.

Right with that vent/context out of the way - I wanted to ask for anyone who's been in a similar situation what the right move is for the next year. A big part of me is thinking it's best to let these kids go their own separate ways and be absorbed by other teams. The club is huge and there are plenty of teams that will be mixed up moving into U9s next year. There is no grading whatsoever at our club, some teams will "pre-form", others go to "formation day" where teams are created from everyone else who's registered.

My son is one of the more skilled players on the team, and has expressed his frustration with many of his teammates' effort during games. He loves that I'm his coach, and he likes the players on his team on a personal level. But from a development point of view, I feel like he's missing out when there's only 1 or 2 other kids out of 10 who can play at his level.

I'm torn between doing what I feel is right for him and getting him on another team (no guarantees it will be better, but it's fairly likely given our track record), or moving forward and bringing the boys into U9s. That said, I'm going to assume many parents might make that decision for me and choose not to proceed in the current team anyway.

Apologies for the brain dump, I'm a bit mixed up, and trying to juggle what's right for my son primarily vs my enjoyment coaching him and the team. And I do enjoy it, the kids are fun, we have lots of successes at training, good attendance - there's just not much translation into performance at matches.

If you've made it this far, thank you, and any thoughts or advice would be much appreciated.