r/SoccerCoachResources

I’m sorry for the long post. I’m frustrated. So some background. We’re in Ontario, Canada. We signed my son up for U6 this summer for just some sport activity. We didn’t want to be coaches but they called me 3 months ago and I was the last option to coach so of course I said yes so these kids can have fun. I have a 3 year old and the 5 year old and I’ve been around sports and hockey since I was 11 so I thought I could do it.

I basically follow the outline they give us for the practises. We do 30 mins of “drills/skills” and then 30 mins 3v3 against the other team on the field. But what I’m learning is that these kids don’t have the patience or attention span for complicated drills. I’m basically doing games with a soccer ball and learning on the fly.

We actually had a really good first week. We played a team and it was pretty even and the coach and I got along and managed everything perfectly.

That was ok for the first week but the second we had a very bad experience. The other team on our field was doing massive complicated drills and totally destroyed us in the game. They would swarm our players and wouldn’t let us regroup to centre after they scored and then it’d be in the net again. They’d lob goals from centre and score. Their coaches said nothing and did nothing. I think we scored maybe 2 goals in 30 minutes. Not that scoring goals matters but my team couldn’t even do anything and that’s my real issue.

I guess my question is how do I manage all of this? I’m just trying to get my boys to have fun and work together but others seem to not have that idea.

Looking to do a bulk buy of balls for a new club I’m joining and was wondering what you guys thought were the best balls available right now?

Some balls I’m currently looking at Nike Academy, Quickplay Aerotech(asked about these yesterday), Select Numero 10(I think is the most popular), and Adidas MLS training.

Also what sites do you guys use to purchase soccer gear?

I never played soccer so take this with a grain of salt….

My son has gotten really into soccer. He’s okay. Not great but an average player on his club team. With his interest growing, I’ve started to learn more about it.

One thing that bugged me about this past season was the focus on mistake free playing. It seems to hurt the player development.

Some examples:

- Goal kicks booting it past build out line
-Kickoffs go backwards and then a big boot towards the opposing goal
-Defenders just booting it to the other side
-Defenders always taking the ball to the outside instead of looking for the open player
-Midfielders afraid to pass across the field

Is this like this everywhere in youth soccer? How do other coaches handle this?

Edit: For clarification: this is 11U

Let me know if this gift link doesn’t work.

Sharing this because we’ve talked about this so many, many times in the sub.

Link without paywall: https://archive.is/CdMD0
Hat tip u/simplyclueless

So, I am running into a problem I've never had in my short coaching career (U12 boys).

We we had a very inconsistent season last year and finished 3rd from the bottom. So, we were dropped down a division. In the offseason we picked up a bunch of new players who are astonishingly skilled. A number of my existing players have developed a lot as well. I was worried that we would run into this problem and it seems I was right.

We are 2 games into our season. We won our first match 9-5, with the opponent's goals coming mostly after we started being silly with who played keeper. Last night we won 18-0 and I feel awful. Winning is not my primary goal. This score is bad for everyone involved.

I was slow to respond to the problem and my interventions didn't really make a huge difference. I instructed to only shoot outside the box and told them they needed to work the ball around more. They can only do that so much. By the last quarter I had pulled players so we were down 2. We were still completely dominating play and scoring.

Any ideas on what to do? I don't want to ruin the sport for opposing players, I don't want to humiliate opposition with my attempts to balance the game, and I don't want to take the fun out of it for my boys.

Edit: Thanks for all of the ideas. To address a few points:

- The season is active and there is no opportunity to modify our schedule. I will look for tournaments and scrimmages to get my team exposure to more suitable opposition.

- We rotate positions regardless. No amount of rotation was fixing what happened last match.

- I am planning on introducing restrictions proactively next match with the hopes that they take hold a bit better. I want to target build out and play up the wings.

- A lot of great constraints like only score with headers, must play through GK, must switch fields, minimum pass criteria, etc. Thanks!!!

I have twin daughters (u15) who are looking to switch clubs. After their first practice with the club they’re interested in, they were invited back to more practices. Tonight, will be their 3rd practice. This clubs try outs are next week, but they cannot attend (there is a school event that they must go to). We made sure the coach knew immediately and reminded him again last week. Our current club is rolling out offers this week, so we are expecting one soon. How do I handle getting an offer from this new club if we cant attend their tryouts? Can I email the coach after practice tonight (he has another practice immediately after, so I do not want to bother him then) and just remind him that we cant attend try outs and ask if they will be receiving an offer for his team? I dont want to seem pushy, but because we cant attend try outs and may be receiving another offer, I want to make sure we have all our ducks lined up to make a decision.

Following feedback that was a resounding “no” and with constructive criticism to the drill I designed I thought I’d share the session I ended up running with tonight.

Thank you for the responses.

1. Red Light, Green Light (8–10 Mins)
   Setup: Half pitch.

2. Three-Person Line Passing (10 Mins)
   Setup: Three players spaced evenly across the sideline of half the pitch.
   Focus: Weight of pass and running into open space.
   The Goal: Players sprint sideline-to-sideline while maintaining their lanes, practicing passing ahead into open grass for their teammate to run onto, rather than hitting them directly in the feet.

3. Gate Passing in Pairs (10 Mins)
   Setup: 10 pairs of random cone "gates" scattered across half the field.

4. 5v5 Dribble-to-Score Match (10 Mins)
   Setup: Half-field scrimmage using the halfway line and goal line as sidelines. 6-meter-wide goals on each side.
   Goals can only be scored by dribbling through the goals

5. Goal Kicking & Tech Correction (10 Mins)
   Setup: Shooting at goal from at least 1.5m outside the penalty box.dribbling ball around outside of play back to position. Kickers who only toe poke don’t have to move if they kick with any area of foot other than toe.

6. 5v5 Standard Game (10 Mins)
   Setup: Same half-field dimensions, finishing with standard 2-meter cone goals. Normal kick-through scoring allowed.

I started working at this soccer club. I've been there for about a year, most of the other coaches are well seasoned coaches who have been there for a while. We live in a small, predominantly white, upper class segregated city so a large majority of the players at our club are very affluent white kids. This year at tryouts, we've had a few people of color (mainly blacks but some hispanics)" We as coaches are all required to rate each girl at tryouts on a scale from 1 to 5.

1 being they aren't ready for the club and 5 being they need to move higher up in the club to a different tier because they are too good for this level. There's 10 coaches, including myself that evaluated 100 girls in the span of 5 days. I've been going over my evals and I've noticed that one of the coaches, Eric, has ratings that are basically outliers compared to the rest of our ratings only when it comes to the black girls that tried out.

For example, so far, I have gone back over every black girl from tryouts and if all ten coaches gave her a 4 and 5, Eric, gave her a 1 or 2. He also did not write any notes for the white girls he evaluated but under the black girls evals he wrote things like "unathletic, lacks technical and tactical IQs, not impactful on the field, could stand to get more training which is why I rank them low, think she would do much better in a lower tier"

Notes are optional but I checked his evals and he only wrote notes on black kids and they were all negative notes. I came across this because I evaluated a black girl who was very good at goalkeeper and also played as a center back and I ranked her a 4 and her other ranks were 4,4,4,5,4,4,4,5 but I noticed that Eric rated her a 2 and said she wasn't "impactful on the field, didn't get a lot of touches on ball"

I can't imagine what he gains by not letting black kids be on teams but I find it weird that no one has caught this. I really don't have any stance to make any accusations but I wanted to know how you would treat the situation. I am a huge advocate for equality and while I know some may look at this and say "what's the big deal, it's just youth soccer" I don't want a kid to miss out on an opportunity because of their skin tone or social economic background and I also don't think someone should be employed in youth sports if they are going to treat kids differently based on the color of their skin.

I asked this question in a thread before, but I’m obsessively trying to game out my daughter’s future. My daughter is a great goalie - she’s been playing since she was 6, and is also a gymnast so she hurls her body at balls and makes great saves, even though she’s smallish. She’s only 8 now. She’s 30th percentile for height, which will be about 5’4”. She also plays defense, and I put her in summer futsal to improve her ball handling so maybe she can play wing. She’s a “bubble” kid on the B team, and I wish she could move to A. I’ve noticed the club is a little biased against smaller girls in general (an awesome girl got held back on B team, and the only “issue” with her is she’s quite short), and they also preferentially pick taller goalies, even though my daughter has a better record in the goal.

Goalie training is its own thing, and she does get it through the club, but I’m debating getting her private lessons in it over the summer just in case she wants to keep playing it. It only occurred to me this year that maybe it’s not a great position for her. She’s been our primary goalie for years in rec.

Is it beneficial for her to be able to play goalie as well as something on the field, or should I try to steer her away because it’s a waste of her time given her stature?

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to seek out help especially as far as drills that I can have my younger sister do that will help her with her goalkeeping. She is fairly new to the sport and she is very excited that she made her first competitive team. She wants to work towards being the teams goalkeeper but she has little to no experience but is determined to gain the position. Any advice would be helpful as I have little to no knowledge when it comes to goalkeeping. Thanks!

We've most likely all seen where Donovan says youth coaches seem like they know more than him. Here's how I think we can help youth soccer.

Donovan has called out some parents and some coaches and I don't think he's completely wrong.

Basically with him saying half the youth coaches think they know more than he does. However that means there's half that's willing to listen and learn.

I see a bunch of youth camps for the kids and I'm 100% for it, but coaching resources are either locked behind a paywall or there's so much information it's hard to decipher what works.

I'd love to see coaching clinics. I'm not talking about these half crap licensing classes. It'd be nice to get practical hands on advice from people who know more than us.

If US soccer really wanted to help us, they'd be putting coaching clinics on each summer for different regions. And coaches don't exactly get paid a ton at the youth level, so these either need to be free or low cost. If youth soccer wanted to make more money in the long run we should be educating us coaches to the fullest extent.

As title says what's better overall if costs are about the same. I can get some rebounders pretty cheap on sale like 10$ diffence.

Are the ones off Amazon not as durable as one I make out of plywood and 2x4s. Besides being a cool project to do with my kids is it actually worth it vs just ordering off Amazon and sitting on the couch?

Hi everyone I am currently a college student I grew up playing soccer throughout my youth and up until a little bit of college. I volunteered at the park district and ymca as a soccer coach a bit but not a lot of experience in coaching besides my playing experience which I had some great coaches.
I was looking to start maybe a 4-6 week program over the summer teaching kids footwork and other stuff as well. I know travel sports are expensive so I’m hoping I can help bridge the gap and get kids to enjoy the sport without the parents needing to spend an arm and a leg. Any advice you guys would give me or if you’ve done something like this before?

It seems that it is just ‘Premier 1” State League. Now it just requires application and events to cram in games instead of a normal season.

Hi, will try to keep this brief. My daughter has a decision to make between two clubs. She's going to be a U13 next year. This year she played on a DPL team (our club has 2 DPL per birth year, hers was considered lower than the other). She wants to continue to play with her current coach - this cosch has been exactly what she needed for her development and confidence this year, and she's made great progress. However, our current club is adding GA Aspire next year, and that plus the age change affects is making things tricky (as everyone in the club world can attest to). Tryouts for current club aren't until next week. And the club hasn't released coaching assignments for next year (despite repeatedly saying they will soon 🙄).

To give her another option, she tried out at another local club. That club has ECNL and ECNL-RL teams. She was given an offer for the 3rd team, which is NAL. We aren't badge chasers and weren't expecting a ECNL offer. Talked to someone from that club a little over a week ago, and got some more info. That coach invited her to a practice last week, as the majority of the players on his current U12 team were given NAL offers as well. Practice was awesome and she said everyone was friendly, supportive and inclusive, and she found the coach to be strong and of a similar philosophy and style as current coach. However, that coach won't be assigned to that team next year.

Originally, we were going to have her tryout with her current club next week and see where everything fell. But then we just got a notification from the other club that her offer there expires tomorrow. So now she's stuck with a hard decision.

My husband thinks we should talk to the other club and ask for an extension on the offer. Does that sound reasonable? We're not new to club but, as other parents probably feel, are frustrated by the timelines and trying to figure out what's best. Ultimately, we let her drive the bus and will do a pros/cons list tonight with her. But we welcome any insights and suggestions. TIA!

Hi all,

I have an important game coming up in a few days, and the team we're playing has a very big and physical midfielder, usually floating around the left side. Once he has the ball at his feet, he can essentially do whatever he chooses, as all players just bounce off him.

How would you guys deal with this? I tried a man-mark in our last matchup, but he was able to body our players off the ball. I'm afraid of doing a double mark, as that leaves another midfielder open. We play a 4-3-3, and I don't really want to change formation.

Ok, the title may be confusing, but I'm wondering if anyone has any secret ways of really driving home the idea of being between an opposing player and the goal on things like throw ins and corner kicks. I have a group of very distracted boys that I want to teach this to as I truly think it'll up their game a ton (for a team consisting of half with skill and half playing because they're being told to).

Any ideas are welcome! And for the age group (U8), I do keep it quick, fun, etc. so I'm certainly not looking to lecture them.

im currently coaching a womens team of beginner-amateur level. we seem to be leading every game in the 1st half, but as soon as the 2nd half starts, the team just crumbles and we end up losing. how do i build up their tenacity to want to win the game, and that mentality to either maintain the lead or to extend it.

It's a subjective question on an emotion-eliciting topic, but as fairly as you can answer (because there is good/bad everywhere!), curious to hear what you feel the state of the game is around you: clubs, leagues, state associations, refs, coaching and the general game.