Soccer is a team sport, but within the game there are a lot of 1 versus 1 situations. In these situations there is no help, not for the offensive and not for the defensive player. In this article I’ll explain you what the priorities of your defensive players should be when they play a 1 versus 1 on the field. I think it’s very important to talk about these 3 priorities with your players, so they are aware what their options are. As a coach you can use these 3 priorities for your practice. You can practice the choices your players make in the field and analyse them by using these priorities. Because 1 versus 1 defending is the base for defending as a team, I think you should start practicing how to defend around the age of 7. If your players are older than this age you can still practice with these priorities and improve the defensive skills of your players.

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As a professional soccer coach the main thing that keeps me going is of course soccer. In the summer this is still soccer, but it’s a little different than in other seasons. This is because the company I work organizes summer camps. This means that during the day we have a lot of children who we teach how to play soccer. In a regular season we mostly work in the evenings because the players are in school during daytime.

The alarm goes at 7.00 AM o’clock and I mostly jump out bed, ready for a new day. I start with preparing myself by making and eating breakfast, taking a shower, brush my teeth and do my hair. I will leave my place around 7.45 AM. It’s a 20 minute drive to our facility. Because we have inside and outside fields our camps always go on. Last week it was really hot and some other companies cancelled their camps. We can take our children inside, where they don’t have the burning sun on their faces all day long.

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Soccer Scoring Zones

In soccer there aren’t any marked scoring zones, but they are definitely there. There is a marked area, the 18 yards box, but this isn’t really a scoring zone box. It’s more a marked area that shows how far the goalkeeper can use his hands and when a direct free kick will be a penalty kick. Knowing more about the soccer scoring zones will help you when you try to improve the scoring skills of your team. You want to have as many changes as possible in the best scoring zone. So when you are practicing your finishing, you might want to focus on this area.

If you look at a soccer field, we can determine 4 different scoring zones. The 1ste scoring zone is the one that’s the most easy to score from, when you have a chance. Of course it’s the hardest to create chances in the 1ste scoring zone. In the image on the left side you can see the different scoring zones. In this article I’ll tell you more about the different zones and how to make sure you’re team is using the zones the right way.

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Maybe you are familiar with the feeling I used to have just minutes before your team enters the field to play a game. I always do my pre-game speech (How to do a structured pregame speech , 10 Tips to making your pregame speech stick) first and than the players will start to warm up. After they warmed up everybody goes back to the dressing room to change clothes and wear our team jerseys.  The team is waiting to start the game, but there are a few minutes more to wait. Everybody is standing or sitting in the dressing room. I always had the feeling I was expected to say something, but what? Was I going to tell them the key points of the pre-game speech again, was I going to tell them something to motivate them a little more or was I going to tell them something completely different? The feeling you need to say something as a coach, but you don’t have a clue what to tell your players. It’s a feeling I don’t like, not knowing what to tell my players, or what sort of thing I need to say. I tried to use all tree possible kinds of talks or just said nothing and experienced some advantages and disadvantages of all methods.

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I recently wrote an article about the tasks I give my soccer team captains. The article, ” 15 tasks for a soccer team captain “ , is only talking about tasks. In this article I’d like to tell you a little more about the qualities I want my soccer team captain to have.

I’d like to start this article with telling you that the criteria I use to pick my Soccer team captain depends on the age of the team. At a young age I think it’s good idea to make all the players team captain by turn. So every player has the experience of being the soccer team captain. Some player will like to be the captain and some won’t. That’s no problem for me, I want all of them to try it. I think it helps their development and understanding for the captain. If a player did the job once, the will respect their soccer team captain when they are older. Until the age of U12 I’d like to rotate team captains. After U12 I will select 2 or 3 players who will be the team captains. I select the Soccer Team Captains on different kind of qualities.

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You have to play a game with your team and you want to give a pregame speech. The first question you have to ask yourself: “What do I want to tell my players?”. With this article I provide a structure to you. If you will use this structure you will be sure that your pre-game speech makes sense.

I recently wrote an other article about the pre-game speech, ”10 Tips to make your pre-game speech stick”. If you are able to combine these 2 articles your pre-game speech will definitely help your players!

Start your pregame speech with some general information.
The first part of the pregame speech you have to give the players some general information. Who do we play against, what is their position in the league. Have they scored a lot of goals and did they get a lot of goals against them scored? Just some basic information. I always tell something about the weather and the field. If the field is real dry this inflects the dribbling possibilities. I also ask the players some questions about the last game we played. What went well and what didn’t?
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The Soccer Team Captain is a very important person for a soccer team. The captain haves different tasks so he/she can help the team. This tasks are on and off the field. When your players are at a young age, you might consider changing the team captain every game. If you do so every player get the experience of being the team captain. You’ll help the leadership development of all your players. When your team is a little older you can chose one or two team captains. I prefer two team captains, because if one of them isn’t able to attend or gets injured, the other captain is still able to lead the team.

I mostly work with the same tasks for my captains. Some of the tasks will not apply at a certain age. I have 15 possible tasks for my team captains. I suggest you read the list and think which tasks could be helpful for you and your team

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This article is about the role of the assistant coach. Maybe you have an assistant coach, you are an assistant coach or maybe after this article you want to find yourself an assistant coach. I’ll explain a little more about the role of the assistant coach. His tasks and responsibilities. A lot of people think that assistant coaches or only useful at a high level, this is a myth. Even when you are the coach of the U7 team with players that never played soccer before, an assistant coach can help you teach the players. With an assistant coach it is more likely to develop your players faster than without a an assistant coach. Maybe an assistant coach is even more useful with the U7 team than with a great skilled U16 team.

This article is part of Coaching Staff series. The series is about the different staff positions. This is the first article in this series. 

 In this article I’m talking about a male (assistant) coach (with words like he and his). This is just for the writing purpose. A female (assistant) Coach can be just as good or even better than a male (assistant) Coach.

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Maybe you have experienced the following: After preparing a great soccer pre-game speech your team is doing exactly nothing you talked about during the pre-game speech. During half-time you are doing a speech again. All players are quite and you think they know what you expect from them the second half. The second half starts and they still aren’t doing anything you asked them to do. After the game you are thinking about the speeches and the responds of your players. What you are actually asking yourself: Why didn’t I reach them?

With the following 10 tips you can make your pregame speech stick. These tips are not about the soccer tactics, but about the organisation of your pre-game speech. . If you want to know more about what you should tell your player’s in the pre-game speech, you can read an other article I ‘ll publish later this month.

1. Prepare your pre-game speech.
This sounds pretty obvious, but it still is the most important tip I can give you. Prepare your pre-game speech. If you know what you want to tell your player, you probably can. I you have to think about what you want to tell them, standing in front of them will not work. I always use flip over papers (also see tip number 5). By using these papers I force myself to think about what I want to say before I’m standing in front of my team.

2. Don’t make your pregame speech everlasting.
If you want the things you are telling your players in the pre-game speech to stick, you have to make sure your speech is not too long. An average person can stay focused for about 15 minutes. For small children this will be even less. So how much time you can take depends on your player, but in general I advice to make sure the pre-game speech is not longer than 10 minutes. For u10 team and younger you might want to think about not giving a pre-game speech. Only use tip number 10 for these ages.

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One of my favourite systems of play is 1-4-3-3. In this article I will explain why I do like this system so much. What are the strengths and weaknesses of this system of play. Why I like this system of play so much will be pretty obvious, as a Dutch soccer coach I like to play total soccer. The 1-4-3-3 system of play is the best system to use when you want your team to play total soccer. Let’s first show how a 1-4-3-3 system of play looks:

As you can see in the images above there are 2 ways to play the 1-4-3-3 system. The left image shows how to play the 1-4-3-3 with an attacking central midfield player. The attacking central midfield player is the famous number 10. The right image shows to play the 1-4-3-3 with a defensive central midfield player.

The strengths of the 1-4-3-3 system.

The 1-4-3-3 system is giving your team some real strengths. Of course you still have to develop your players, but this system will help your players to develop their skills. This are 5 strengths of the 1-4-3-3 system:

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