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Skill Acquisition

How our players acquire skills through formal practice and informal play.

Defending is an art form and easily overlooked when the focus in youth development can often be around exciting, attacking play. PDP Technical Advisor & UEFA A licensed coach, Dan Wright shares a session on defending around the box. The main aims of this session are: – Lots of repetition of the key principles of delay, deny and deflect – Progressing from defending 1 v 1 to defending as a unit – Repetition of blocks, headers and clearances – Developing the decision-making of the key…

What are the challenges creativity poses? PDP Lead Researcher James Vaughan challenges the place of this important ingredient in human development. The problem with creativity is that our world is not designed for it…however, before we get into that, a few disclaimers: 1. This blog post may be viewed as controversial, confronting and a bit annoying (but it is all evidence based). Therefore, when I want to make an important point, I’ll use an academic reference (peer reviewed) and, where possible, I’ll include a full…

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