Practice

Being organised and following a session plan are fundamental to good coaching. Knowing how to efficiently set up your session can save you time, increase ball-rolling time for the players, and minimise stress when you first arrive. In our Introduction to Soccer Coaching online course, Rob Sherman (Current Fiji Men’s National Team Coach and Former Technical Director of Football Australia) shares his system for ensuring you’ve got everything covered when you turn up to training.  Rob’s N.E.A.T system helps to ensure the players spend their…

This practice is designed to provide attackers with repetition of semi-opposed crossing and finishing and defenders a chance to work on stopping/defending crosses. Quick Navigation About the Video Additional Information Practice Overview Interpreting the Diagrams Diagrams Objectives Organisation Observations & Interventions About the Video In the video below, Dave will talk you through the structure of the practice, various outcomes and how you can adapt it for your players. Do you want to improve your ability to plan and deliver great sessions? Sign up for…

This practice is a positional game which focusses on getting wingers into position to take their opponent on 1v1. There are some great opportunities within the structure of the practice to work on position specific themes, particularly midfielders combining to exploit width. The practice is easily adapted based on smaller or larger player numbers but in this case is based on 12 players at training. Quick Navigation About the Video Additional Information Practice Overview Interpreting the Diagrams Diagrams Objectives Organisation Observations & Interventions About the…

The question this week comes from Paul via email Paul asks, “Should possession practices be directional?” Your Turn: Ask PDP Anything Do you have a coaching question that we might be able to help with?  We would love to hear from you!  Here’s what you can do: 1. Tweet your questions to us @playerdp, or contact us on our Facebook page.2. PDP Members can chat directly with the PDP team to ask questions, share ideas, and support each other on our exclusive Coaching Community.  Start your membership today,…

Sara Santos, Sergio Jiménez, Jaime Sampaio, Nuno Leite The Big Idea When you sit a spell and think over the major point of session planning in sports, you can’t avoid the big idea of transformation. Hence, such training programs are inherently designed around re-creation and hope. Faith in unknown possibilities is something like the observation of the American inventor, philosopher, and architect Buckminster Fuller (1895-1993) that, “There is nothing in a caterpillar that tells you it’s going to be a butterfly.” If players and coaches…

Zlatan Ibrahimovich is one of the great characters and creative players of modern football. PDP Lead Researcher, James Vaughan examines some of the reasons why. Watch this… Zlatan is the best example of affordances in action. Ibrahimovic sees and plays passes that very few players can because he sees the opportunity to move in ways that most people can’t. This allows Zlatan to make passes and score goals that no one else can. He is one of the most unpredictable, innovative and therefore creative players of…

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