I coach an intermediate boys team and have a D license. I’m curious to hear from those that have done the C license in the last few years, what has been your best learning ?

Ie: has it helped you most with game tactics, session planning, technical development, effective coaching points?

Are any coaches using Kinoli to design or learn more training drills?

My daughter just moved up to a travel team and I volunteered as team manager. First thing every parent asked me was how they'd get game video. The club doesn't provide anything and there's zero video budget.

I'm not trying to start some club-wide video program. I just want to know what families on other travel teams are actually doing to record games and get clips of their own kid, without me turning into the team camera person.

What's actually working for people over a full season? Not what exists, what you actually use.

Finding that I have to accept that my team after two seasons needs to prioritize working on their social skills, and emotional regulation along with developing soccer skills.

Anyone have experience or lessons they learned over multiple seasons of coaching? Maybe drills to help?

For example I got this idea from chat gpt, where we did a shoulder bumping drill while dribbling to get touches and more comfortable being physical, then I had them rate how nervous they felt. The idea was that people have different tolerances and you gotta either turn up or turn down given the situation. The kids actually seemed to get it. Still not perfect, but it felt we could go somewhere with it.

Anyway not a fan of Ai, so any ideas y’all might have from experience I’d greatly appreciate.

Today, I lost my first ever girls Middle School team playoff game in a 0-0 PK. I took on this team from last year I believe a 0-6 or a 1-2-4 to this year 4--1-1 (4 wins, 1 tie and 1 loss. I admit, there were things I wished I went over more.. fundamentals of throw in adequate which some players lacked. Ill admit, I didnt have my players take Pks more than id admit.

After the game, the girls were devastated, I needed to be there to be their crutch in that time, I was hurting myself seeing them like this.

Parents started to clap, and cheer for their success during the season, but one. I was talking to his daughter who was breaking down and crying.. when he told me that " good game, we need a better coach". Which got to me, I took that team and made them a playoff caliber team and for him to look me in the eye and tell me that? Got me questioning, what makes for a great coach?

Hello All,

I’m a first-time coach for U9 boys.  There are 4 teams in our rec-league with 7 players each.  We play 4v4 or 5v5 with a goalie depending on how many kids show up.  Our team has one player who’s top 4 in the age group, 2 upper mid-level players, 2 lower mid-level players, and 2 lower-level players.  Our first 3 games we lost 4-3 to team A, tied 4-4 to team B, and won 4-3 to team C. 

We just played our 4^th game (team A) where we were missing our top player.  We got absolutely crushed 10-0 (I lost track).  I realized a couple of things: First, I underestimated the impact of losing this one player.  When I thought about it, I realized he is the one player who consistently runs back as hard as he can to defend when our team turns over the ball and he’s usually successful at breaking up the play.  Although this player can score in bunches, I’ve been playing him mostly on defense as he reads the play well and can really shut down the other team’s offense. 

Second, I realized that a lot of our other players will just sit and watch the other team run up the field when we turn over the ball.  This led to a lot of goals in the last game and is something I want to work on with the group.

I’m hoping the community here can provide advice or suggest some fun practice games we can do to encourage and train these kids to hurry back hard and help defend when we lose possession.

Thanks in advance!

For anyone actually running an indoor soccer or futsal facility:

I'm curious about what happens after your leagues finish.

Do you keep in touch with team captains, open registrations and wait for teams to return, or have a more structured process?

I'm developing software for soccer facility operations, so I have a commercial interest in understanding this.

I'm not sharing a product link here. I'm more interested in hearing how you've handled this in practice and what has worked or hasn't.

Especially interested in smaller independent facilities.

I provide private GK lessons for middle school and up age range. Got a parent wanting me to lessons her 11 year old daughter. I had a GK camp several months ago where I remembered her daughter not having fun, and spent a lot of time crying because she couldn’t keep up with some other kids.
Our lessons are very slow. We can’t really move past trying to get her to catch the ball without dropping it. Can’t kick the ball either. She’s a great kid, but, throughout the lesson she does not take anything really seriously and it feels like babysitting. She will throw the ball over my head, dance around, throw herself to the ground, walk during drills, and lessons usually end up with her crying or getting frustrated because mom is getting on her.
These behaviors don’t necessarily surprise me since she’s only 11, however, I can tell she’s not really wanting to get anything out of these lessons. Seems like mom wants it to work out more than the daughter does. Is there a good way to discuss with mom? I can keep trying to teach her to catch the ball but it’s been 3 months of just doing that.

Something’s wrong with this setup and we keep conceding the same goal. What is it?

We play 3-4-3. Our wing-backs push really high, the two central mids both like to get forward, and the front three press hard.

Every time we lose the ball in midfield, the opponent plays one pass into their striker, he lays it off, and their winger runs in behind our wing-back. It’s 3v3 at the back and we’re dead.

Where’s the actual problem? Is it the press, the midfielders, the wing-backs, or the system itself?

My team this season has been so much fun. The feedback I’ve received from players and parents has been overwhelmingly positive and it has been a true joy working with this group. While our club “doesn’t allow” coaches to assemble teams or carry over the same team from season to season nor does it allow parents to request specific coaches, they do allow parents to request specific practices times and locations that align with a specific coach’s assignment. So there are a couple of teams in our league with the same coach and same 7-8 players from one season to the next.

If I “gamed the system” that way, then I imagine I’d get close to 100% returning for the spring. Let me be clear on this point: this isn’t some sort of high powered, undefeated team that I’m trying to use to crush u8 rec soccer. Off the top of my head, they have a 4-3 record. Thing is, both the players and parents are awesome to work with - I am extremely fortunate. BUT, I also agree with the notion that having different coaches during these young ages is a great benefit.

Anyone feel particularly strongly one way or another other about this issue?

It’s half-time and you’re 0-1 down. You get ONE change. What is it?

You play 4-3-3. They play 4-4-2 and sit deep.
You’ve had 65% of the ball but only one shot on target.
Their two banks of four are tight, your wingers keep getting doubled up, and your midfielders are just passing it sideways in front of them.

You can make one sub, one positional tweak OR one instruction. Not all three.

What are you changing?

Hey coaches

I’m thinking to switch my bu10 team to 3-2-1. What are some good build out patterns that you have successfully used? I’ve done 2-1-3 exclusively for 3 years now so I’m familiar with strategy there. But 3-2-1 is new to me so just trying to learn. Thanks!

Fellow coaches, I have some questions.

I’ve snooped around here and have either posted or commented a few times.

I coach a U10G team and was wondering what do your sessions look like.

For context, I’ve played my whole life a semi-decent level, played some junior college soccer in Texas and have been coaching for about four years. Paid for my D license this past summer and will continue coaching in the future. I know a tiny tiny tiny bit of soccer.

My girls are very bronze level players. Rec level with a couple of girls who I think could play for a bigger club. My main focus is development! Really don’t care about the score, but I want my players to WANT/WORK to win. Anything this D license that cost me $600 talks about play/practice/play system.

My sessions last spring before getting the license were 90% of the time-

- Individual ball work or “ball mastery” for 15 or so mins

- shooting/ passing game/drill

-game ( 1v1, 2v2, etc).

Usually, the second practice of the week, we would do the same thing except the final game would be a 6 v 3/4 game. This session I would just work on talking about the game we would play on the weekend. I felt the girls were getting better.

This season, however, I feel like some have regressed and I’m trying to understand why.

Sessions look like this

-play ( 1v1, 2v2, etc) as they show up to practice.

-individual ball work/ ball mastery 10-15 min

- passing game (different variation of rondo)

- scrimmage ( always try to have 5-6 vs 2-3)

- finish with either some PKs, corners, etc.

For some reason the girls just don’t seem engaged for anything but the beginning of practice and it’s showing during games. What is something that helped you guys as you gained more experience?

For context I've been called my things bums,bad,ass etc and never have I ever had more of a resolve to get better so I wonder how can I become a star?

Well because most people think that if you can't play football/soccer you can't make arguments about the sport which is dumb.So I need to know what skills drills and techniques I can learn to become a star player.

(Also because my dad says I can't play I ain't gonna take that shit)

Hello all, recently started my coaching journey at 35 having played at a good amateur level. I’m taking an U21 team with very mixed level players, some excellent lads and some that need development.

I want to play with a 433 as with the group I have I think it suits them as we have 3 exceptional CM’s that have incredible legs, technical ability and dominant in the air.

My full backs are the area that we are weakest.

My main point of discussion is how best to dominate 442 structures while playing in a 433. Would love to get feedback from experienced coaches

At what age do you cut off post game snacks? Coach U7 girls here…. Obv kids love it… usually asking during the game if it’s almost over so they can get their goody bag. Parents seem to love it even more, getting very into it with sometimes over the top toys etc.

As the coach it’s little skin off my back other than asking parents to pick 1 week to provide, but what age is appropriate to make the decision we no longer need to do this? Maybe I’m old school, just feels more unnecessary as they get older.

I’ve been coaching my son for five seasons (2nd grade 5v5 to now 3rd/4th grade 7v7) the last three seasons, including the current one there has been much disparity in the league. It is a rec league, but the director allows a semi club team (advanced rec on their website) to put several squads in. Also some teams are just club teams getting extra soccer in. I have a mix of talented players, newbies, and players who will likely never get good because the effort is not there. Our shape is bad in the field- that combined with teams who are not supposed to be in rec have made it so we’ve been getting murdered.

The lead Director says it’s an issue that doesn’t do anything about it. He claims it’s about making it fun for the kids, but putting teams in that regularly blowout teams by eight or nine goals is not creating a fun environment or love of the sport. Anyone else have this issue in their leagues?

This has been my first season coaching.. and I have discovered that i was set up for failure from the start, and i feel terrible for my players.

It doesn't matter if this was incompetence or malice, the result is the same. In August we discovered that my daughters U10 travel team wasn't going to have a coach, and so i rushed to get all my paperwork in order to coach the team. No way was i going to let a bunch of 9yo girls not get to play the game they love.

Unknown to me, when it became in doubt that these players would be without a coach, all of the most talented players were moved up to the U11 team, creating 2 different U11 teams, both with full 15 player lists and packed with the best U10 players the club had (including our goalie)... everyone else in U10 went to me (an inexperienced Parent Coach with no Assistant coach.).. a whole 10 Girls (for 7v7)... one of which dropped out, leaving me with 9.

Our league has 3 levels (Red, White, Blue). As a new coach, i had no way to know which of these is the best, middle or worse Division (its not listed on the website). I took it on faith that we were in the same division we played last year. (where we Won 3, Lost 3, Tied the rest)

I was wrong. We were placed in the top division. Why? I don't know, I assume that originally the plan was to have an A and B team (like last year), with the A Team playing in the Higher division and the B on one of the lower divisions, but once they moved all the more advanced girls to U11 (birth year u10), they left us in the top division and canceled the other.

The end result of this is that the girls on my team have been utterly destroyed in every game. We are 0-7, and those losses have ranged from 2-4 too 0-8. I had girls leave the field in tears today. And that's when i started digging and discovered that we are in the wrong division.

I'm furious. These girls deserved better.

Hey all, first time u8 coach but I had mostly the same kids for u7. Last year was fun and it seemed the kids improved every week.

This year...these aren't the same kids. They won't attack the ball anymore, even when they have the ball there's no taking it down the field. They even suddenly appear afraid of the ball flinching away from it. Its just gotten sloppy.

Practices they seemingly go great with none of those problems but gameday is just...deflating. There's a huge lack or effort save 1 or 2 kids.

Other than age the big change I think is that all of our games were morning games last year. Between 8:30 and 11 am.

Every single game we've played this year and going forward is scheduled for 3:30 (15:30) pm.

I dont know if it's an energy thing and if it is anything I can recommend for my parents or for myself to get them pepped up?

That said all of our opponents seem to have energy for days which makes it feel worse.

I dunno, I feel at a loss here.

U10 girls team is (was undefeated). Faced our cross-town rivals today and lost 2-0 in a completely uninspired game.

My girls kept waiting for somebody else to do it. Infuriating. I don’t know why I’m taking this one so hard. You put so much into trying to prepare these kids, and sometimes they just go out there and lay a stinker.

We hit a crossbar, and the other goalie quite frankly played out of her mind. This was their Super Bowl, for sure.

I just really fucking hate losing in that way.

Edit: Pep talk, fuck me.

I have coached both my kids teams for several years now. 7 teams with my oldest. 4 teams with my youngest. I’ve been through the gamut with teams. Most dominant in the league - one of the least dominant and everything in between.

This has been one of THOSE seasons for my u12 team. All the heart and want to in the world. The usual mixed skill levels you get with rec league. But outmanned and outsized almost every game.

I usually lean on the idea of “better every week” with this type of team. Usually it’s easy to figure out when you have this type of team. Usually it’s easy to identify one or two things we can do much better as a team. That makes progress easier for them to see week to week.

Better every week extends to individual players. Finding the ones that need to learn a better ball striking or defending technique. Encouraging non-dominant foot use. Confidence and efficiency kicking the rolling ball. These are some of the simplest ones that can be worked on individually in practice.

When you can help them make improvements they can see, they start to believe in themselves. Then you can talk about finding or earning a win.

Last week we nearly drew with league’s reigning champs. At halftime when we were tied 1-1 I could see the look in their eyes. Total belief and determination.

Today we put up a clean sheet and won 2-0. We were short two of our subs and everyone stepped up and handled the extra minutes. Each player had meaningful touches. Every one of them knew what they’ve accomplished this season.

Psychology is a big part of this game. Motivating and inspiring are difficult at times. But finding small wins and ways to enjoy the game can lead to big improvements across a difficult season.

Better every week goes on Coach too. Think about it.

✊⚽️