Thoughts on the Most Boring Game in History!

Well, I think the title of this post pretty much sums up my thoughts on the US v Canada game.  Despite holding the lions share of possession, the US performance was still one of the most boring to date.  I will briefly summarize some of the key points, but there is one I specifically want to address in detail as it is a systemic issue amongst coaches in the US and one of the biggest fallacies we continually coach our players into.

Talent ID Part 2

As I mentioned in my last post one of my resolutions for this year was to post more often, and I’ve settled on posting twice each month.  It’s something I feel is achievable given my busy schedule, but also allows me the time to post meaningful posts that hopefully is beyond or different than what you could find elsewhere.

To close this mini-series, I wanted to discuss the attributes I, specifically, look for when evaluating talent.

Talent ID

Again, I apologize for the delay.  One of my news years resolutions was to post more regularly and hopefully that will come to fruition.  I joined my state’s ODP staff this year and went through the tryout phase in mid-December.  This weekend we will hold our first training sessions with those selected to the state pools.  I cannot explain to you how frustrating a process this was at times.  What some people constitute as talent or lack of talent is mind-boggling and routinely during the try out process I found myself being at odds with the other evaluators.  To be honest, I found that a very reassuring fact. What I have found is that amongst the numerous issues we face with coaching and development, perhaps one of the biggest is talent identification.  If we don’t know what to look for how can we develop quality players?  Resoundingly, I have found that at every level, few have this ability.  In this post, I want to give you a glimpse at a few principles I follow when evaluating talent

My First Podcast

I had the great pleasure of doing a podcast with Jacques Pelham author and creator of the Football Garden, which was posted on his blog yesterday.  Great to read a someone’s views on the game, but often I find by listening to them you can determine whether they are actually full of it or not (hopefully, I come out alright).  I definitely have a new found respect for radio and tv analysts/commentators.  Being able to articulate your thoughts on the fly is definitely a developed skill!!

Filling the framework!

In addition, to my role as a director of coaching  I also coach a small private Christian high school.  We have found quite a bit of success over my 3 years (going on my 4th) reaching the state final 4 for each of my seasons although we have yet to reach the final.  We, recently, began training for our season a few weeks ago, although we have been doing off season work the entire school year.  It’s a frustrating experience for me, however.  I can do more with my high school team in 4 months, which includes exactly 2 current club players (although most have played club at one point or another) than I can with my club teams in 2 years.  Having access to the players 5 days a week, video, weight room, multiple fields, it makes my life as a coach significantly easier as compared to my club players whom I only see 2-3 times a week.  Despite only having 2 club players and only having very average technical players (although some tremendous athletes) by season’s end we will play some very good soccer.

Soccer Metrics

As the game continues to evolve on the field so do the tools we, as coaches, have at our disposal.  Technology has taken us a long way and professional coaches these days through the use of prozone analysis and opta statistics etc are able to glean a much clearer picture of how the game has transpired.  However, most of us probably don’t have access to such software.  It has only been in recent times, as far as I am aware, that statistical metrics have ever been given a serious consideration by soccer coaches. 

Supposedly we have tons of coaches teaching possession….BS!!!!

This post was born out of the comments from Gary Kleiban’s 3Four3 blog, which can be found here.   Gary’s blog is phenomenal and while I don’t always agree with everything he has to say, I can say that it does challenge me to question my own views and philosophy of the game, and there are very few people I’ve come across that can do that.  “As iron sharpens iron, so 1 man sharpens another.”  Gary’s question is a good one and one I’m not sure many of us have truly asked ourselves.  Why do you advocate possession soccer?  But that’s not what this post is about.  What it is about are the comments and the number of supposed coaches out there teaching possession soccer.  I call BS!!