Let Players Touch the Ball

As a coach and spectator of many games, there is very few things less settling than seeing players who receive a ball in a game, and their automatic reaction is to kick the ball away! This is very frustrating to watch because the majority of times these players have many different options to either dribble or to make a pass to help maintain possession of the ball, yet this doesn't seem to happen as often because often time players are afraid to make a mistake or even worse they lack the confidence to control, dribble, and take players on because they weren't taught these fundamentals from a young age.

A way to avoid this in players and helping them build their confidence on the ball can start at a young (u4-u12) and it comes down to coaching. At the younger ages it is very important that players are doing things that constantly involve them having a ball at their feet, or leaning to control a ball in many different passions, so that when it comes to games they are comfortable to deal with that situations. From the ages of u4-u7 every player should have a ball at their feet during training sessions with the focus being on using different surfaces of the foot, different movements of the feet such as turning, step-overs, stopping and accelerating, throwing the ball up in the air and having them control it with other parts of their body (bringing it down with their chest, feet, thighs, or head) will help build their confidence of getting the ball when they face such situations during games. As the players get a bit older (u8-u12) drills that focus on players dribbling at defenders and then taking them on trying to beat them should be encouraged. Things such as receiving the ball with their back to goal and a defender on them, which then you encourage the player to try to turn and beat that defender, receiving the ball  going directly at the defender trying to beat them, and even teaching players how to dribble out of the back because for defenders that is a great asset to have if they have the confidence to join in the attack or start the attack in a manner other than just punting a hail-marry up the pitch.  Even as the kids get older (depending on how many training sessions they have a week) one should be completely focused on ball mastery.

With that being said one of the most important things I've observed as a coach to help change this attitude of fear players may have is during different types of games at the younger ages is instead of putting a maximum amount of touches a player may take, coaches should set a minimum amount of touches. With me I often like to set the minimum amount of touches for players at 3. The reasoning behind this is so that the player can receive the pass, take a touch with their head up, and then make a decision by seeing the field as to whether they should dribble, make a pass or have a shot. I find this to be very successful as players tend to become more comfortable with the ball, and as mentioned before (and most importantly) they observe the field in front of them to make their decision. If they realize they have space to take the ball no matter their position (including keepers) should be utilizing that space to go forward. If they have been taught there is nothing wrong with taking a player on and they have had a lot of practice of doing  so you will see the confidence build in them.  

OPDL: Where Changes Should Be Made

As I've stated before, I think the idea of LTPD and the OPDL are very great in concept, but with that being said, I think there has been a major lack of communication and structural set up by the OSA with all the clubs involved in the process. There are many naysayers out there who appear to want this league to fail, while others think this is the saving grace for Canadian soccer. Where do I stand in this whole situation? Although I'd love to see this league succeed, unless there are changes made by the OSA quickly, I can't see this league obtaining its full purpose. From the majority of talk I am hearing via soccer blogs and twitter there are many flaws currently going on with the process at the moment (I don't know if the talk is all true, but I believe a lot of it is). I'm not going to get into prices, lack of inclusion of academies, demographics and other issues, but I will be talking about where the OSA/Clubs are still failing the players.

If the OPDL is supposed to be a league for Elite players...

When this league was introduced, many individuals believed (and still do) that this league is supposed to be for the "elite" players in the province. If this was the case the OSA failed miserably right from the get go.  Taken right from the OSA page, they describe the league as this:

"OPDL represents young players' early graduation to a genuine high performance training environment, targeting only the top athletes in the province from age groups U13 to U23 with what will be the highest level of competitive youth soccer in Ontario."

With this statement being made by the OSA, for the league to be truly for the top athletes, the way they granted teams should have been completely differently. If they wanted it to be for the "top players" (I find it a bit hard to claim 12/13 year olds are "top level players", then this league should have moved away from clubs being appointed teams, but instead ran as a district league. What this would allow for is to players from teams an opportunity to play relatively close to home (depending on district size),  provide clubs with an opportunity to pride themselves on how many players they could promote to the next level, costs could be unified being supplemented by clubs in that district having to pay some of their district fees to the program (they already give money from registrations to the district), and for the larger districts they could possibly have 2 teams.

Despite the OSA claiming that this is for the top athletes, they contradict themselves in other documents as they say that this league is about development of the player. With the development of the player being the focus of the league, from what is being talked about by individuals from the Ontario soccer world, then the clubs are failing from this aspect.

OPDL, the Developmental League...

With rumours circulating that many clubs are struggling to find players, and more importantly RELEASING players, clubs are failing, and despite the focus being about "development" the old problem of wanting the best players currently still exist. For those that follow me on twitter, you may know that sometimes Jason De Vos and I don't always see eye to eye on things, but yesterday we did come to an agreement on one major issue. After having a back and forth discussion I tweeted: 

"If it's about elite training then coaches should, be taking almost any decent player willing to join the program" 

Jason agreed with statement, and provided quite possibly the best response to what these clubs should be doing with 

"You are absolutely spot on. It's not about the kids who are currently "the best". It's about the ones if want to be.  

I couldn't agree with this anymore, if clubs are receiving players who want to get better by receiving elite training year round, and these coaches who were hired are really good at developing players based on their qualifications, then they shouldn't be releasing players (they obviously have to have a bit of skill), but instead they should be taking them in to develop these players so that the talent pool can increase. The problems of "low numbers" could be resolved by this.

Why are coaches supposedly releasing so many players that are wanting to join the program? Is it possible that despite results not mattering in this league, coaches and clubs still want to get a WINNING team on the pitch?

Conclusion:

With the OPDL season slated to begin soon, the OSA and all the clubs need to make some changes to how this is being ran in order for it to operate properly. With development supposed to be the main focus of the league, players shouldn't be turned away, but instead embraced and taken in so that they can further their development so that in the long run they can actually produce some "elite" players in the future.

The Multi-Sport Athlete

With the Canadian World Juniors not winning a medal in their 2nd consecutive World Championships, our nation believes that hockey needs to change how the grass roots level is operating. This was spear headed by head coach Brent Sutter's comments after their bronze medal game loss saying that kids are being forced to focus on results at a young age instead of developing their skills, and everything they do is to hockey oriented from such a young age. These comments got a lot of the youth soccer community talking as this is what they are trying to eliminate from the game in Canada. While getting in on this topic, I ended up getting into a lengthy discussion with a couple coaches about players who are multi-sport athletes, and thus don't "focus enough on their soccer development". The comment that really got me thinking was when one coach wrote:

"I have coached a boy’s team in the past with several high level hockey players and for them and their families the hockey always came first. Admittedly, these soccer players played the sport in the summer to keep fit and when they did not get the majority of playing time they were upset. As a coach I don’t want to build a team with such players being the corner stone. I have the greatest respect for those athletes who can compete at a high level in multiple sports, but that does not change the need for total commitment to the team. Both hockey and soccer are a 9 to 10 month a year sport and therefore there will be conflicts. As a coach I could not in good conscience give majority of the playing time to a player who does not practice regularly with the team between September to March. So I am not saying that my view is correct, but it is my view."

This got me really going because I don't agree with it at all, and believe that by penalizing individuals for being talented in more than one sport might actually drive them away from the game. In regards to this specific issue, in my eyes if the player is able to be one of your top players when they come back to join the team in the summer, and they are committed to the team, then they deserve to play more than a less skilled player on the team. This particular coach said it wasn't in the best interest of the team to build it around players who weren't around all year. If the coach is truly looking out for the best interest of the team, then they should be putting out their best players no matter what their commitment is in the winter. If the coach is looking for the best interest of the players (which should be the main focus), then this is taking away from those talented players who have talents in multiple sports.

Having coached a team with many multi-sport athletes, I never really cared to put much focus on the indoor portion of year by having a slightly leaner policy on attendance for training, and never entering into an indoor league.  I believe that allowing players to participate in other sports in the off season has many benefits because it  allows them to work on different skills that might not happen in soccer, allows them to analyse the game in different ways, and most importantly won't lead them to burning out from being too consumed with soccer at a young age that by the time they reach 15 or 16 they want to quit. What I noticed with my group when we first started playing games at the competitive level, the players who played other sports had a much better sense of positioning in comparison to other players who just played house league soccer the year before.

The argument then came up of if we want to be producing world class players in Canada, then they should focus on soccer to develop their skills. In regards to this, a true reality check needed to be given. At the end of the day, a very small percentage (1%) will end up going pro. To me, the players that do end up going far with the sport are the ones who truly want it (not their parents, not their coaches, not their coaches, or their peers). These are the players that will show up to every training session possible, go out on their own without being told, grab a ball work on their touches and watch games whenever they have the opportunity. To many times it is everybody else who wants to see a player excel in soccer, but the player themselves may not. If the player truly doesn't have the desire then even if they train 10 months a year with their club, they won't go anywhere.

My view on the multisport athlete is that parents shouldn't take it away from them if they can afford it, and the child is enjoying it. The athletes who have aspirations of getting to the next level will show that on their own by their actions away from the team. If they are a multisport athlete, when the time is right for them, they will make the decision as to which sport THEY want to focus on.

Should Ontario Youth Footy Follow the A, AA, AAA Model

2013 has been quite an interesting year for youth soccer in Ontario mainly due to the creation of the 2nd standards based league the OPDL (SAAC is the first despite what the OSA may try to claim). Although in theory a great idea, the OSA has handled this completely wrong as they have concentrated the majority of the clubs in 2 areas that makes it quite hard for clubs to get the truly elite level players throughout the province involved in the "top" league. There has been many blogs, tweets, and post on various forums about this so I won't go into details about it.

Yesterday I came across a newspaper article from the Toronto Star written about the GTHL looking at downsizing (eliminating non-competitive teams) and as I briefly discussed with another individual on twitter, something that needs to happen in the "competitive" world of of youth soccer in Ontario, as there are far to many teams playing at the rep level, and this has severely water downed the level of play. In the case of the GTHL, it is more of a shift in demographics as the majority of organizations that are struggling are from the east end of the GTA, and the same shift has been seen in youth soccer as well where once the Scraborough Soccer Association use to be a power house, but that has now shifted to Peel-Halton being the dominant area in Ontario youth soccer.

After reading this article, it rekindled some thoughts that I had that I believe could help change the landscape off soccer in Ontario, keep things more competitive on the filed, and not dilute the level of rep soccer as much as it is now. What I believe should be done is what happens in almost every other competitive team sport in Ontario where organizations are classified as A, AA, or AAA. Why I believe this would be better for the game is so that it eliminate a lot of teams/players who shouldn't be playing at the rep level, rids coaches of thinking about promotion and relegation (win at all cost), and it would PLACE THE PLAYERS AT THE APPROPRIATE LEVEL THEY SHOULD BE PLAYING. Instead of coaches being viewed as "successful" for winning trophies, they now could be looked at being successful for how many players they are able to develop to play at the next level.

For this to work, what would need to happen is that organizations would need to be classified as having teams in either as A, AA, or AAA (they me be affiliated with a club, or a stand alone organization). For some of the smaller areas, if they would like a AAA or AA organization it would be 1 team in that region so that they are able to pull from the surrounding towns without having to really worry about competition for players in neighbouring towns, and in larger areas such as Mississauga there may be 2 AAA clubs, 3 AA, and 3 A clubs. From there at the start of every season there would be tryouts where coaches would pick their top 15-18 players to make up their rosters with the rest of the players who aren't selected either trying out for another team, or play in their local house league program for the summer (which if numbers provide, will have an all-star team).

The leagues themselves will have standings, but there would be no promotion or relegation for teams, and if a player is doing very well in their current level, then hopefully the next season they will try-out for a team at a higher level. Like the OPDL, to coach at different levels coaches would be required to have a particular coaching level so that players playing at the AAA level are getting trained by individuals who have had higher training themselves. The AAA level could be where the provincial/national coaches go out to scout (maybe some AA games as well). As time goes by, we will be seeing the top players playing at the top level while receiving level appropriate training, and the same thing throughout the other 2 levels as well.

The reason why I believe that this would be the best way for soccer to progress is that it won't stretch thin top level training (often times right now, club's technical staff are working with very large groups, and in all reality a lot of the players need to be working on the basics first), teams don't need to focus on finishing at the top of their league to move up, but instead it will be based upon the individual player themselves and their skill level, and it will also eliminate the abundance of "rep" teams that currently exist. This model is used in hockey, baseball, basketball, and lacrosse to name a few sports, and the Canadian national teams are able to compete much better than the majority of national soccer teams.

Sessions or Actually Coaching?

As some of you may already know, I just successfully completed my provincial pre-b assessment this past Sunday. It was unique as it was just myself and two other individuals (who I help coach the u12 boys program with) who were in the course. The course was hosted by Huw Morris and he was aided by Terrol Russell. Although I was successful with the course, I was still able to learn a lot from these two individuals as they had a wealth of knowledge to pass on to myself and the other two coaches.

One of the most interesting comments that myself and the other two coaches taking the course took in was made and then demonstrated by Terrol, and what he said was "There are many coaches out there who can run sessions, but they don't actually coach". When I thought about this, and then Terrol in action, it became evident what he meant by that. When a lot of coaches go to run a session, they have their drills prepared, and then all they do is just go out and run those drills, and if the drill isn't going well they then just make corrections to that specific drill.

What Terrol showed is that simply explaining the drill and then carrying out is beneficial to players often times as coaches we over look a lot of things that are going wrong. As drills are going on, us coaches are often quiet and watch the drill with very minimal coaching taking place during the drill (instructions being given are different from actually coaching). What he also also asked us to do was get the players more involved in the training session by constantly asking them questions. Often times as coaches when running sessions, we spend our time just giving instructions to players instead of actually testing their knowledge. I know when I was working with my former team at North Mississauga along with other teams in our COE program I would ask players questions about things they think they could change to enhance the drill, but Terrol showed us how we can ask these questions in a better manner.

Terrol was able to incorporate form of coaching right away into his training session during the warm up. He had the players dribbling around in a small area and as they were working he was vocal and motivating to the players. He then stopped them, and did something that a lot of coaches don't do... Most coaches have a tendency of just telling players what do for the drill and may offer a demonstration of what to do. What Terrol did though was instead of telling the players how to change the dribbling technique that they were doing, he asked them "how many parts of the feet can we dribble the ball with?" After the answer was given (5), he then again asked a player what was a technique they could do to incorporate 2 parts of the foot to dribble, and as the answer came he then got them to continue in that fashion. While the players were performing that task, instead of stopping them get them to use their other foot, he was coaching them and told them to incorporate both feet. Although it seemed simple to do so, many coaches (myself included) wouldn't take this approach, but instead would stop the drill completely and then tell them to use their other foot, this kept the flow and intensity of the the drill going.

Although Terrol only briefly ran two quick drills, the intensity and change from how the majority of coaches tend to run their sessions was very evident. This was good for me to learn as I believe that taking this approach to my training sessions from now on will not only help me, but will also help maximize the development of the players that I am working with. I look to implement this style of coaching into my next session this coming Saturday morning, where I want to become more of a coach than an instructor.

Solid Foundation

Today I par-took in a provincial pre-b license course in NWT, and it went relatively well. It was nice to work in a small group (there was myself and two other coach's who I coach with for the u13 boys group here), and it was ran by Huw Morris and Terrol Russell who came over from Saskatchewan. They provided me with some great feed back to help improve my coaching style, and the help optimize getting the most out of the players at training sessions. It was also nice to have a few of the u17 players come out to partake in the drills, but as they were doing so, it was another observation for me that the players here (no fault of their own) were not provided a proper foundation from a young age that would allow them to compete at a higher level in the long run.

In my last blog I had made mention that in Yellowknife, there is quite a divide in the soccer community and because of this doesn't provide the players here with a proper development pathway from a young age so that the basics of the game can be learned, and so that when they are put into an environment with a more demanding coach, they don't face quite a shock. After the two other coach's and myself ran our sessions, Terrol ran a couple of drills for the the players, and the other coach's and myself were able to see an immediate shock in the players expression on how a high intensity training session would be ran. When the other coach's and I talked to each other about this, and if we took the same approach to running our sessions, one of their responses was the players wouldn't show up again.

This got me thinking how important it is to get these players in Yellowknife who aspire to play at the next level (or even being able to compete with other provinces at things such as tournaments in Alberta or nationals) they need to be placed in a proper training environment from a young age. Having been involved with the North Mississauga Soccer Club for over 2 decades, Terrol reminded me a lot of their current assistant technical director Jhon Ardila (and the rest of the mentor coaches) and how he runs sessions for the players in the Center of Excellence program who range from u7-u12. There is a demand on the young players as they are in the competitive player pool, but it is nothing that is unrealistic. All of the players are able to train in such an environment, and over the season and years great strides can be seen in their game, both as individuals and as a team over all. 

The reason why I believe that it is important to start putting these players in such an environment at a young age is so that they develop a mindset from a young age that they need to work hard and at high intensity level from a young age, so that this way when they get older, a more demanding coach isn't a shock to them, and they don't have an attitude of quitting the game because a coach wants more out of them during training. If the players here in the NWT are able to learn this from the early ages (provided they are in the high performance program) they will see great strides being made in their individual and team games.

In order for this to happen though, there needs to become unity among all the clubs in Yellowknife so that they have a proper system to develop the players who would like to play at the high performance level. If there was 1 club for youth, they could have a houseleague program for the less serious and weaker players to play in and develop, while the players who have some talent and want to progress further with the game have somewhere to go with proper training and a bit more demand so that they are used to constantly working at a more intense rate. With this foundation, it will help them learn as they get older that when someone wants them to work harder (not just in soccer but all areas of life), quitting isn't the answer but instead giving it an honest effort will show them that they are capable of attaining much more than they believe they could.

"While some may think they didn't get the opportunity that life offers,often they miss it because it comes disguised as hard work, sleepless nights and sacrifice"

Starting Fresh- Youth Soccer in Yellowknife

Been awhile since I have written one of these, but I'm back! As some of you may know I have moved from Ontario to the Northwest Territories for work, and along with that I have gotten myself back into coaching as well (it's hard to stay away when you love it). I plan on updating this more frequently now, but this blog will be a brief over view of the soccer "culture" that I have observed here so far.

Fees for Coaching Courses
In comparison to courses that are ran by the OSA, it is a lot cheaper up here in the north in comparison to coaching with the OSA. I recently registered to take my pre-b license and unlike the astronomical fees of $250 (minimum) charged by the OSA, the exact same course here is offered for just $50. The NWTSA only looks to cover the cost to bring the facilitator in to run the course (my instructor will be coming from Saskatchewan), and the course is going to be ran in a much smaller setting (obviously there a much less coach's here). Another great thing is that for any other courses that I may decide to take such as my B, they will pay to send me out of province and cover all my expenses.

Politics
If you thought the OSA was a mess, despite being a small city sadly politics exist here too. I am living in the city of Yellowknife (population of just under 20,000), and yet somehow there are 6 different clubs with 5 of them being "competitive" clubs... To put this in perspective, I'm from Mississauga which has a population of over 700,000 and there are 6 main clubs and 3 micro clubs. Each competitive club here only operate in specific age groups, with none of them having the same age groups. One clubs has u9-u11 (one group of boys and one group of girls with the 3 age groups combined), the next club u11-u16 with the with the u11's to u 13's as one group an the u14's-16's together, another just has a u18 team, another is the 2 adult teams that represent the province at Nationals (they automatically get to go as there is no other teams to play). Worst of all, the only real game action that these kids get to play is in by playing in a poorly ran house league program that as very little organization (the indoor facility in town that they had the most say in has boards...) and there is ZERO development there. Soccer is played by a lot of kids in the city, but in order for these kids to actually develop, it would be essential for the entire soccer community in the city to come under one umbrella to build a proper foundation.

Player Development 
Today was my first day running a session with the u11-u13 group with the club I am coaching at, and lets just say there is A LOT of work that needs to be done (I will get into more details about this at a later time). These kids haven't really had any proper training, with a lot of them being introduced to a bit of "quality" training at the u11 age group, but by then they have picked up some bad habits and have not learned any of the basics to the game. Tonight there was not one player during the warm-up who was on their toes (all flat footed), terms like check away weren't known, and during the scrimmage... well let's just say the sense of positioning wasn't there, and EVERYTHING was always going forward with very little passing. Another problem that may hinder their development is that due to the location of Yellowknife, and the lack of organization, there is no league for these "competitive" (or high performance as they call it here) teams to play in and if lucky they get 1 tournament for the year in Alberta.

Conclusion
As I said this was going to be brief as I have to get to bed to work early in the am so I will wrap this up now. I will provide more updates with how the soccer life here is going but I will end it with this. I HAVE A LOT OF WORK AHEAD OF ME, BUT IT'S A CHALLENGE I AM READY TO ACCEPT!