Tag: Football Coaching (page 2 of 3)

AC Milan Trains #TheFuture

October 31, 2015 / / 1 Comment

It’s always fantastic when one of Europe’s leading youth academies opens its doors to the world and offers a glimpse of how they go about their youth development. There’s much to learn.

Through this fantastic video, we get a chance to understand how seriously European powerhouse and Serie A football club, AC Milan, takes the development of young footballers. Further, the video highlights how the club grooms talented youngsters and teaches them what the sport is all about. Starting at ages as young as 9 and 10-years-old, AC Milan ensures that the children maintain a balanced life and keep up good grades while training to become professional footballers.

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Key Qualities of a Young Footballer

October 25, 2015 / / 2 Comments

So we’ve been thinking about the qualities that coaches look out for in young footballers, especially at the grassroots level, for a while now. And it’s been hard work coming up with this list. There was a lot of debate and discussion within our community of coaches and this is what we’ve come up with. It’s not like it’s a final, conclusive checklist. At best, it may be something you can refer to going forward. At worst, it may incite you enough to write a nasty comment below.

What’s most important for us, as soccer parents and coaches, is to air our thoughts about this often neglected conversation in grassroots and youth football circles, especially in India. So here goes…

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Get Well Soon, Johan

October 23, 2015 / / 0 Comments

After winning three successive European Cups with Ajax, three Ballon d’Ors, eight Eredivisie titles, and one La Liga title as a player, several more honours as a manager with Barcelona and Ajax, possibly the greatest exponent of Rinus Michels’ Total Football philosophy, 68-year-old Johan Cruyff will take on a new opponent now – lung cancer.

While we are saddened at hearing the news, all of us at GFI wish one of the most inspirational coaches of all time a speedy recovery. #AnimsCruyff

Johan Cruyff Lung Cancer

Know How Your Players Learn

October 20, 2015 / / 0 Comments

“PASS THE BALL!”

“FALL BACK… HELP THE DEFENCE!!”

“STAY TIGHT!!!”

Sound familiar? There’s probably a LOT of us coaches (and parents) who are guilty of this during training and matches, but it’s never too late to change. Research indicates that the more people try to remember what they’ve been told, the more rigid their performance gets and the more likely they are to fail when put under pressure.

That’s why understanding how young footballers learn is a critical element of coaching success. Effective learning involves observing, listening, thinking, visualizing, discussing and experimenting. Good coaching requires us to get all of these ingredients together in the right proportion and correct sequence.

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Every Grassroot Coach’s Mantra*

October 17, 2015 / / 0 Comments

*if it’s not, it definitely should be!

Grassroots Football Coach Mantra

Image Credit: Unknown

As grassroots coaches, and even parents of young footballers, it actually takes very little to inspire children. But, and that’s a big BUT, we’ve got to genuinely connect with the kids. A kind word, a pleasant greeting, a pat on the back, some constructive one-on-one criticism after training, checking on them after taking a knock, a little tip before the big game… small things can make a big difference. It can’t be a superficial show of affection. Mainly because children have a way of sniffing out bullshitters. What we say and do has got to come from the heart. And when it does, seeing that happy, incredibly energetic smile and being greeted super cheerfully in the morning, even though your life off the field may not be ideal, gives us more joy than any amount of money will ever do.

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Why Do You Love Football?

October 15, 2015 / / 0 Comments

❤

SSE’s Grassroots Football League to Kick Off

October 14, 2015 / / 0 Comments

Soccer Schools of ExcellenceIn a country like ours, where cricket has almost become a religion, it is refreshing to see people with a passion for football sharing their love with children. Atul Gupta and Arpreet Singh Bajaj are two such individuals who decided they wanted to pass on their fondness of the sport, and they both quit their jobs in finance to start Soccer Schools of Excellence (SSE) in 2010. They set up SSE with the aim of providing young sports enthusiasts in India with a complete football education. While over 800 children have signed up for their various classes through the week, SSE is hoping to reach out to more NGOs in the future, and touch the lives of those who are not as lucky as them through football.

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Player Positions in Grassroots Football

October 9, 2015 / / 0 Comments

One of the many challenges that grassroots football coaches deal with is determining positions for their young players. While whom you are playing in a particular position in a given game or training session isn’t paramount, what we’re talking about is grooming footballers to play a variety of positions.

Becoming Two-Footed

To our minds, it begins with the ability to use both feet well. That’s why leading coaches across the world constantly emphasise the need for grassroots football coaches to plan sessions in a way that children are encouraged to train with both feet. This means including games/drills that cover ball control, dribbling, passing and shooting with both feet. Usually, you see players that inherently have a preference…

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YFC Rurka Kalan – Changing the Game

October 8, 2015 / / 0 Comments
YFC Rurka Kalan

YFC Rurka Kalan
Image Credit: YFC Rurka Kalan Website

It’s the year 2001. The sleepy hamlet of Rurka Kalan, about 40 kilometres from Phagwara in the state of Punjab, is plagued by crime and substance abuse. Almost an entire generation of youth are squandering away their futures. Enter Gurmangal Dass, an electronics engineer, who has returned some years ago from the US after giving up a promising job – a man with a vision for brighter future and a steely resolve to free the village from the clutches of drugs.

Cut to the present – the year 2015. Youth Football Club (YFC) Rurka Kalan now has centres spread across 9 villages in Punjab, touches over 10,000 lives, houses a 5,000 seater sports stadium, operates in the areas of education, sports, health and environment and, amazingly, offers every single service at no cost whatsoever to young people in need.

This is the story of YFC Rurka Kalan – much more than a grassroots football club.

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Performance Over Results

September 21, 2015 / / 2 Comments

Contributed by Ajeya Row – Head, Soccer Schools, Pune FC

One of the greatest travesties of grassroots football is watching a coach jumping and yelling along the touchline as s/he sucks the joy out of the game for the kids out on the pitch. I recently caught an Under-12 game where a school coach cursed and heckled his own player for misplacing a pass! It was disgraceful.

When I think back to why coaches behave like that in training or at a game, there are a few reasons that come to mind:

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