That’s pretty much it, right? All too often it seems that if you want to do something that breaks the mold, people react strangely. It’s like you’re an extraterrestrial or something. Two kids want to build a search engine better than multi-billion dollar incumbents? Larry and Sergey create Google. Twitter? Who the fuck is going […]
How to Execute: Who on Earth are You Learning From?
The figure breaks coaching down into 3 fundamental elements – all of which contain huge challenges. For instance, we’ve got over 4 years of philosophy-based content here, and we’ve barely scratched the surface. But now I think there’s enough of a base to start efforts in the other two elements – Activities & Execution. The […]
How Can You Take World Class Soccer Methods, and Apply Them In Your Environment?
I think we can all agree that taking what they do elsewhere in the soccer world and applying it here, is not easy. But the reasons behind that aren’t necessarily what you think. Perhaps the biggest and least understood reason for the difficulty is interpretation. You see, reading or witnessing something, and properly interpreting what […]
1 Truth, 1 Fallacy, and 1 Solution for Coaching Possession Soccer
A Truth It can be successfully done across all levels of play. The main reason it’s rarely seen, is that most coaches have not acquired the expertise to do it. First and foremost, a coach must develop a possession-based philosophy (a vision … a taste … a feel for that type of football). Then he […]
The Golden Rule to Team (and Player) Development
This continues with the theme of our previous article … It is after your team demonstrates a level of mastery with your core material, that you can start layering in other principles. For instance, our founding core (the set of activities all our teams start with) does not include stuff like: Combination play up the middle. Offsides trap. How […]
A Huge Mistake Well-Meaning Coaches are Making
They try a bunch of different activities. Doing this, creates no continuity in your training. Which means: Your players aren’t getting a simple digestible message (the philosophy). Your players can’t achieve a level of mastery in the skills associated with a particular activity. And you, the coach, aren’t achieving a level of mastery with a […]
Player Development Answered in 4 Minutes [video]
The following video is split in half. One half is conducive to high-level development, the other isn’t. One half is 1 in a 1000 in our country, the other is the norm. If you find yourself nitpicking and making arguments otherwise, it’s highly likely you are THE problem. The eternal question of course, is how […]
Xuxuh! American Youth Player Features for Manchester City and Receives MVP
Barely 12, John Kenneth Hilton, nicknamed Xuxuh (pronounced shu-shu) is a Chivas USA player who this past week lit up Europe! … Again. This time guest playing for Manchester City. But before we get to that, we’ve got two videos for you: Trying to capture the “wow” factor. Gives a sense of the multi-dimensional (complete) […]
Who are the American Soccer “Incumbents”?
I’ve used that term a lot on twitter, and was asked to define it. This was my response: Impossible in 140 chars. But here goes: The "incumbents" are those holding the power, their supporters, and their target demographic. — 3four3 (@3four3) July 27, 2013 Here I’ll go further … Traditionally the term is used for […]
Why “Developing All Players to Their Potential” is a Lie
You can not be all things to all people. You have to pick. Let’s consider you have a single roster that you get to work with for a certain number of hours per week. I think we can all agree this roster is comprised of players with unique qualities and varying levels of talent (or […]