FineSoccer.com Edition #25 - NASL.com - The Best source for soccer coaches in the world

FineSoccer Fitness Newsletter - Off-Season Conditioning

     Welcome to the FineSoccer Fitness Newsletter. Today's subject deals with Off-Season Conditioning

      When setting up your off-season training program, the primary focus should initially be on increasing work capacity. This means just what it sounds like, increasing the volume of work that the athlete is able to do. This is the time for high volume and low intensity. The workouts will be on the long side, around 1.5- 2 hours, but the intensity will be relatively light. For example, if you plan on incorporating weight training into your off-season program, you should start with total body workouts done three times per week. The weight used should be on the light to moderate side, it should be a weight that the athlete can lift at least eight times with perfect form, but not more that 12 times. This will ensure a good technique base on which to build for future training, as well as provide a base for strength and hypertrophy (muscle size). The athlete should perform between 2 and 4 sets of each exercise with short rest periods between sets (.5-1 minute). This will produce the most gains in muscle size and prepare the body for future training by increasing the athletes' work capacity. I would have the athletes start with 6 exercises: Squat, Lunge, Step-ups, Lat-pulldowns, bent over rows, and bench press. * Allow 48 hours to recover in between total body lifting sessions, and follow this program for 3-6 weeks before moving on to higher intensity and lower volume training.

      *Note: I know a lot of you are wondering about incorporating Olympic lifts into your program this off-season. I firmly believe in the benefits of increasing explosive power through Olympic lifting, HOWEVER, I do not recommend you try or have your athletes try this type of lifting without qualified supervision. This means someone certified, knowledgeable , and experienced in teaching progressions. Otherwise, the risk of lifting incorrectly will outweigh the benefit of Olympic lifting.

      To subscribe to the FineSoccer Fitness Newsletter, please go to http://finesoccerfitness.com/subscribe.htm

      To see the previous FineSoccer Fitness Newsletters please visit the archives at http://finesoccerfitness.com/archives.htm

      Have a great day!
      Aaron

Training the Featured Player
also How to Defend Against the Featured Player

Welcome to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter. Today's activity helps to train teams to find a "featured player" and also on how to defend against a featured player.

When players are young, they should all be given the opportunity to play different positions. This will allow them to develop as total soccer players and learn the different roles and responsibilities of the different positions. However, as they get older certain players will excel in certain positions and also in the different roles necessary to excel in those positions.

Teams frequently have one or two "featured players". These are the players that they want to have the ball as much as possible and who make each player and the team as a whole better. Some examples of featured players over the years would be Pele, Johan Cruyf, Diego Maradona, Mia Hamm, Kristine Lilly). Since these featured types of featured players work best with the ball, it's important to train them to find the ball and also to train the rest of the team to try to find these featured player in the course of a game.

One way to train these featured players is to play keep away games with the featured player or players in a different color. Whichever team has the ball has a number up situation with the featured players on that team, In the diagram below, the it's a 5 v 5 game with 2 featured players in a 25 x 25 grid.

Teams get a point for 5 consecutive passes plus they get a point every time one of the featured players gets the ball. When there is a change in possession of the ball, the featured players change teams so they are always on offense.

The featured players will have to learn to find space to receive passes and the offensive players will have to learn to keep possession of the ball while also looking to find the featured players whenever possible WITHOUT forcing the ball and losing possession.

Defensively, the players will learn to try to keep an eye on the featured player and force the ball away from the featured player while also having to try to win the ball.

The next step in this progression is to assign one of the featured players to each team so now it's an even number game and each team only has one featured player. This makes the featured players work even harder to find the ball The scoring stays the same. See diagram below

The next step is to add goals. Each team still have a featured player (depending upon the numbers there might be 2 per team) and they get a point each time the featured player gets the ball and 5 points for a goal.

If you think this whole idea of a "featured player" doesn't apply to you, think about how many times you have seen a team with a top player on it that you try to shut down. The problem with trying to shut down a top player is that most teams don't practice to do this. If you don't practice it with your team, how can you expect them to be able to do this? Also, if you have a forward who is a goal scorer, if you don't train this forward to find the ball when being specially marked, how can you expect this forward to know how to do this?

Any comments, questions or suggestions can be posted on the FineSoccer Forum at http://finesoccer.net

Have a great day!
Lawrence

Developing a Soft Touch

                                        FineSoccer Drill 146

     Here is a fun game that works on developing a good, soft first touch and receiving balls in the air.

     This game can be played by as few as 2 people or as many as 10 and requires a small space, one ball and a garbage can (yes it says a garbage can!)

     The players surround the garbage can (this would be a regular size garbage can people keep outside) and one player starts with the ball on the ground (the player with the ball is 3 yards away from the garbage can which is upright). This player tries to chip the ball up (softly) and have the ball land inside the garbage can. If it misses, the next player tries to volley the ball into the can (preferably without the ball bouncing but if that isn't possible, there is no penalty for the ball bouncing). Everything is played one touch so the next touch might be with the thigh, head or chest. When the ball goes in the garbage can, it's a point for the last person to touch it. There is no defending and while it might SEEM like this would be an easy game to score points on, it's a lot more difficult than you might think. If the first person misses the can, the person closest to the ball gets to go next (it's not a case of going in a particular order). First player to 5 points wins.

     This is great game to play when the first players get to the field before training and can be much more productive, enjoyable and helpful than letting the players go and shoot on goal (which seems to be what so many players want to do when they first get to the field). It's an excellent way for players to work on the soft touch that is required by a forward when looking to lay a ball off to a midfielder as well as for backs to work on keeping their head down and watching the ball when volleying.

     Give this a try (one quick pointer would be to use an EMPTY garbage can!) and let me know what you think on the FineSoccer Forum.

Have a great day!
Lawrence

Training Indoor for Soccer

      Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's subject deals with what to do with teams when all you can do is train in a gym because of weather.

      Last week I was working with a group of nine players in a small gym (the gym was just big enough for a basketball court). After the players warmed up and did a little bit of skill work (just some one touch passing from different distances etc), we started playing.

     The numbers can vary depending upon the size of the playing area and the number of players available. With 9 players we played 3 v 3 with 3 teams so that one team was always resting. In the gym where we were training there were two wooden benches without a back (just the seating area), which we used as goals by laying each bench on its side on the center of the end lines (under the baskets). The boundaries for the game were the outside lines of the basketball court.

     The rules to the game were simple. The game lasts three minutes. Anytime the ball goes out of bounds, the other team (the team who it didn't go off of) gets a "kick in". A "kick in" starts by the player stopping the ball with her hand and then either passing the ball or dribbling into the field. The reason for the use of the hand is to make sure the ball comes to a complete stop and also so there is no confusion when the player takes the first touch. To score a goal, the ball has to hit the front of the bench (the part where if the bench was upright, people sit). If a goal is scored the team that scores the goal gets the ball and immediately attacks the other direction. At the end of the three-minute period whichever team has scored more goals wins and stays on the court and the losing team switches with the resting team for the next game. In the case of a tie, the team that last won stays on (this creates an atmosphere where you have to beat the champion to become the champion).

     For this to work the real key is to use a Futsal Ball instead of a regular soccer ball. On a gym floor, a regular soccer ball can be too bouncy which results in it being too difficult to control. A Futsal ball is "deader" ball that works much better indoors than a soccer ball (for more on the game of Futsal please see http://finesoccer.com/soccer_edition_74.htm).

     The advantage of this type of a game is that it is less physical and less dangerous than the regular indoor soccer played here in the US because there aren't walls to worry about plus it requires a softer touch in order to keep the ball under control and in bounds. Plus it can be played anywhere there is some open floor space. By playing 3-minute games the players work really hard for a relatively short period of time as opposed to pacing themselves so it's a great cardiovascular workout. Also, there are the tactical aspects of this game since the "defending champion" can play differently in the last minute of the game than the "challenger" since one team can play for a tie and the other team has to win to stay on. If one team is stronger than the other two teams you can either switch the teams around or just let it go because the longer they stay on the more tired they will become which will equal out the differences in the teams.

     This is a great game for the players to work hard, have a lot of fun and learn more about becoming better soccer players so it's something I would strongly recommend you give it a try.

     Kwik Goal makes great Futsal balls and they retail for $40.00. However since I am going to recommend them I might as well also make them available at a nice discount. You can order Futsal balls by Kwik Goal for $34.00 INCLUDING SHIPPING within the continental USA by going to http://finesoccer.com/futsal.htm

     Any questions, comments or suggestions should be sent to Lawrence@finesoccer.com or they can be posted on the FineSoccer Forum at
http://finesoccer.net To subscribe to any of the FineSoccer Newsletters
please go to http://finesoccer.com/subscrib.htm

Have a great day!
Lawrence

P.S. Being successful in soccer requires a great deal more than just knowing where to stand or how to kick a ball. To learn more about how to be truly successful in soccer and in life, please take a moment to check out SoccerAtEase at http://finesoccer.com/socceratease.htm

Futsal - Great Off-season Training!

Soccer Edition 74

Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's newsletter is a guest article written by a subscriber who I have corresponded with for the past few months named Steve Sawtelle and he is a big fan of the game futsal.

Now for Steve's article:

Futsal - Great Off-season Training!

By Steve Sawtelle

     My goal in writing this article is to share some of the benefits my team and others have gained by adding futsal to our regular winter soccer program. Futsal has been such an effective development tool that we have replaced the conventional US walled indoor soccer game with it this winter. Our soccer week follows a pattern of one formal skill session on Tuesday using the futsal format, outdoor pick-up games on Saturday, and organized league play in futsal on Sunday. We are not using the walled indoor soccer game to train players at all this winter. The cost of court time and available space makes this prohibitive. I believe that when given a choice for player development, futsal does it better and more economically.

     Futsal may be new to some coaches, so I'll describe it briefly here. This is a court soccer game. Its origins are credited to Uraguay some 30 years ago. This game is common in certain areas of Brazil where the shortage of open space encourages short-sided court games and beach soccer. Because of it's availability and small-sided format, Futsal has impacted the early development of some of Brazil's finest players. This game is also played in parts of Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. This is the indoor game sanctioned by FIFA.

     This is a five-a-side game. It is played with a goalkeeper and four field players. This game was originally played as team handball and evolved to soccer. The character of this game is outdoor soccer played indoors. It is played in soccer's fundamental shape, which the 4 vs. 4 format is so good at presenting. The futsal ball is smaller and heavier than the outdoor soccer ball and has dampened bounce. Players, U12 and under, play with a ball about the size of a No. 3 outdoor ball. U13 players and above, play with a ball approximating a No.4 outdoor ball. Since the court surface is usually fast and the space small, these modified balls scale the game to the size of the court remarkably well. The smaller circumference makes precision touch and the sweet spot on the ball more challenging to hit. The rules of the game are similar to the outdoor game with some friendly modifications that fit the game to the smaller space. Throw-ins are replaced by kick-ins and the goal kick is replaced by a goal clearance. The goal clearance is a restart by the keeper using his hands to put the ball back in play with restrictions similar to those of the outdoor soccer goal kick. Substitutions are made on the fly, including the keeper. Most importantly, the game is played with touchlines and goal lines, with all the consequences that go with them. Simply put, a bad play with the ball may result in the ball leaving the field of play with the resulting loss of possession being the consequence. This game also emphasizes skill and control. Rough play is discouraged. Shoulder charges and slide tackles are forbidden. Fouls are tracked and teams penalized for playing too roughly. As in basketball, a sanction is placed on a team after 5 fouls have been assessed in each half. In futsal, this sanction takes the form of a revised free kick process. Only the goalkeeper may defend the goal during the taking of the kick. The offending team loses the privilege of their wall and the ball is spotted on the second penalty spot 10 meters from the goal. As you can see, this is a strong deterrent to rough play. I have rarely seen a game get to this point with young players. For more details, go to the US Futsal web site or be our guests at KCFutsal at www.Kcfutsal.org. Both sites have links to the Futsal Laws of the Game.

      Futsal is great for young players. It provides numerous ball touches in a short period of time and it presents many of the fundamental tactical patterns of the big soccer game. The game contains many of the challenges faced in the final third of the field and provides repeated opportunities to finish. As a requirement of all teaching, futsal provides repetition and recognizable consequence for poor execution. Conversely, it also reinforces good play with tangible results, mostly shots and goals. In most coach's training sessions, the 4 vs. 4 format is often used. Its effectiveness in teaching players both skill and tactics is widely recognized. The 4 vs. 4 game can present all the primary combination plays. It emphasizes both offensive and defensive support, but most importantly - immediate transition. Futsal can be a brutally honest game. It will isolate and expose your team's deficiencies. It will also showcase your teams strengths. The game is fast and numerous finishing opportunities are offered when played well. Technical and tactical speeds are emphasized. A bad touch or a slow recovery will almost always result with a loss of possession. Quite frequently the lesson is driven home with a goal scored by the opposition. These lessons learned hard are not easily forgotten. The satisfying thing about this game is that these lessons are quickly learned and that players readily adjust themselves to the game's demands. Coaching clinicians have often stressed that the game is the best teacher. By putting players in learning situations, the results of the decisions and their technical execution will educate them with a minimum of coaching involvement. In futsal, you can see this happen.

      When teaching young players, I think some coaches struggle with getting effective player movement off the ball. Players tend to feel that their work is done after they deliver the ball to a teammate or when a shot is taken. In this game, supporting movements and management of space are keys to success. Slow transition and lazy supporting play will result in turnovers and goals to the opposition. This game requires strong play in these areas. If not shored up, the score can get ugly. Team success requires good spatial management, patience, and poise. Goalkeepers must be more than an obstacle standing in front of the goal, they must also play in the field and support the attack. A good futsal goalkeeper plays is a sweeper and a goalkeeper. Because of the speed of the game, communication and anticipation are necessary and are usually rewarded with ball possession and finishing opportunities. Finishing opportunities generate enthusiasm and reinforce quality decisions and execution. This is a position-less game (excluding the goalkeepers). Players must continually rotate between defensive positions in the back and attacking runs to the front. Players must organize themselves to maintain both defensive and attacking shape.

      I think futsal's advantage over the dasher board indoor game is that it naturally teaches good habits. My experience with dasher boards is that they don't punish bad play or bad decisions as well. In some cases, a bad decision can turn into an assist with a lucky carom off the wall. Since the ball is kept in play by the boards, players don't have a consequence for a misplayed ball or for bad tactics. A player in trouble can be redeemed with a kick off the wall that sometimes results in an accidental assist or an opportunity to maintain possession. I have watched my young player's movement and work rate diminish steadily over a 9-week season in walled soccer. Sometimes the game declines into a long kick and chase game where possession and control lose importance. Futsal demands play to feet or to playable space. Players learn good possession habits, how to make space, and how to attack space. Futsal's most powerful selling point to players is that they get more playing time and shots on goal. Consider a team with the full roster allotment of 18 players. For the same costs of playing dasher board soccer, this team can be split into two futsal teams of 9 players. This same team will usually play as an 18-player team in the conventional walled soccer game. Both soccer games will last 48 minutes. In futsal, each player will get at least 24 minutes of court time if all play equally. In a 6-a-side indoor soccer game that lasts 48 minutes, each player will play approximately 16 minutes. Because of futsal's smaller pitch, touches and shots per minute are also increased. Possession and shots in futsal are more frequent. This playing time differential sells kids to this game.

      One of the powerful attributes of this game is its accessibility. Any basketball gym will work. Any open warehouse space will do. This game has an advantage over the common form of indoor soccer in this country. The game played in a hockey-type format is primarily set up as a business operating for profit. Court time and practice time is scarce and costly. Here in the Kansas City area, gym time ranges from almost nothing to $50 dollars an hour. The bottom line is that practice time is easier to get in these gyms and it is cheaper. A basketball court fits nicely into this game. The three-point arc defines the penalty area and it comes complete with a half line and boundaries to the pitch. All you need to add is the goals. A futsal goal is 7 feet tall by 12 feet wide and is now offered by a number of companies.

      Getting a league started is a bit more challenging than scheduling practices and clinics. You need a large block of court time, administration, teams, referees, and a schedule. We lease our time in two facilities and are serving 141 teams this year. We got to this point almost faster than we can manage. I think this makes a strong statement to the power of this game. Once introduced, coaches continue to expose their kids to it. Coaches and parents are great salespeople once they accept the concept. The original sell is hard, because the game is new and different to many people. It is not in the paradigm of US soccer yet. They don't see the game on TV, it's not in the newspaper. Lastly, futsal is the only indoor soccer game with a world championship and an endorsement by FIFA.

      Futsal is a great training tool for developing soccer players. It is also a very fun and safe game to play. The people who introduced this game to the Kansas City area realized that competition in this game is important. The competitive game is the exam that reveals how effectively the lessons are absorbed during training. As mentioned above, we have a successful league playing now for its third year. We have 141 teams playing from U8 to U17. We started three years ago with 5 teams and now have filled two gymnasium facilities with four active courts each Sunday from November through February. I think this fact alone speaks strongly about this games effectiveness with youth players. Supporting us in this rapid growth have been Lennox Industries, the Kansas City Wizards, Johnson County Parks and Recreation, and the Johnson County Girls Athletic Association. Visit our website at www.kcfutsal.org and follow the links on this site to the United States Futsal Association and other organizations supporting this game in the United States. This site also contains links to the Laws of the Game for futsal.

      I think this is an excellent alternative to indoor soccer (anyone who has read through the archives or was an early subscriber knows that I am not a big fan of indoor soccer but Futsal is something I really could get excited about.

      Any questions or comments about Futsal should be addressed on the FineSoccer Forum at http://finesoccer.com/forum.htm as a number of the people who post there seem to be involved in Futsal

      Questions, comments or suggestions about the site should be sent to me at comments@finesoccer.com

     To subscribe to the Soccer Newsletter, send a blank email to soccer@finesoccer.com. To subscribe to the Goalkeeping Newsletter, send a blank email to keepers@finesoccer.com . To subscribe to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter, send a blank email to drills@finesoccer.com . To subscribe to the FineSoccer Kids Newsletter, send a blank email to kids@finesoccer.com

Have a great day!

Lawrence

Beating a Zonal Defense with a Negative Pass

Soccer Edition 75

      Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter. Today's subject deals with beating a zonal defense with a negative pass.

      Also, I would like to make some notes available to anyone who would be interested. At the NSCAA convention, Bill Beswick (the team Psychologist for Manchester United as well as the U21 National Team of England) spoke three times on various subjects. I have to say that he was truly an amazing speaker and it was one of the most worthwhile things I have experienced involving soccer. A friend of mine has typed up her notes from the three sessions and sent them to me (for those of you who were there and only thought he did two sessions, the first one was for the NSCAA instructors). If you would be interested in receiving these notes, please send an email to notes@finesoccer.com and I will forward them to you. I read through the notes and they made a lot of sense to me but then again, I sat through the sessions. I do NOT guarantee that they will make sense to everyone nor will you be able to get much of an explanation regarding the notes. To get more information about Bill Beswick or to learn about his book Focused for Soccer go to http://www.soccermind-uk.com/

      When playing against a zone defense, many teams will play a negative bass (a pass back away from the goal you are attacking) in order to get the ball away from pressure. This is an excellent thing to do but the problem arises with the first touch after the negative pass. When playing against a man-to-man type defense, this is a very effective way to change the point of attack (see http://finesoccer.com/soccer4.htm for more on this subject). However, against a zonal defense, it allows the defense too much time to shift so it's important to take your first touch after a negative pass as an attacking touch. In other words, while against a man to man defense the ball might go from the left midfielder to the left back to the sweeper to the right back to the right midfielder or something like that, against a zonal defense, it is more effective to have the ball go from the left midfielder to the left back and then all the way across to the right midfielder to attack the space at speed. By attacking with this first touch off of the negative pass, you will switch the point of attack before the zonal defense has time to make their shifts. If it takes two touches for the left back to make this long driven pass, the first touch should still be an attacking touch into the space that is open in order to get the ball there quickly.

      The best way to practice this is initially to do it as a shadow training exercise with no defense and then to add in minimal opposition in order to guarantee success. Finally, try it against full opposition and see how easy it is to switch the ball against a zonal defense and beat them to the shift (of course this does require having proper spacing since, if the midfielder on the far side cheats toward the middle too far, she will be killing the space you want to shift into.

      This is a very simple concept that with practice will make your team much better in attacking against a zonal defense Any comments, questions or suggestions should be sent to comments@finesoccer.com or posted to the FineSoccer Forum at http://finesoccer.com/forum.htm

     To subscribe to the Soccer Newsletter, send a blank email to soccer@finesoccer.com . To subscribe to the Goalkeeping Newsletter, send a blank email to keepers@finesoccer.com . To subscribe to the FineSoccer Drills Newsletter, send a blank email to drills@finesoccer.com and to subscribe to the FineSoccer Kids Newsletter, send a blank email to kids@finesoccer.com

      Remember that all previous newsletters are archived at http://finesoccer.com

      Have a great day!
      Lawrence

We would like to thank Lawrence Fine and FineSoccer.com for allowing us to publish this article on the NASL website. Please visit http://www.FineSoccer.com and sign up for Lawrence's free coaching newsletters and articles.