Soccer Coach Weekly Issue 112

I imagine the majority of coaches reading this will be getting ready to enter pre-season or have a further few weeks off before you get back into it.

Wherever you are in that cycle, I hope you have managed to have a good rest. We all know how demanding soccer can be and it is important to take time to recuperate when we can.

In some of the time I have had off, I have been reflecting on how vast the role of a soccer coach is – how many things we are expected to do, how many decisions we need to make and how quickly we have to learn as we go.

I don’t mean just the technical and tactical stuff, I mean everything that exists around it. 

One thing I struggled with in my first season of coaching was how many players to take to matches or how to even go about making that decision. I have shared some things I have learned on that in a piece on page three.

You may be starting to mentor a coach in the coming season, as Bobby Robson did back in the early 1990s when Jose Mourinho joined his staff.

It can be a very rewarding role to take a coach under your wing, but for the relationship to blossom, some ground rules need to be put in place.

Adrian SIlvester, a mentoring specalist, provides some advice on the topic on page four.

If you are looking for some technical stuff, our consultant coach Carl Wild is back with another in his ‘What is…?’ series.

This time he looks at turning, and provides two practices to support players to develop their turning skills.