Soccer Coach Weekly Issue 115

Some of you might have hit the part of pre-season where your team are taking part in some friendlies or exhibition matches.

Pre-season tune-up matches are a great opportunity to get your players back into the game after their break. They are also a great opportunity for you to set some ground rules about what matchday should look like.

Parents are one of the aspects you may want to consider. Depending on how you manage them, parents can be your best helpers or your biggest hindrance when it comes to game days. So manage them we must!

Across pages three and four, I have written some advice specifically around where parents should physically be on matchdays.

It provides suggestions on where parents - as well as other family members and friends - are best positioned at different stages of the game. 

Give it a read, and think about implementing some of those boundaries early. If you can establish them as accepted practice, it will make your life a lot easier.

Elsewhere in this issue, we haveve got advice on being a good assistant coach, a session on building from the back and another instalment in Moritz Kossmann’s series.

This time, Moritz is looking at the defensive action of marking. He provides some helpful detail on the skill, before sharing a practice to help you coach it.