Christmas | Gifts For The Grass
Tags: Sports Coaching, Leadership, Football Coaching, Football

Gift wrapped insights to keep the coaches merry this festive season.

From Edu Rubio | 22nd Decemeber

“This year has reminded me that you have to work on yourself and your relationships with others. Improving those relations and understanding your true self will help you become the best coach you can be’”.

Having helped lead the Nike academy, Edu has gone on to manage Milton Keynes Dons Football Club academy, coach in the EFL (English Football League) and continues to tutor the Real Federación Española de Fútbol Pro License. He has recently launched a new project, MY ENERGY GAME.

From Danny Kerry MBE | December 23rd

“I’ve chosen to look at how we might beat offside with 2nd ball leading. The reason for choosing this is that the offside rule was removed from hockey before I started coaching hockey… as such its something I’ve never had to think about. This was an initial thought and it’s something I don’t think I see a lot of in the football I watch.’ It’s a high return skill — beating offside line leading to high goal opportunity. It potentially requires higher order defending skills to successfully manage opponents leading from deeper (& potentially helpside) lines. From an offensive viewpoint there is always the potential to either collapse opposition defence structures or overload them. The principle of helpside midfielder as player looking to 2nd ball lead is key. There is the potential for this lead to be harder to see by opponents orientated to ball. If this lead tracked well there is higher potential to collapse opposition defence structure, or create temporary overloads. Linked to the above, you can explore the decision of high attacker on ball: whether to play the 2nd ball lead pass, or to switch play to helpside. I didn’t spend anytime thinking about ‘gamification’, such as scoring systems, pauses, power-ups and such like… but normally that’s the kind of thing I would add to a session like this.”

Danny Kerry MBE is currently head coach of the England and Great Britain Hockey men’s team. He was previously coach of the women’s side, leading them to numerous successs, including Olympic Gold at Rio 2016. Danny is currently the most successful England and Great Britain Hockey coach in history.

From Kris Perquy | Christmas Eve

Get a ‘head start’ this Christmas, with free access to the MP Mental Coaching in Topsport workbook, available in short YouTube tutorials, explaining how to work with people and players on confidence, focus, communication, and more.

Kris Perquy is a highly experienced mental coach who lead the performance psychology task force for the Royal Belgian Football Association, helping drive the growth of their ‘golden generation’.

25 years of experience and 2 books later, Kris is now associate director at Sport Business Talent within and outside of which, he coaches top business, sports and even e-sports people in the art of keeping their head in the game!

From Gary J. White | Boxing Day

Gary is currently head coach of Suzhou Dongwu in China, adding to an already intriguing resume. Over the last decade alone this has included coaching club sides Tokyo Verdy (Japan) and Nantong Zhiyun (China), alongside management of national-teams in Chinese Taipei, Guam and Hong Kong. He has also been a football technical advisor for Nike in the nation in which he presently resides.

‘Players love going to goal’ and that’s what this gift is all about!

From Victor Hugo | 27th December (1/3)

How would a session designed by coaches from each corner of the globe actually look? Over the next few days, you’ll find out. We asked several members of the Worldwide Coaching Group network to contribute an exercise, in order for us to create a truly worldwide training session.

After a quick warm up, we’re onto out first exercise (1/3), which comes all the way from Brazil. Victor Hugo Ferreira, currently U13 Coach at Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas, gives us his take on an opening activity.

This one he uses to introduce ideas that he may focus on as the session develops (he changes the points system based on the topic) and sometimes adds goals at each end to get players scoring goals and feeling good, nice and early!

So, time to start our training like the boys and girls from Brazil, before continuing the session on a different continent tomorrow…

From Gavin Lee | 28th Decemeber (2/3)

After yesterday’s opening exercise (1/3) from Victor Hugo Ferreira of Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas in Brazil, we today cross continents to take our session into a game (2/3).

Gavin Lee has provided a fast and furious wave game, all the way from Singapore where he is is currently first-team Head Coach at Tampines Rovers FC.

Competing in the Singapore Premier League, Gavin is recognised as being one of the youngest first-team head coaches active in world football today.

The session is now in full swing having moved from South America to South East Asia and there is still more to come — We finish off on yet another continent tomorrow!

From Tim Thielen | 29th Decemeber (3/3)

After an opening exercise from Victor Hugo Ferreira in Brazil (1/3) and larger game designed by Gavin Lee of Singapore (2/3), we conclude our session with a quick and clever 4v4 practice from Tim Thielen in Belgium.

Tim is currently U14 coach at KRC Genk, working in a country where the quality of youth coaching and football development in the 21st century has seen a ‘golden generation’ of Royal Belgian Football Association talent emerge, matched by few.