The 5-Minute Football Coach - Issue #5
Ball skills, Equal or Fair game time, Playing other sports
Here are this week’s selection of links:
Practice of the week
A nice and simple compilation of 12 ball mastery skills, which can be easily used for warm-ups. Just pick a few of the skills and get the players to practice them for 2-3 minutes each, it should help with their composure on the ball.
Topic of the week
Interesting post on the FA’s Hive website on Equal or Fair game time (free registration required). This showed a pretty good split between coaches who prefer one or the other. (Although I suspect quite a few coaches actually play to win but aren’t represented in this survey…)
It still left me wondering how to decide what ‘fair’ time is: should this be based on ability, or on attitude? ‘Weaponising’ substitutions by making them punishments for not being good enough sounds like a pretty slippery slope. Personally, as our team isn’t competing for top prizes, I’d rather stick with equal play time over the course of the whole season, keeping in mind our players are just children wanting to have fun while playing some good football.
Thought of the week
Roger Federer on how important it is for children to play more than one sport. Sound advice indeed, and a point worth making to players ahead of the summer break!
I hope this was interesting - any ideas, suggestions just let me know
Have a great week
Fabrice