Here are your highlights for this week:
Practice of the week
I was looking for an attacking practice for our team, and was quite happy to find the following setup for playing through the midfield and using a through pass to beat the offside trap.
As a possible progression, have two of the three forwards pushing up against a single defender.
Topic of the week
Does your club have a Director of Coaching? What would someone in that role do? The Coaching Manual has a nice write-up of the responsibilities of a DoC.
Which made me wonder how much autonomy this would leave to individual coaches, regarding what and how they coach? Losing that autonomy could be pretty demotivating.
Coach of the week
Jimmy Shan spent 13 years coaching at West Bromwich Albion, from the Under-7s to the first team. His interview with the Training Ground Guru is pretty insightful, and contains some reminders of good coaching practice, including using 1v1s, small sided games and unopposed practice.
I hope you enjoyed this. Have a great week!
Fabrice
The 5-Minute Football Coach: every Tuesday, 3 coaching tips in 5 minutes, for free.