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Teaching skills/tricks to beat a player

David Saunders

On FA coaching session videos I see lots of kids with excellent skills at staying on the ball and beating other players in crowded areas. But nothing about how to teach them these manoeuvres, and by that I mean skills, tekkers, tricks and flicks to beat a player and stay on the ball. As well getting defenders off balance, turning defenders. feints.

I have players in my girls team who are keen to learn but don't know where to start. I'm not enough of a player to be good at teaching it.

There seems to be a conscious decision not to focus on these in the FA materials, that these will flow from learning basics about using different parts of your foot etc.

So question, how are coaches meant to know how to teach these skills or is the expectation that they will just appear if the kid is keen?

I have seen many people say 'Google Raymon Van Heijhen' but my question is what is the rationale for this not being more prominent in the FA provided materials? Am I even right about the lack of emphasis?

I have a concern that this approach favours boys who are more likely to learn and share these in the playground and in a 'football culture' than girls who often (but not always of course) have less exposure to this.

Similarly, what about coaches who have not played much, which again might work against female coaches.

Cheers!

  • 0

    Found some good stuff on YouTube about watching opponents body language, and working out which way they want you to go, but my basic point remains as why is this never in the coaching points on FA material.

    Just to be clear, this is absolutely NOT A MOAN, FA stuff , DNA materials and coach support is fantastic,  I'm just asking about this particular aspect which I don't quite 'get'.

  • 0

    evening Dave

    i think for me in grassroots coaching its about teaching the basics for all, in the small amount of time each week we have with the youngsters.

    As these youngsters get older they will try to do the step over, the drag bag, juggling the ball as long as they can.

    and when they do try it we have to make sure we praise there bravery.

    but alot of these things they pick up from observations themselves boys or girls.

    and the reason they do is because tricks/skills are so hard not everyone can do it.

    i say to my lads that if they want to be fitter then instead of half hour on the xbox, get yourself running round the garden, take the dog for a walk.

    some things they need to explore themselves to gain that extra 5%.

    If they want to do it they will try and learn it but with trial and error which is a good thing

    they could be given a task each week to try and learn a new trick, but its something that they choose each week themselves to complete 

    but i think with the time restrictions we have as coaches its nearly impossible to coach everything but the basics should be forefront

  • 0 in reply to Lee Cooper

    Hi Lee, thanks for the reply. Yes, that all makes sense, there is only so much time and kids should expect to put in some practice.

    I also appreciate that you could say that 'putting your opponent off balance' is the basics, whereas learning to see when they are off balance (e.g. hips turning) is more than basics. And more for 11+ than Foundation phase.

    In any case we did a 1 v 1 session with my newly Googled coaching points last night and it went really well, they were engaged and trying things out and we got to talk about losing the fear of trying and failing (psychological corner).

    I do still think that a session on the Boot Room site about dribbling coaching points at this level wouldn't be inappropriate and would be really beneficial - not least because beating a player is really fun (possibly more so that learning to delay when defending ;-)) and fun is the name of the game when retaining players.