One of the things that amazes me this year, is the amount of organisation and work in FFT rep coaching.

It seems much greater than when I did a rep team a few years ago, which was a junior region. There really is quite a lot of work, even with an excellent manager.

With training ground sessions, I usually arrive 60 minutes to 40 minutes early to set out cones.

I usually spend about 60 - 90 minutes planning sessions the previous night, relating to a weakness identified in a game. A four stage theme should be current throughout sessions, with an evaluation at the end.

We also need to organise constant and regular practice games, as the team is not in a regular roster. It is the first time a team I've coached has more than one session per week.

The team has had resounding success on the pitch, to the point of us needing some losses to prevent over-confidence for the state championships in a few weeks.

The good match performances are very satisfying. To see a game playing possession football out from the back in a 1-4-3-3, diagonal passing, and holding the midfield triangle well, is the culmination of some hard work and thorough planning.

Against the Skilleroos the other night, the team must have made over 20 successive passes in one stanza of the game. Apart from the first goal, scored from a mistake by the Skilleroos, tour other goals were all well-constructed. The team has beaten the Skilleroos by big margins in practice games.

Nevertheless, the score does not reflect that the Skilleroos played some excellent football and should have scored more goals against us. From the first games, the Skilleroos really dominated us in 1v1 duels, which we've worked on in the last weeks on the training ground.

However, I've run some poor training ground sessions in the last week, with players lacking focus and intensity. I'm partly at fault. A couple of hidings from older teams should fix that.:) We play three games this week. Nice to have less work , as games require a lot less preparation.:)








Edited by Decentric: 23/4/2013 12:12:03 AM

Sometimes I turn up an hour and a half earlier at the pitch, but some of that is to learn more stuff from a couple of national team FFA coaches who train just before.

When I say 60- 90 minutes organising/ planning, that is a minimum. It is at least three-four hours by the time I have set up equipment and ensured that there are enough training bibs, cones and balls for all players to have one each.

I've run two shooting sessions in phase one, out of a four phase session - technique/warm up/passing practice - in two successive sessions that have been very unsatisfactory. I've spent hours trying to resolve this. It is too good a drill not to use, but players have lacked focus when we have done it so far.

The drill is one of the first from Chelsea Academy, a sticky in this section from Dirk's link. With a few modifications, I've made, it has worked brilliantly with CFP and at club level. At a higher rep level, the first time it was just okay from the outfield players perspective, but hopeless from the keeper's perspective.

The second session was modified to assist the keeper. It worked well for him, but the outfield players were shocking. Why? I have even concluded that we have had two previous keepers whose personalities were so resilient, they were able to overcome possible flaws in the outfield organisation.

This drill covers all core skills in the NC - first touch, running with the ball, striking the ball and 1v1. It is also brilliant for conditioning. Players are active the whole time. So in terms of hours spent resolving the problem, there have been many allocated to it. In the past on the training ground it has been outstanding.

There could be a few game issues after the next few nights playing a lot of games. So far the KNVNB structural methodology, which is outstanding, has enabled our team to maintain very good shape in the 1-4-3-3 with the defensive midfield triangle. This has worked very well against the Skilleroos. We could be exposed against some reputedly very good club teams who are a few years older.

I have bent the FFA NC slightly, where we are supposed to establish modules from a more proactive, full pressing ethos, to set up a team from a defensive, structural perspective first. Arnold did this with CCM when he first went there.