The Soccer Coach. Marco Bruno

      Marco Bruno

      THE SOCCER COACH

      From the player’s training

       to game plans and theories

Translated by: Eva Melisa Mastroianni

      The sense of pleasure in wearing the cleats, the smell of freshly cut grass early in the season; the plastic bags at feet to not get in the water during workouts in the pouring rain. Friends not only for one season, but lasting forever. Growing up with a dream and not being able to accomplish it completely and then realizing that the reason was because your vocation was to train. Little ones and big ones. With an unexpected naturalness. Probably the talent I lacked as a player I had as a coach. Or maybe not even here I can say I have it... the way to get what you want is often incredibly winding and you might even get lost in it. Cleats or whistle... the passion is the same. And if passion drives you, you can never get lost.

      Table of contents

       What is soccer? 4

       TRAINING STANDARDS 7

       TRAINING AND GROWTH 24

       TRAINING OF YOUNG PLAYERS 31

       COACH RESPONSIBILITIES 36

       PHYSIOLOGICAL EFFECTS OF TRAINING 45

       SOURCES FOR ENERGY PRODUCTION 56

       MOTOR SKILLS 65

       COORDINATIVE SKILLS 66

       CONDITIONAL SKILLS 71

       RESISTANCE 73

       SPEED 113

       FLEXIBILITY 130

       THE MASS IN ACTION 144

       TRAINING PROGRAMMING 147

       THE COACH 156

       TEACHING PROGRESSION IN THE YOUTH SECTOR 162

       TECHNIQUE 164

       TACTICS 170

       TRAINING METHODS 178

       GAME SYSTEMS 185

       BALL POSSESSION 202

       HOW TO PREPARE A TRAINING 210

       THE MANAGEMENT OF WHO DOES NOT PLAY 216

What is soccer?

      Soccer is a simple and easily understandable game in its rules and in its course. Anyone can practice it because it does not require a particular physical structure or certain athletic skills; the athlete has a wide freedom of movement and therefore the possibility to express the best of him.

      For this, the game of soccer is called free activity that, starting from a common basic technique, allows everyone to express their own personality and their own style; however, it is an uncertain activity, linked to the law of the case, and which is impossible to foresee.

      Philosophically soccer is an ever-new and full-fledged adventure that can become spectacular; it is an activity of the present because the player builds his future during each game, the past does not matter.

      People like soccer

      Because it’s a simple game

      Everyone can play it

      It’s a free activity

      It’s an uncertain activity

      It's an adventure

      It’s an activity of the present

      I think there are key factors to work on in order to train one player in all his characteristics: technical, tactical, physical, mental and social. Obviously, we must make it clear straight away that training a young soccer player is completely different from training an adult one. For this reason I prefer to talk about the young soccer player’s formation before, and about the adult player’s training then.

      In recent years, I’ve seen (and I still do) youth training coaches often making the same mistake: to train youths and kids as if they were adults.

TRAINING STANDARDS

      When assuming responsibility for team leadership, each coach must have a clear understanding of the meaning of the word "training”. In an extremely general way, training is a process that produces a physical, motor, cognitive and affective change.

      The athlete's sport training is:

       - physical training,

       - technical-tactical training,

       - intellectual, psychic and moral training.

      All this is accomplished through physical exercises. We can therefore define the training as “the combination of all the actions aimed at improving the modifiable factors that affect the performance to get the best efficiency."

      The factors on which action can be taken are many, we can mention:

      - training of physical abilities;

      - training of technical abilities;

      - training of tactical abilities;

      - training of psychic abilities.

      It is not possible to intervene on one of them without affecting positively or negatively the others.

      If training stimuli are varied and directed at all abilities, the body is confused and does not know what response to such stresses. In training, combining multiple capacities does not cause a sum of adaptations, but instead it causes a subtraction of adaptations. Therefore, the coach does not have to train all the time, because otherwise he will be training bad, little or nothing. Physical exercise physiologists have always been interested in the adaptations of our body to the chronic exposure to physical exercise (training) and in particular:

      to the principle of subjectivity, under which the training program should be established taking into account possible variations from subject to subject. Different people respond differently to the same training program.

      to the principle of specificity, under which the training should reflect perfectly the type of motor activity that is taking place, in order to optimize its benefits. A