As a soccer player, it can often feel as though your life is an endless cycle of training, eating, playing and sleeping. Obviously, these are core aspects of the life you have chosen and contribute in a huge way toward you being the best player you can possibly be. But, are you truly maximizing each hour of your day?

“Stop thinking your Messi and keep it simple”, ” stop passing the ball around there and get rid of it”, ” when you get the ball just give it to our best player”. Do these statements encourage creative football players?

These are just some of the comments you may hear coaches and parents give to young players, every week around the country. I remember in my youth football playing days receiving such instructions on a weekly basis and finding it more of a distraction than actually helping me play better football. Encouraging ‘simplistic’ football is all too common in our game and despite the football association’s best efforts with the introduction of the new FA coaching courses, grassroots football is still suffering from this culture.

Big, strong and fast. Those are the traits that dominate youth soccer in America. If you don't have them, there's a good chance you'll get overlooked. Despite all the lip service paid to development over winning, too many coaches still want the fast kids who make it easier to win. It's a simple formula: play kick and chase, swarm to the ball defensively, and you win a lot of games. What you won't do is develop players who have the ability to play at the next level when they get older.

Does your youth sports club preach player development and follow through with its promises? Or does your club toss “player development” around as an alluring phrase to hypnotize parents into joining your organization?

Many parents struggle with their child's development in youth soccer. They constantly worry about what to teach them, what team they should play on, what camp should they go to, or whether they should play them up an age group. I hope that this article will put many minds at ease and clears up some true objectives for parents, players and coaches.

Player Development Project Lead Researcher, James Vaughan recently attended the third annual International Congress for Psychology Applied to Football. He shares his notes from this prestigious event where some of the best thinkers in player development shared their ideas on the state of the game.

The creation a “football culture” is key to the long-term growth of football in any setting. The key question for those wanting to develop this culture is – How? Former Aldershot Town academy manager and Cook Islands national team manager Drew Sherman attempts to answer this question by looking at his own professional experiences and discusses the importance of “football culture”.

Few events in history have altered the staging of major sports. So far only the World Wars have kept our athletes away from the grand stage of the Olympics, and several politically based boycotts prevented some nations from participating in other Olympic Games. In fact, few events have altered day-to-day function across the globe as has COVID-19. In what seems like an instant we have gone from training and congregating wherever and whenever we want- to travel restrictions, closed borders, closed training centers, and millions of people living in self-isolation.

Let's look at it this way - a player can shoot the ball well but may not necessarily be a good finisher. The key is having a great repertoire of shots and to have the ability to use the right weapon at the right time. This is the difference between shooting and finishing, and it is crucial that players learn finishing rather than just learning to shoot the ball hard. Don't get me wrong, there is a time for learning the proper techniques to shoot, bend, and dip the ball, but the most important thing is for players to experience game-like situations where they learn the art of finishing.

by Christian Isquierdo

So you have to question which score we should really be keeping at the end of a youth soccer game. Do we keep the number of times a team one touches the ball past an immature goalie? Or do we count the number of touches our team has vs the numbers of the other team? Do we value the player who juggles 20 times once a week or the player who juggles 10 times every day. In the end, it’s all a matter of orientation.