Is coaching a team once per week enough?

I know that the youth level soccer teams are mostly coached by weekend warrior coaches. These are the gents or ladies that volunteer their time and effort to help

shape the kids on and off the pitch. Not an easy job given the amount of time most coaches have to train their teams or even the field time assigned to them by their clubs.

The development of young kids is a major part of coaching at the youth level, something that has been forgotten completely by coaches and not understood by a lot of parents! A lot of coaches see training as babysitting the kids for an hour. Not much emphasis is placed on proper technique, fundamentals, touches on the ball or even fitness. The kids show up kick the ball around for an hour and then go home. Then they are expected to show up for games and actually perform. Further more the kids get yelled at when they make mistakes. It brakes my heart when I see this from a lot of coaches, who although they mean well and want to help their town’s soccer league they are not really qualified to teach the game.

The F License has become a joke as people get it a lot of times just by showing up for 5 minutes in class and do not even participate in the 6 hour on-field training that is required. Let’s be honest here, the more a coach knows & the more time a team puts into training the better the results will be. There are a lot more elements to soccer than just kicking the ball. Kids must develop a good first touch on the ball, be able to use all surfaces of the foot, have agility, timing, and conditioning. Things like that are not going to be developed with once per week training session that is only kicking the ball around. Kids also need to practice all of their fundamentals at home so that the coach’s job becomes easier when the kids show up for training and at the same time he or she can spend more time on other parts of the game.

Take a look at this training to get a better picture of what I am talking about:

http://www.ibourl.com/ntn