When it comes to how I coach, I really believe that there is a pattern of things we have to master. And they build on each other. In general, my practices will focus on the following things depending on the needs I see as we work together.
Practices are more important to your players than games. In practice we have every player with a ball, getting 90 min of maximum touches on the ball. In a game, we have to share a single ball with every player our whole team and the other whole team, and they are less than 90 min long at this age. So in practice, you may get as many 3,000% more touches.
The first thing that we need to have is fitness and speed. If we cannot beat the other team to the ball, then it doesn’t matter how well we dribble, pass and shoot. We will only get to defend. So we will often have sprinting soccer distances as part of our practices. I don’t like to do laps or anything like that, short sprints the length of the box, or maximum length of ½ the field is the most distance I would think is important, and I almost always combine that into part of a larger skill base drill.
The second thing after fitness is individual skill with the ball. Passing, receiving, dribbling, shooting, heading etc. And these type of skills are things you can work on at home to master, but I will be covering proper technique and reinforcing that in practices. After a certain number of touches, the ball will become almost an extension of you. And it will go where you want it to almost automatically.
The third thing after those two is tactics and team shape. This is the best use of practice time. How do we create and use space and move the ball to attack and defend? Half of a typical practice or more will be spent doing drills to learn team play principles.
And the last thing, after you have the fitness, and the skills and the right shape and strategy, is mental toughness. Rising to a challenge and overcoming adversity together. And that is something that really only can be taught and experienced during the games. As I mentioned above, wins and losses may not always be under our control, but our attitude and response are. How we handle winning while respecting our opponent, and how we handle losing without compromising our character is something we can control and learn to do better as we go.
When it comes to games, I try my level best to have everyone play the max amount of time in all games. A couple games last season I got nearly perfect minutes distribution. Again the logic being, that my goal is to help all the players get better and learn, not just some of the players, and not just in practice for some.