Last weekend was US Youth Futsal Nationals. I know that talking about ‘National’ tournaments for youth players can sound a little over the top. There weren’t teams from all over the country but there were some great teams from the midwest and east coast.

Talking about it as a National tournament is really more of a way to describe the progressive nature of the competition. Team qualify through a Regional tournament and then progress to a National Final.

It was great weekend. I could see my teams continuing to improve from game to game. They had to raise their level of play to be able to match the abilities of the teams we were playing.

This week’s question comes from Tom (not me :-). It’s more of a statement than a question but I thought it would be interesting to comment on.

Tom says,

“I’m not sure that this is feasible subject for a podcast but it’s worth asking.

I recently took the USC Advanced National Diploma course and while I did ok, the one area I did struggle with was the freezing of play and then going through the remaining three steps, review, rehearse, restart. The last three are fairly straight forward if you recognize the freeze moment.

I think the answer lies in a detailed understanding of what you are looking for both positive and negative but I think it’s probably the area that dogs coaches the most.”

Thanks for the question Tom!

It’s vital that you decide what you’re trying to improve. For example, movement without the ball. Look for a moment where there is a lack of movement or wasted movement & the ball is lost.

Then freeze the play, review what went wrong, how to change it for a better result, walk the players through it and then have a controlled restart.

Miss a step and the players won’t make the connection between the error, the poor result, the correction and the positive result.

In This Episode

I was going to talk about the transition to outdoor but I decide to change the topic for this week. I want to take the time to review the Futsal season before I jump right into my spring outdoor plans. Some of this is selfish because I want to be sure I’ve made note of what worked and what didn’t so that when the next Futsal season comes around I’ll be ready with an even more effective plan for my players.

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Future Episodes

Next week I’ll share what I’m doing with my teams to transition from winter Futsal indoor back to outdoor soccer. Promise!