Campfire Football

Today I go over some thoughts on the Frank Lampard Sack Saga and where the situation may actually stand. Then it's on to games of the day. Chelsea's Women beat Manchester City in a Continental Cup thriller. Real Madrid fell to 4th tier Alcoyano, Juve beats Napoli in the Supercopa thanks to an American, and the Manchester clubs went through tough tests to get all 3 points.

Bayer Leverkusen against Borussia Dortmund was a cracking game of two halves. A real contest. Leicester against Chelsea, less so. Leicester were efficient and good enough. Chelsea were not. As a Blues fan, this was frustrating and I'll tell you why.

The governing bodies and authority figures have decided to ban goal celebrations where players touch each other. Why? Well, Covid of course. But does that even make any logical sense? Is stopping a celebration doing anything except virtue signalling and posturing? I don't think so, and neither does John Nicholson of Football365.com. See his article here:

https://www.football365.com/news/football-celebration-clampdown-utter-bullshit-john-nicholson

Some big matches are duds, like the Liverpool vs Manchester United match. But some are dimes, like Inter Milan and Juventus. They played a good match, as did the Chelsea and Manchester United Ladies. Tanguy Ndombele scored a pearler, so did Lauren James, and the Brozovic-Barella-Bastoni B-trio showed that Conte spirit to keep the title race in Serie A hot.

It's winter football at its best. Snow in Turkey, a 1980s Elland Road throwback pitch, 1 - nils where you were certain there would be goals, and the early match with Sam Allardyce on the touchline turned out to be the Premier League thriller.

In youth football, the learning process to get kids back out onto the field has been on a steep curve. We have needed to adapt, collaborate, communicate, and in the end, try to create a culture that is geared towards the health and wellness of the players.

I watched a webinar called Navigating Return to Play Protocols Across State Lines and Political Subdivisions. Some great insights from Vince Ganzberg (USC Education Content Coordinator), Mayowa Owalabi (CCL FL President), John Barata (Legacy Soccer Club CEO/DOC), German Peri (Arlington Soccer Association), and Matt Busch (Inter Atlanta FC Exec Director)

I was fortunate enough to be able to sit in on a Q&A with Jose Mourinho. This was a real treat for this convention. The Special One talked openly about a range of topics:

tactical evolution of the game in recent years, technology use in modern football, what Spurs did for each player during Covid Lockdown in March, how he feels about getting into international management, and what he thought about the Amazon series on the club.

Please check out https://unitedsoccercoaches.org/ and if you are interested to attend the convention in the future, you won't be disappointed.

I saw Jose Mourinho do a Q&A this morning. It was incredible. Fascinating. I need a day to synthesize the information.

So, I watched Seth Taylor from Ianni Training conduct this talk:

"Parent Drama and Player Trauma: The origins and solutions to the largest problem in youth soccer."

As a coach, I have an opinion on this. Keep kids in the game. Do your part. I'll do mine if you let me.

It's the second leg of the Copa Libertadores semi-final between these two teams. Palmeiras won the first leg 3-0 away from home so River needed to really bring it in this game to make it interesting for the neutral. And wow, what a game it turned out to be. It had absolutely everything!

Here's the second installment of the United Soccer Coaches Convention Series. Today I watched Emma Hayes, Chelsea Ladies Coach and her Assistant Denise Reddy discuss "The Pathway to Scoring Goals" which I very much enjoyed. Then I saw Collen Hacker deliver an inspiring talk on "Coaching Mentally Tough Athletes: Are They Born or Made?"

A lot more of the organizational, culture, and process side of achieving high performance. This advice applies directly to life in general as well.