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Come and meet me at the Grass Roots Football Show

DC

Dave Clarke

The Grass Roots Football Show is taking place this weekend and I for one am not going to miss it. You can come and see me on the Elite Soccer stand C29a and ask me questions about youth coaching.
It’s a great place to pick up some coaching tips to take home with you and there will be some famous names running technical coaching sessions from set pieces and warm-ups to attacking, defending and finishing.
Michael Beale will be there on Friday and Saturday and it will be me on Sunday so don’t miss it.
You can also look out for sessions from managers like Peter Taylor, Iain Dowie, Chris Hughton, Graham Taylor and Chris Coleman.

The top coaches will be on hand to showcase exciting new drills, deliver top coaching tips and make sure that whether you coach an U10’s or adults team, there will be loads of great sessions to motivate and inspire you.

Here’s the type of thing you can expect: Robbie Savage talking about discipline when he was a Manchester Utd youth player:

And this is what happened last year:



Creative play and finishing moves

dave clarkeThere will not be much New Year optimism around for the coaches of some clubs. While you and I look forward to the tussles ahead and the development of our young players coaches like Chris Hughton once of Newcastle United and Rafa Benitez at Inter Milan will likely be looking for new jobs.

In the run up to Christmas Benítez was described by Italian newspaper La Stampa as a man, “walking with a pistol at his temple”. I’m glad I don’t work under those conditions!

Everything a professional coach does is linked to a winning team. Lose and you’re out is basically the message for the top coaches around the world. How different then is this message to the one we preach for young teams and their coaches “winning doesn’t matter”. Everything I am focused on is the development of each young individual that comes my way.

And that should be at the heart of everything we do – playing the game the right way, and that goes hand in hand with winning. Jose Mourinho is seen as a winning coach, but his Real Madrid team got played off the pitch by a team that just passed the ball around them – Barcelona.

The message here is: play the right way and you’ll be a winner.

When I watch these professional games there are two things that stand out in winning teams – creative play and finishing moves.In an attacking sense creative play is vital to give attackers goalscoring chances. And finishing into the net makes the move complete.

Watch the two goals scored by Real Madrid in their match against Valencia. Both goals are excellent examples of playing the game the right way. The first one is a wonderful turn and finish and the second a great move and finish.