THE PLAYERS IN YOUR SQUAD

If you’re going to compete in your club’s league, then you need to assess and prepare your team to compete. Most leagues will run for about 8 months and depending on the number of clubs that are affiliated to your local football association, a team can play up to 42 matches over this period, excluding other competitions that come up during the season. This means that your youth football coaching drills and your strategies need to be good.

When preparing your squad, you need to look at each individual player and what they can bring to the game. Don’t for one minute think that you can change an ordinary player into a Ronaldo or a Messi over a season. You do not have the time to do this. Whilst you can certainly improve a player’s ability, you can not turn that player into something that they are not.

Split your squad into three sections, namely those players that are naturally gifted, agile, physical, fast, with good ball sense and raw talent. Then those players who are fast, lack good technical skills, but are reliable; they will improve over the season. And lastly those player’s who are weak, have no ball sense and are slow.

You must consider two things: You need a good attack and a solid defense. If you have no raw talent in your squad, then you have a problem. You must find that talent within your community. This can be done by asking players if they know of kids in their neighborhoods or schools who are fast runners and would like to play football. Alternatively if you have the time, approach schools in your neighborhood and ask to promote your club to pupils during an assembly one morning (a quick 10 minute presentation). You can also get your players to dish out flyers at their schools, promoting youth football. Get an article into your local newspaper etc. Involve the players in your squad. Make them your talent scouts.

If you don’t have the right mix of players in your squad, then you are going to spend the season being hammered. It’s that simple. Remember winning matches raises the confidence levels in your players and makes for a happy team. Losing does nothing for morale and in the long run players will leave the club. Also you as the coach will be blamed for the poor performance by the parents of the kids in your squad.

Cheers for now.

Mike

P.S. Next we will carry on with this topic with an in depth discussion on your players.