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Glow in the Dark Night Soccer

Assessments For Never Ending Improvement

Life's never ending challenge is to use our talents and resources to become the best we can be at whatever we choose to become. For talented young soccer players the single greatest limitation to becoming a world class player is the limited pool of professional soccer development programs with the highly qualified and dedicated experienced professional coaches and trainers who are:
  • experienced former professional players, 
  • experienced professional coaches and trainers, or 
  • university graduates with the required undergraduate and advanced degrees in player development.

For almost all players, coaches, referees and/or trainers, soccer will never be a full time professional career. They play for the love of the game and the opportunity to learn life's lessons so they can use their resources and talents to become their best in the career they are best qualified for. 

Challenges in Real World Coaching and Training

In a perfect world everyone would have the same opportunity to learn from perfect coaches so that they would have the best chance of becoming an elite professional player, coach and/or teacher of the game. But in our real world there are few perfect opportunities, players, coaches or teachers and no guarantees of everyone having an equal opportunity.

Research studies document the majority of coaches and trainers teach the game based on how they were coached, what they see other coaches do and on outdated coaching text. 
  • "Coaches spent most practice time on (repetitive skill) activities that are not related to match performance." Confirmation most coaches don't spend enough time on activities that are required for success in games. Bibliography: - Journal of Sports Science: 2010, March, 28
  • "Current coaching practice is based on tradition, intuition and emulation rather than empirical evidence of training methods that best improve player performance." Confirmation most coaches do what has always been done and what others do, instead of what studies show can best improve players.  Bibliography: - Journal of Sports Science: 2005, June, 23
  • "Study of actual (practice) activities and instructional behaviors of U9, U13 and U16 coaches showed very little difference between what's done and taught at each age level." Confirmation most coaches do the same things for all ages. Bibliography: - Journal of Sports Science: 2010, March, 28
  • "Study focused on the discrepancy between coaching behavior and what research on motor learning and skill acquisition demonstrates coaches should do."  Bibliography: - Journal of Sports Science: 2012, September, 28
  • "Too little time is spent improving the speed of decision making and play required to play at higher levels." Confirmation speed of play is largely ignored in training. Bibliography: - Journal of Sports Science: 2010, March, 28

Meeting The Challenge

Most coaches, regardless of sport, teach players the same way they were taught, behave in the same way as coaches they played for and rely on traditional text on how to coach in their sport. Recent studies document advances in training and technology that can dramatically improve how a game is taught and played.
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The mission of Soccer Game Sense is to:
  • provide animations, videos and tutorials to help players, coaches and teachers learn, understand and play better,
  • to provide a review of research studies and articles on the game,
  • to create online, at home and team practice materials and exercises to help players learn to play better.

Coaching Proverbs and Myths

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Proverbs are often used to sell people on what you want them to do. For example: 
  • "Practice makes perfect",
  • "It's takes 10,000 hours of practice to master skills", and
  • "You must practice year round". 

Franz Beckenbauer, German National Team Player & Manager, observed:
  • "Practice doesn't make perfect", only
  • "Perfect practice makes perfect".
Franz knows it's not how many hours you practice, it's how perfect each practice repetition is, that makes you successful. Studies show doing a skill poorly just 100 times creates an ingrained bad habit that requires 1,300 or more perfect practice repetitions to correct. Do the skill poorly 1,000 times and it requires 13,000 perfect practice repetitions to correct. 

Developmental Versus Chronological Age

Schools, sports and other activities use chronological age to define a child's peer group for their activities. The use of date of birth only doesn't take into consideration a child's intellectual, skeletal, physical, emotional and social maturity for determining the correct peer group for the child's activity.

For each type of maturity there is a normal range of up to 2 years between the average for the chronological peer group and the actual level of the individual child. For example, a child may be up to 2 years ahead of their chronological peers in intellectual maturity and up to 2 years behind in skeletal maturity.

In the 20th century schools taught language skills, spelling, multiplication tables and other subjects, including soccer, by rote repetition until the subject was learned. Soccer training text used in schools in the 20th century required rote repetition of soccer skills until they were mastered, but did not insist on Beckenbauer's always perfect repetitions.  

In England, repetitive skills training has been replaced by programs like Manchester United's Coaching in Schools curriculum with emphasis on:
  • "basic motor-movements, whilst developing running, jumping, hopping, skipping and throwing",
  • "developing the key core skills of agility, balance, and co-ordination",
  • "playing both individually and as a team",
  • "gaining experience by playing invasion games",
  • "basic knowledge of playing soccer and understanding of the rules".
Bibliography: - http://www.manutd.com/ "Coaching within Schools" 2015: July: 15

A 2012 European Research Study found 60.1% of players signing the highest paying professional contracts with teams in the 5 highest level professional leagues in Europe were late developers who reached physical maturity later than 78.2% of their chronological peers. In this study only 11.8% of early developers signed professional contracts with teams in the 5 highest level professional leagues.

The late developers survived playing with peers who reached physical maturity before them because their clubs taught them the understanding of the game required to survive playing with more physically mature peers.
Bibliography: - Research in Sports Medicine: 2014, October: 22(4): 398-407

Worldwide many players who reach physical maturity after their peers quit playing before they reach physical maturity. In the United States, with an emphasis on winning, 70% of all players quit playing by age 14.
Bibliography: - ESPN: 2013, July, 16:

Periodization for Performance and Development

Research shows that age appropriate "Periodization":
  • improves players performance, 
  • improves player development,
  • reduces injuries, especially overuse injuries, and
  • leads to faster recovery when an injury occurs. 
The world's most successful clubs and coaches now track player's on and off the field activities and tweak their training load, rest periods, game participation, fluid intake, diet, sleep and lifestyle to avoid injury and to optimize game performance. Medical research has proven that over training leads to poor performance, overuse injuries, illness and burnout. Bibliography - Immunology and Cell Biology: 2000, May, 30

The 4 year range in developmental maturity within a chronological peer group of youth players dictates that all aspects of player maturity be considered in determining the workload for each player. For example:
  • As players attain increasing levels of intellectual maturity they should be taught an in depth understanding of the game so they may learn to be creative playmakers for their team.
  • As players attain increasing levels of social maturity they should be taught when and what can and should be communicated to help their teammates play in games.
  • As players attain increasing levels of emotional maturity they can better assume game responsibilities. 
  • As players attain increasing levels of skeletal and physical maturity they can safely handle a heavier level of repetitions in practices as well as an increased level of  strength and core training. Increasing this training load before a young players body is physically ready leads to overuse and season ending injuries.
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The benefits of "Periodization" apply to all students and athletes. Studies document that parents who monitor their child's diet, sleep, rest, activities and social media access directly influence their child's performance and achievements in school, sports and other activities.

Retaining Youth Players

The percent of youth who quit a sport or activity by by U14 is 70%. The reasons given are usually negatives. Expressed as positives children want:
  • Parents who are supportive, but not so enthusiastic they take the fun our of playing and make them dread the ride home, going to practices or just being in the activity.
  • Coaches that make playing fun, teach well, are supportive, make them feel good about themselves, who are fair and who make them feel as successful as all of their teammates. Coaches who never plays favorites, put players down, make players feel awkward, bully players, make negative comments to or about players, or through words and actions are guilty of mental, physical or sexual abusive. 
Bibliography - ESPN: 2013, July, 16

Game Assessments That Reward Effort and Success

Players improve most when their talents and what they need to learn to play better in games is correctly identified. A simple assessment system that rewards effort and success, correctly identifies contributions in games and encourages never ending improvement works best. Training must always be developmentally appropriate or the risk of injury is increased.

Some lessons a player needs to learn to become more successful, that are identified in game assessments, must be delayed until the player has the physical (skeletal and muscular), mental, emotional and/or decision making maturity necessary to safely and successfully learn the material. ​