Monday 24^th September

Brazilian Soccer Schools

Year 5/ Year 6

Session 3

I began this week’s session with a longer talk at the start than usual, there were particular little issues that I wanted to control in order to gain a higher intensity form the players. Lippitt (1999) suggests that leadership helps maintain control and focus. I felt it was essential to establish leadership from the start thus the reason for my talk highlighting issues, giving direction and also maintaining attention of the players to emphasise my authority from the beginning. After reading publications by Lyle, I have also predominantly tried to utilise a humanistic style of coaching which is defined by Lyle as

“…. a person centred philosophy or ideology which emphasis the empowerment of the individual towards achieving personal goals within a facilitative interpersonal relationship.” (Lyle, 2002)

Tham, Werner (2005) suggests it is important as an educator to build a rapport with students. I will adopt this ideology and utilise it as a coach and player relationship. I agree building a rapport is important as it allows the coach to speak on a personal level as well as a professional level to the players. A coach-player rapport also helps reduce resistance in terms of behavioural issues (Murphy, Valdez 2005). I will begin to implement these factors prior mentioned into my sessions as the week’s progress and hopefully gain a good response from the players.

I was pleased with the overall work ethic with players this week, specifically in the core work and the juggling. These are two areas that we must continue to progress with in order to improve our individual skills. VanLehn (1996) suggests that the initial stages of skill acquisition involve collecting and interacting pieces of knowledge, whilst the final stages with practise help increase speed and accuracy. In addition to this Wade (1997) states that skill involves judgement, and as a coach we must help players to make the correct selection from a number of action options. Therefore I must implement drills that will help bring the correct decision from inside of the players. I feel we are making great progress with our juggling however if players work harder at home we will be able to improve beyond limits. Dreyfus and Dreyfus (1980) portray five stages of development in acquiring skill novice, competence, proficiency, expertise and mastery in order to progress through these stages Capana et al (2005) suggest that practising a skill over and over will allow the intensity of the skill to be increased as the duration of the skill being performed will become shorter, allowing players to repeat more moves in a shorter amount of time. In BSS we stress to our players that repetition is the key to becoming more skilful. We have a player in our soccer schools that is a testament to this methodology, he recently achieved 4785 juggles with the ball taking him over an hour to complete, being only 9 I think this is incredible.

After my 1 v 1 drill going wrong last week, I decided to make it as simple and basic as possible in order to reach the coaching objectives I intended to. I had two players, a defender and an attacker, the defender players the ball into the attacker and then close’s the attacker down. The attacker bursts into the ball with speed and takes the ball on the move and then it becomes a 1 v 1 situation. By setting this drill up it removed the need for me to coach the pass. Bonaccarso (2001) suggests 1 v 1’s are a “real game” situation as you often come up against a man that you may have to beat or defend against; Vickers (2007) studied perception, cognition and decision training and suggested that 1 v 1 situations in soccer are important especially in set pieces, this is a key area for us to work on. I feel the players are moving in the right direction in this area and I feel it will help our players to flourish with their individual skills and use them under pressure. When we become proficient in 1 v 1 then we can move onto 2 v 2, 3 v 3 and so on.

Bonaccarso, S. (2001) Coaching Soccer 10 to 15 Year Olds: Planning Technical and Tactical Training. Reedswain Inc

Capanna, R, Oneto, M, Ferrera, G. (2004). Total Soccer Coaching: Combining Physical, Technical and Tactical Training. Reedswain Inc

Dreyfus, S.E, Dreyfus, H.L (1980). A Five-Stage Model of the Mental Activities Involved in Directed Skill Acquisition. No Obvious Publisher [online] [Accessed 12^th Dec 2007, 19:15hrs]

http://stinet.dtic.mil/oai/oai?verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA084551

Lippitt, M. (1999). Lessons in leadership. Training & Development, 53 (3),18-42

Lyle, J (2002). Sports Coaching Concepts: A Framework for Coaches' Behaviour. UK: Routledge.

Murphy, M, Valdez C (2005). Ravaging Resistance: A Model for Building Rapport in a Collaborative Learning Classroom. Radical Pedegogy [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs]

http://radicalpedagogy.icaap.org/content/issue7_1/murphy-valdez.html

Tham, C.M, Werner, J.M (2005). Designing and Evaluating E-Learning in Higher Education: A Review and Recommendations. Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies; vol. 11: pp. 15 - 25. [online] [Accessed 11^th Dec 2007, 16:45hrs]

http://jlo.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/11/2/15

VanLehn, K (1996). Cognitive Skill Acquisition. Annual Review of Psychology. Vol. 47: 513-539 [online] [Accessed 13^th Dec 2007, 14:15hrs]

http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.psych.47.1.513

Vickers, J.N (2007). Perception, Cognition and Decision Training: The Quiet Eye Action. Human Kinetics.

Wade, A. (1997). Principles of Effective Coaching. Reedswain Inc