#126 How to Remove Diving from Soccer

My teams are making the transition to indoor Futsal training this week. Some of them still have an outdoor tournament this weekend but our club always moving inside on the first of November. I enjoy the change of pace and the focus on different skills and tactics. Some coaches focus on training Futsal in isolation but I look at how the game as an opportunity to better prepare my teams and players for a return to the outdoor game in the spring. This winter I’m focusing on a couple of key areas that I think will really benefit my players in the future as well as help them understand the unique elements of Futsal. This week’s question comes from Luis. He asks about lack of focus during training Luis says, “I had a question. I coach a Girls 2005 team so all the players are 12 or turning 12 soon. Seven of the girls played with me last year and most if not all have played with one another at some point or another over the last four-plus years, so everyone is familiar with one another. This is good as the team has bonded well together, but the problem is that it has bonded too well. The girls often talk and giggle and mess around and lose focus. I try to combat this by keeping my practices fast paced with things they like to do, but that doesn’t seem to be working. Any break in our sessions, no matter how small, and they lose focus. This is a problem with about 9-10 of our 14 players.” Luis’ question was actually about how to handle this with the players but I think there’s something else involved here that I’d like to focus on. How long should someone coach one team? There are a lot of different opinions and circumstances to consider. I outline my perspective in the episode. In This Episode What’s one of the things that non-soccer fans always point to as the reason they don’t like soccer – Diving. What’s one of the things that non-soccer fans always point to as the reason they don’t like soccer – Diving. What causes more unfair results than anything else in our game – Diving. Today I focus on what we CAN and SHOULD do to remove diving from our game. Here’s an opinion video from WORLD CLASS COACHING President, Mike Saif, about: How to Stop Diving and Cheating in Soccer INSTANTLY. Ranking and Reviews I’d like to ask you a favor, we have 96 rankings and reviews on our Apple Podcast profile. I’d love to get that above 100 this week. If you’ve ever found any of the information I’ve shared over the last, nearly three years, helpful or interesting please take two minutes and give us a quick ranking and review through your iTunes account. It will help push us over 100 and keep us near the top of the rankings for soccer podcast. Future Episodes Next week I’m going to speak with Ola Larsson about his SuperCoach app and unique ideas for constructing technical exercises.