U.S. Soccer has unveiled the new coaching curriculum for coaches of players ages 5-12. The curriculum concentrates on improving the youngest players by creating more organized, age-appropriate training sessions, developing coaching practices and creating an environment that is fun for the players. All of the materials are available on the US Soccer website here
Soccer America captured Claudio Reyna’s comments on the four key points of the curriculum. Reyna was named the Federation’s Youth Technical Director one year ago. The former captain of the U.S. Men’s National Team is responsible for overseeing the design and implementation of long-term strategies for development of both coaches and players at the youth level in the United States, of which this is the first step.
1. Development over winning.
“Our players are naturally competitive,” Reyna said. “We don’t need to ramp that up anymore. The whistle blows, our kids want to win. That’s one of our strengths and we’re proud of it. But if we’re manipulating and thinking winning-over-development, we’re making a huge mistake. We’re short-cutting the development of players. …
“Our aim is to produce skillful, creative, confident players.”
Reyna, who made several references to Barcelona’s famed youth program, quoted star playmaker Xavi: “Some youth academies worry about winning. We worry about education.”
2. Quality Training.
“Make every session a quality session, come prepared, don’t waste time,” Reyna said. “Keep players focused and active. … If you have 12 one-hour sessions in a month, and you waste 10 minutes each session, you can waste two sessions in a month.”
3. Age appropriate.
“Providing players with too much too soon leads to confusion and hurts development,” he said. “We don’t need coaches teaching 8-year-olds zonal defending or an offside trap, just like we don’t teach a second-grader calculus. Kids learn rapidly, but at different stages in their lives.”
4. Have fun and inspire your players.
“If we make it fun, we’re going to inspire them. Soccer is a great, fun game,” said Reyna. “Let’s make sure we create an environment so that our players want to come back to our training sessions and be part of the fun.”
Downloads (Note large file sizes)
Part 1 – Style and Principles of Play (2.5 MB .pdf)
Part 2 – Concepts and Coaching Guidelines (30 MB .pdf)
Part 3 – Age Group Organization (2.5 MB .pdf)
Part 4 – Planning and Training (61 MB .pdf)
Full Document (98 MB .pdf)
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The Curriculum actually goes to advanced levels and ages up to 18 not just 5-12. It has some very good standards of training that are a move in the right direction if we are going to produce players that are going to be considered among the best in the world. It recomends training 4 days a week and playing one match a week. It also gives some good ideas on how to organize your competative season and off season as well as the specifics of your training sessions. We need to give our young players more quality time with the ball if they are going to develop the technial and tactical skills needed to be the best. As a soccer nation we out-perform most other nations in the Physical and Psychological aspects of the game but our technical and tactical skills although much improved over the past 20 years, are still behind. I know most coaches are not able to train 4 times a week and our kids do not go play on their own like they used to. That is one of the reasons I started Integrity Athletic Performance with soccer specific training sessions so players can get high quality training 4 times a week that is competative and enjoyable so they develop a love to play the great game. I recomend coaches and parents read through the document, I garentee you will find several things that will make you think and improve your soccer inteligence.
Best,
Cory Carr
The key element in my mind is the emphasis on training and a reduction in the number of games and the emphasis on winning that games creates. If you follow Terry Michler’s efforts at learning from the Dutch, the two key points he has emphasized to me are 1) focus on the positive. 9 positive comments to every 1 negative comment. The other element is let the kids play the game and learn in an unstructured way.