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)
