Customer Reviews

Coaching Soccer: The Official Coaching Book of the Dutch Soccer Association

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
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This book teaches you how to read the game for on and off the ball movement of your players, and provides small sided games to improve deficiencies you have diagnosed.Who else but the Dutch would be serious enough to have a chapter titled "Didactics and Methodology in Youth Soccer Training?"Do not look to this book for skills coaching, however.Useful for coaching U-10 and up.

As a Director of Recreational Soccer and a competitive coach, this is one of my top books in my library of over 30 books. Bert starts by defining age groups and age characteristics and how kids learn. Then in Chapter 3 gets into Learning How To Play and Chapter 4 Coaching Young Players. Bert gives great insight into coaches and kids and breaks it down by age groups. A lot of yellow marking and side notes by me on these pages! Chapter 5 is Reading the Game, with excellent bullet points. The book takes off in chapter 6 when Bert gets into the Dutch Approach section. The talks age group shows sessions, talks concepts and philosophy and then makes sure we understand "soccer moments" and "soccer problems". The team in possession and oponents in possession sections is excellent. He tells us about TIC (technique in soccer) and then goes into the 4v4 and the 7v7 training. I highly recommend this book to coaches that understand "The game is the best teacher"

From an Australian point of view, we have many people telling us how we need to improve our junior coaching techniques. I have spent many months and a considerable amount of money looking for a resource like this.
It seems to meet the guidelines of everything the commentators and experts in our country recommend is taught to our children and the Dutch have had obvious success.

When they teach young players to play soccer, the Dutch focus on TIC (Technique, Insight and Communication). This book focuses on the Insight players need to develop to understand how to play the game, to understand what is happening on the pitch. An outstanding resource. Very highly recommended...

This book reads a lot like shorthand. Very short, clear descriptions. It has some very good diagrams and after awhile it begins to make a lot of sense. Be prepared to keep returning to it as a resource book.

For coaching youth soccer ages U15 and younger this is all you need, seriously! Especially for those of us in the US where soccer is not as ingrained in our sporting culture as it is in the rest of the world. People here do not have the innate understanding of the game. The game is simple and complex at the same time, this book really clears up the areas a coach needs to focus on. There are some chapters that are not essential (about running a club or tournament), the middle is great.

The brilliant part of this book is breaking the game down to mini size drills: 1v1, 2v1, 3v2, etc but no bigger than 4v4 to focus on attacking or defending. The key is 4v4 and smaller: every kid getting lot's of touches in real soccer situations (there's no standing in lines and dribbling thru cones in a real game). Also what to watch for and what to do when you see it is great for ideas and helping a coach solve the problems you see your team exhibit.

I have read the US coaching manuals as required for getting my coaching licenses (free PDF's from US Soccer) and they just miss the mark, though they have some good info. I also thumb through every coaching book I see and they are usually ridiculously complex and not helpful at all.

I had the benefit of growing up with a father from England that was a huge fan of the Dutch style of play and loathed the English long ball style. He also was one of a handful of people (in my hometown) that knew anything about the game, so he was the local guru of soccer coach, but also watching soccer matches with him allowed me to catch on to the points of the game that people in the US just don't see, so I "get it" more than a lot of other soccer people in the US. I coached my kids teams for 10+ years without reading any coaching books but when one of my kids started playing at a higher level I needed better resources as a coach. I know many coaches that have read loads of coaching books and have taken coaching clinics but no clue how the game really works. Well intended but mis-guided, when I found this book it was like the Holy Grail of coaching. I think all that is needed is this book (and having kids play futsal as much as possible)

This book is the official coaching manual of the Dutch FA. The Dutch are well-known for their youth development programs, tactics, and excellent teams, including the dynamic teams of the early 1970's, total soccer, Ajax, etc. They have refined the identification and development of soccer talent into an art form, and in this book, you can get some nice pointers about how to do that.

This book will not give you exercises to improve dribbling, shooting, or controlling the ball, nor does it describe specific techniques. Rather, the Dutch method is to create game-like situations, centered on a limited number of basic games, particularly 4 v. 4 games. Indeed, the book repeatedly cautions coaches to use other drills sparingly.

Most interestingly, within the games presented in the book, there is a detailed description of various problems a coach may observe ("what a coach sees"), coupled with solutions ("what the coach does/says). By paging through the games presented and the problems identified by the coach, the manual provides a roadmap to developing training sessions.

This book is hands-down one of my favorite coaching books, along with Horst Wein's Developing Youth Football Players. I suspect it would be most useful for a coach to have had a decent amount of experience playing soccer, since the methods described in it focus largely upon a coach making observations and then implementing a plan to address those observations. In all, the author's knowledge of child development coupled with soccer really make this a must-read.

considering that there as so many books on the markets, i think this book tends to offer much much more, it helps with understanding what is required and how to achieve the desired goals, the approach towards coaching is also illustrated in a more practical and logical way thus ensuring that maximum benifit to the players as well as the coach

good book

This book gave me a lot of good ideas on drills, practices and game strategies. A bit outdated, but still very effective, nice work!

This book teaches you how to read the game for on and off the ball movement of your players, and provides small sided games to improve deficiencies you have diagnosed.Who else but the Dutch would be serious enough to have a chapter titled "Didactics and Methodology in Youth Soccer Training?"Do not look to this book for skills coaching, however.Useful for coaching U-10 and up.