Dutch Soccer Drills [Paperback]

Richard Kentwell (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 11, 1998

Europe's top coaches have contributed to this collection of 180 outstanding drills designed to pinpoint specific skills and develop them to their fullest potential. These drills will help coaches advance their players' skills, confidence, and tactical awareness as they strive for creative, attacking soccer. The easy-to-use layout of Dutch Soccer Drills makes it an essential practice tool for all coaches. Divided into chapters on dribbling, passing, shooting, heading, restart plays, goalkeeping and conditioning, coaches have drills designed for the skills they want to work on right at their fingertips. Each drill features the objective, a clear diagram, and easy-to-follow organizational factors, instructions, coaching points and variations. Coaches will gain exciting new ideas from these excellent drills which will keep their players motivated and interested. Whether you want to break out of a practice rut or keep from falling into one, Dutch Soccer Drills will energize your players and make the most of practice time. Richard Kentwell is a licensed English F. A. Coach with over 25 years of coaching experience. The author of four books and numerous articles, Kentwell earned his masters degree in education from Boston University, with a specialization in human movement. He is a director of the British American School of Soccer and president of Reedswain, the coaching and book specialists.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard Kentwell is a licensed English F. A. Coach with over 25 years of coaching experience. The author of four books and numerous articles, Kentwell earned his masters degree in education from Boston University, with a specialization in human movement. He is a director of the British American School of Soccer and president of Reedswain, the coaching and book specialists.

Product Details

• Paperback: 232 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (May 11, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1570281068
• ISBN-13: 978-1570281068
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 7.2 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #801,539 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Is this soccer or a pattern book for needlepoint?, November 5, 1997

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Dutch Soccer Drills (Paperback)

I don't claim to be an expert soccer coach. However, I do know that there are two schools of thought about how to coach soccer. In one school, coaches emphasize simple drills to teach and then perfect particular ball handling skills (for example, trapping or heading a high ball, or sprinting down the field and then sending a long crossing pass). These skills are then allowed to be put to use in small scrimmages, in order to allow each player to have a maximum number of ball touches to develop confidence in handling the ball under pressure, and also to allow for creativity. In the other school, coaches emphasize rigid pattern drills, which attempt to simulate particular play situations in soccer, and in this way, the players also learn to perfect their ball control skills.

Well, this book definitely belongs to the second school of thought. I don't happen to believe in this school, at least not yet.

I have to say that the title of the book made me think that there was some connection to Dutch Soccer. Visions of Johan Cruyff, Marco Van Basten, Ruud Gullit, Wiel Coerver, and all of those wonderful Dutchmen, who coach and play some of the most inventive and creative soccer in the world (oh, okay, maybe not in the whole world, just in Europe) danced through my head.

Instead, the author turns out to be really an Englishman, and the book's only connection to Dutch Soccer seems to be that these drills are borrowed from the Dutch Soccer Academy. The drills are really all about dribbling, passing, and shooting, in well-defined patterns. The pages are just filled with symbols - triangles, dots, and squiggly lines. Some of the drills are relatively straightforward and easy to do. Some of the patterns are quite complex. After trying to figure out several pages worth of these patterns, my eyes just started to glaze over. I don't know how the coaches or players memorize all of these patterns in the first place. And you would have to memorize them, otherwise the really complex drills would fall into total chaos.

I can only guess that if anybody were to use these drills, they would have to be 1) fairly advanced soccer players, probably at high school or college level or above, and 2) heavily into a structured style of soccer.

Maybe it will work for you. I didn't find the book to be very useful. The blurb in the title about "Individual Skills" is also misleading since there is virtually no information, not even one pearl of wisdom, about how to teach individual ball skills to a player.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Complicated Drills, November 24, 1999

By 

Daniel W. Boren - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dutch Soccer Drills (Paperback)

I found most of the drills to be quite complicated and difficult to implement on the field. I did find some useful drills and others may become more useful in the future as I coach upper age groups, up to U-12 right now. But the time lost explaining the drills and setting them up is better spent on less complex drills with more ball touches per player. I also prefer small sided games to allow the game to teach the players.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Lots of drills... not much variety, February 17, 2005

By 

BrahmaBull "BrahmaBull" (Kitchener, Ontario Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Dutch Soccer Drills (Paperback)

This book, and the other Dutch Soccer Drills book is full of drills, that if you are interested in running them from a coaching perspective, involve a lot of "pattern" play and running. As a competitive level youth coach I personally only use only a handful of drills from these books, and mostly the small-sided games, which do not constitute a large part of this book. Drills where players pass from one position to the next, move, then do some function are good conditioning exercises for the beginning of practices, but they are robotic and repetition oriented and really have limited use training players to make good decisions during games. Stick to the Weil Coerver series for skill development and then keep practices to 2 vs 2, 3 v. 3, 3 v 4 small games for the best development of youths.