How to Coach a Soccer Team: Professional Advice on Training Plans, Skill Drills, and Tactical Analysis [Paperback]

Tony Carr (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 2006

Tony Carr knows what it is to be a great coach—some of his students in London’s famed West Ham United Academy have gone on to earn international honors. Here are the secrets of his success, illustrated in detail and arranged to follow a full season, from the first session to the final game. Carr explains how to assess players and provides complete training sessions, including warm-ups and cool-downs. He devotes a full chapter to ball skills—a bedrock of the game—as well as to team play, goalkeeping, and problem-solving. There’s a section of set plays and one with small-sided games that includes suggested conditions for the players to follow and coaching points.

No would-be coach can do without it.

 

TONY CARR is a preeminent youth soccer coach, who has worked with many European soccer stars. He lives in England.

Editorial Reviews

From Booklist

Carr, manager of the West Ham United Academy in London, England (West Ham is a Premier League team with a reputation for developing young talent), offers a selection of the drills and practice routines he has used over 30 years of guiding soccer players from early to professional play. Photos and illustrations are abundant and helpful; general organization suggests the way both a single practice and a season might be structured. After information on warming up and getting organized, chapters offer drills focusing on ball skills, team play, and goalkeeping. A chapter on set plays treats the essentials, and another on small-sided games offers creative exercises for letting players play while focusing on particular aspects of their game. "Solving Problems" suggests possible causes for common problems and lists specific exercises from the book that may help. This treats technique, not psychological or managerial aspects of the game; see DiCicco and Hacker's Catch Them Being Good (2002) for a more holistic approach. An extremely useful reference for youth coaches--of all but the earliest ages--in need of fresh ideas. Keir Graff
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Product Details

• Paperback: 144 pages
• Publisher: Sterling (March 28, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1402729847
• ISBN-13: 978-1402729843
• Product Dimensions: 10.3 x 7.6 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #47,304 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #9 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Coaching > Soccer
  • #34 in Books > Sports & Outdoors > Soccer

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great Book, August 30, 2007

By 

Paul Lizanich (Cleveland, OH USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: How to Coach a Soccer Team: Professional Advice on Training Plans, Skill Drills, and Tactical Analysis (Paperback)

I am coaching my son's U10 soccer team and found this book to be very useful. It offers numerous training exercises to address almost every phase of the game. These include simple to understand diagrams as well as coaching points to discuss with the players. It also offers an appendix on which drills to work on with your team to solve problems.

Out of the two dozen books I took out of the library, this was the one I bought and carry with me.

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Some good drills but that is it..., June 18, 2011

By 

Adi - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Coach a Soccer Team: Professional Advice on Training Plans, Skill Drills, and Tactical Analysis (Paperback)

I bought this book mainly because the author is Tony Carr, Director of Youth Development at West Ham United, a club known for it's great youth development system.

That said, I was very disappointed by the book. I only recommend this book if you want a quick backup for drills at soccer practice, as it has a nice index at the back that you can use to quickly find a drill for a particular area, in case you came unprepared or you can't perform one of the drills you planned to do. It is the only reason I gave it 2 stars and not 1.

If you are looking for a more complete overview of coaching soccer this is absolutely the wrong book. Don't be fooled by the book's name.

First of all I discovered that this book is 90% made up of drill examples, most of which you will find in any other soccer coaching book. That tells me that in the author's opinion, being a coach just means laying out a bunch of practice drills for your players.

The book has only 143 pages and has tons of illustration, which is nice to see at first glance, until you realize the illustrations and pictures are there just to fill up the white space.

I finished reading this book in the same evening i got it, as most of the text just describes the pictures above it, there's not much information to take from it.

Although the book is almost exclusively made up of drills, there aren't that many drills in it actually, because there are so many illustrations and pictures and the fact that variations of the same drill are presented as a different drill altogether (taking up another page).

Part 5 of the book sums it all up. It covers set plays in four pages! One page for defending a corner kick, two pages for attacking a corner and one page for attacking a free kick. Apparently, defending a free-kick is not THAT important to be mentioned in this book. I'm not even going to ask about throw-ins, apparently they should already be second nature.

As an example, the corner-kick defending page shows a big diagram of a set play situation. Bellow it the author describes where on the field each player is located, just in case you haven't seen it in the huge illustration above. At the end, the author concludes that once "the setup has been well rehearsed, then the most important thing is being first to the ball when the corner is taken". Priceless information.

If the book would have been called "Some nicely illustrated soccer drills" I would not have been disappointed, but I expected a whole lot more from it, considering the author's name and the title ("How to coach a soccer team" implies that the book will have a holistic approach on coaching, not just laying out a bunch of drills)

If you want a more complete overview of coaching a team, I recommend reading Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer by Alan Hargreaves.

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Coaching Book, July 7, 2011

By 

Reservoir Dog - See all my reviews

This review is from: How to Coach a Soccer Team: Professional Advice on Training Plans, Skill Drills, and Tactical Analysis (Paperback)

Excellent coaching resource. I coach an under 11 rep team and an under 8 house league team. I am a basketball coach first and foremost and know little about soccer. I use this book as my only resource. It has been excellent. I coach with another coach who played the game at a high level - almost made it to the MLS. He has way more experience coaching than me and yet I will run a portion of the practice and the next practice he is borrowing drills from me. (Which I obviously got from thsi book.) The writer above who dished this book is right in that it does not tell you much about coaching soccer. But that being said if you know how to coach and are looking for drills and an overview of coaching there is none better than this book.