Customer Reviews

Teambuilding: The Road to Success

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Rinus Michel's book, together with Bert Van Lingen's book "Coaching Soccer" provide the framework of the "Dutch Vision" of how to coach soccer. This book is a fantastic resource for any soccer coach at any level, any convenor at the youth soccer level, or any person tasked with administering a soccer program.

Michels explains the vital importance of small-sided (4v4) games in teaching young players how to play soccer, establishes objectives for the technical development of young players by age group, discussed systems of play, and gives real-life examples of how to manage the dynamics of professional and international teams.

This may well be the most important soccer book ever written.

What can be said about Rinus Michels that hasn't already been said about the creator of 'Total Soccer'. Having said that I can only give this book four stars due to Mr. Michels' ramblings sometimes. Yes, it is a somewhat difficult book to read. My advice is to get you a notepad and pen to write down the many golden gems found in this book.

Half-way through the book I realized that I was reading the thoughts of a genius. Section after section I found the answers to some of my questions I had regarding the tactics, training, and methods of professional teams (some applicable up to the U12 level.) I have no doubts that the reader's coaching methods will be positively affected due to the knowledge that Mr. Michels shares in this book.

This book is certainly not a "page-turner" and sometimes I barely wanted to open it, just looking forward to a more interesting coaching book.

Rinus Michels was probabaly a very good coach and had great success with the Dutch national team as a coach during 70s (reached WC FInal 1978 in Argentine) and 80s and obviously has had a great impact on the evolution of Dutch soccer including sucessfull wotk with the Dutch FA and Dutch Youth soccer.

He mentions a lot of interesting things that can be worth taking into account about how the Dutch youth setup is working and what things are important to know about youth soccer in general. I.e At what age you should do that and don't do that

But this book hardly contains any really good exercices to improve your teambuilding. There are only a few exercises in the book and no pictures or diagrams to help you really understand what the exercises is all about. Overall, teambuilding is a broad topic but I felt I would have gained more experience and insight in teambuilding reading this book.

It should also be known that this book mostly cover dutch soccer and that sometimes can be a bit frustrating. For a genuine soccer fan you would have anticipated that he would have learned a lot from his time as a coach of FC Barcelona but barely mention that spell of his life in "Teambuilding". But I suppose he writes about what he knows best.

I don't want to say that you sholdn't read this book because there is always something that you learn with a soccer coaching book that you can apply in soccer on a daily basis. There are always things to pick up but there are for sure better books out there if you want to be a better soccer coach.

An interesting book, though not a seminal treatise. A few valuable insights and a plethora of banalities. But it was the curious omissions that attracted my attention. These may probably be explained by good old-fashioned professional envy, amnesia brought about by deliberate dismissiveness, a phenom quite widespread in the coaching profession. Team-building is given a lot of space in the book, the role of the coach as an important motivational engineer is naturally, of paramount importance. But whether the technician uses a trusted stick-and-carrot approach (euphemistically called operant conditioning)or politically correct self-realization methodology he inevitably will run into personality problems; there's only so much that one can control and manage. If Michels' success owed much to his structured, disciplinarian ways, then how in the world would one explain no less glittering achievements of one Stefan Kovacz, a Roumanian of Hungarian descent who had won two consecutive Champions Cup titles with Ajax in the early seventies. And why is there no mention of the fact that Cruyff and Co. much preferred his relaxed and unobtrusive style to the oppressive authoritarianism of his predecessor? "Total football" of course, is a milestone in the evolution of the game, but the freedom to improvise given to the players by Kovacz allowed them to reach excellence usurpassed to this day. It is true that Stefan Kovacz could never emulate his succes with Ajax and his post-Ajax career is marked by consecutive failures. Arsene Wenger came to replace Kovacz at Monaco, but neither the Emirates hireling will ever care to even fleetingly mention Stefan. Alas, similar fate befell many other great coaches, and Arrigo Sacchi is but one recent example. Speaking of success, what exactly did Holland win under Michels? Commendable though in terms of their 1974 World Cup final performance, they fell short of winning gold. Also, in 1978 they reached the final again, but this time the coach was the cerebral Austrian Ernst Happel. And what about the 1976 European Championship when "the Orange" were handily beaten by the Czechs coached, by Vazlav Ezcek, a revolutionary technician who invented the concept of block training and a man even more unassuming than Kovacz. The only legitimate succes that Michels achieved was in 1988 Euro final; Van Basten's spectacular goal being the highlight of the tournament. But the Dutch lost to the Soviet Union in the preliminary round, not that it mattered eventually. All of this is not to detract from the value of the book; it gives you food for thought and sagaciously doesn't offer a variety of Dutch Passing Drills both as a recipe and a nostrum.

This book is way to complicated and doesnt really do anything to get to success. It is all about high levels of soccer and nothing the normal coach can related to.