Welcome to a 6 day skills challenge. Each day will have a theme connected with a state in New England along with an outline and a short video showing the skill sets we are asking players to do for each day. Each challenge will ask players to get a minimum of 2,000 touches with the intention of getting at least 12,000 touches this week. Please note that we are also trying to share a little connection that our club has with each state.
This idea came from an interesting article that I read about seven years ago. It was a story about a promising young player in England who was trying to break into the ranks of one of the top professional clubs around his area. He was teenager and he did not feel like his club nor any other club were giving him what he needed to take his game to the next level. So what he decided to do is travel to the Netherlands and spend a few weeks studying what the Dutch were doing. He ended up landing for a time at the club FC Twente, and it was there that he truly understood why the Dutch were such great players.
At this club, this English player quickly noticed that every player throughout the club would arrive BEFORE their regular practice time. Once they would arrive, they would quickly get ready and head out to the fields where dozens of balls were left on the pitch for the kids to use before coaches arrived. Every player would go through a series of very simple and basic ball mastery skills before their official practice started. The aim was for every player to get an extra 20,000 touches a week to supplement the official training they were doing at their club.
When I first shared this story with my U10s at the time, I decided to give them an idea of just how many touches that actually was. So, I proceeded to take them through a very intensive 20-minute technical ball mastery program similar to what they do at FC Twente (which mirrors this New England Skills Challenge), and they were surprised that after that very intensive session, they had done 2,000 touches… Then I asked players to work very hard to get 20,000 in the next week. Now this is where it gets really great… I had one player (Dominic Miller) who was a very diligent player. He thought I asked him to get 20,000 touches every day of the week… I got an email the next day from his mother asking for advice that she could share with Dominic about how to accomplish this challenge… We love motivated players!
So, I would like to start with today’s challenge – Maine Skills Challenge
There is a link to a YouTube video showing the skills along with an outline of the skills showing how many you need to do. It is very important for players to be deliberate with their touches. The quality and intentions of your touches matter very much. It is better to go slower and better rather than faster and sloppy. Once you get the skill right, then start challenging yourself by going faster. Trust me that if you push yourself through this skill challenge, it will be a good workout and will certainly improve your touch.
These things are always “challenge by choice” – If you want to get better, you always have a choice on what to do. It is easy to come up with an excuse on why not to do something, but then again I never saw an excuse make a player better nor help a team win a game.
For our older players, if you think that a skill challenge like this is beneath you… Well, here is the lesson to learn. At FC Twente, even their first team (professional) players did the program. Yes, there was a difference between the professionals all the way down to the 9 & 10 year olds. The speed, the quality and the deliberateness was striking. The best players are the masters at basics.
I have also shared a little Monday Motivation from Mia Hamm.
Thanks, Coach Todd
Maine