I’ve been around the beautiful game my whole life. From kicking a tennis ball against my bedroom door as a kid, to having the pleasure of putting on our red Canada jersey, to a national title with UVIC. It’s been a real ride – ups & inevitable downs – it’s shaped me as a human. […]
Happy Holidays, Over the next week the Play Better team will be celebrating and sharing stories from teams who have already accomplished so much playing better this season. Furthermore, we want to personally thank all the teams playing better across our nation! Team # 1 – North Vancouver U-12 Flames The U12 Flames are […]
Boys U10-12 individual metrics by Robert Kleemaier Hi everyone, In my previous post, we discussed a number of attainable collective metrics – team passing, Move of the Day & ‘Around the Horn’, among others – and their implementation throughout a 30-contact-hour outdoor season in BC’s Central Okanagan region in the spring and fall of 2014. […]
The Play Better program is happy to introduce the ‘move of the week’ metric, for younger age groups. After a series of tests we have decided it is a fun, simple and effective metric, which can be easily rewarded. To do this will you need to incorporate a few goals and challenges weekly to keep […]
The 5000 Touch Challenge: a fantastic training program and opportunity to reward players for their personal efforts A simple concept based on years and years of implementation in the greatest developmental football nation, Holland. This challenge has been adapted from my friend John Townsend who writes for These Football Times. Big thanks goes to him […]
Well it’s safe to say that if you are a hard core footy fan then the worst month of the year is finally over. After a lengthy few week break, I don’t watch the average US tour games they make the big clubs go through, the season is upon us once again! And I am […]
Developmental soccer. We’ve all seen the words. They are on every website attached to just about every club out there. Problem is, the actions by many aren’t matching up to the words. A few years ago, as a coordinator for numerous young age groups, I went and observed one U9 team play 6 weeks of […]
0 wins since 2012. 2 goals in 14 months in the men’s game. 110th ranking in Men’s soccer, out of 209 registered nations. 1 World Cup appearance. 0 goals. 0 entries since 1986. 1 Gold Cup. 7th ranking in Women’s soccer of 129 registered nations. [Only 1 other of those nations have our infrastructure and […]
All you parents out there, we need to keep our kids in sport! It is widely and commonly cited that youth dropout rates in sports are staggering. Discouraged children are simply quitting sports before the age of 13. This is the cold hard truth. A fact, as it once was. Children are quitting sport […]
Free play. Unstructured play. No coaching. Are those words foreign to your young soccer charges and their parents? For the vast majority of grassroots soccer players in this country, I would wager the answer is yes. In our typically over-structured and busy lifestyle in modern society, the typical soccer experience in Canada consists of whatever […]
