Fitness, The Main Factor to Play Good Soccer

Are your players ready to sprint at any time in a match not just at the start?

By David Clarke

Fitness is a strange beast. As one coach said to me the other night "why should I waste my training time on fitness? If they're not fit I won't play them!"

Is he right? Is it more important to work on technique, skills and tactics on training night and let the fitness take care of itself?

I have thought about this question a lot since I started coaching. The problem is if your players are not fit enough it can be difficult to tell on training night but easy to see in a match. How often will you have a great first half but get pegged back in the second and wonder why your players are no longer sprinting down the wing or getting on the end of through balls?

If they are not fit then technique and tactics go out of the window as they try to survive the rest of the game. So, the answer to the main question is you do need your players to be fit but you can waste time if you don't target your fitness properly.

In my publication Soccer Coach Weekly subscribers get five minute fitness tips which are ideal for training night and you can run them while you are setting up exercises or small-sided games. In other words you are adding to your training night rather than wasting time.

This is a longer session and one I tend to use once a month because you are specifically working on endurance/stamina during matches, so that if your attacker is put through against a defender in the last minute they will still have the fitness to sprint onto the ball and get a shot away.

Alternating jogging and sprinting

If you set up a course like the top one in the diagram you can get your players using alternate sprints and jogs to practise match-like situations. The sequence will be sprint, jog, sprint, jog.

• Tell your players to run the course alternating between top speed sprinting and slow jogging.

• One complete circle counts as a single repetition.

• Adjust the distance between points in relation to the age of your players and repeat 5 times.

Use the second diagram for sprints.

Tell your players to sprint from 1 to 6 and then back to 1.

• Rest at each point the given amount of time. You can alter the times players wait at each point if they are finding the going tough.

• Repeat 3 times and build up over the weeks. Don’t let your players exhaust themselves.

These exercises are designed to get your players fit quickly. Make it more fun by getting team-mates to shout out the number of seconds the runner has to wait.

Make a Difference

To make difference, Get your players to push harder at key moments in games

By David Clarke

Ask any soccer fan and they will remember early goals, late goals, and goals straight after your team has just scored.There is something about timing in soccer matches that not only means you score a goal but also a psychological blow to your opponents.

But it isn’t just the final minutes that teams should be looking to win games in, there are a lot of important times in matches that you need to make a note of and be prepared for when you take your team out onto the pitch.

Attack straight from kick-off

When the match kicks off you need to tell your players to be first to the ball and get it forward into attacking positions. If you start by kicking off make sure you have prepared them by practising kick-offs so know what they are doing. How many times do you see teams give the ball away straight from kick off?

The last five minutes of the first half

The last five minutes in the first half is your cue to tell your players to turn up the heat on the opposition. Scoring just before half time is a big blow to the opposition. It would be a big blow to your team if you let a late goal in.

The first five minutes of the second half

The start of the second half is key because often a team has been sitting around while the coach lectures them for the whole of half time and they come out to play without stretching and are not quite fully focused. You can create a lot of chances if you make sure your half time talk is structured and you give them five minutes to run around and get ready to play the game.

Immediately after the opposition has scored

One of the other key times is just after scoring. Your players' heads will go down if they let a goal in but if you tell them this is the time to strike back they can take advantage of the situation. Teams think they are in control when they score - make sure your players are aware of this just after they have scored as well.

The last five minutes of the match

When you get to the last five minutes it is often the team that is the fittest that can take advantage. If you follow my fitness exercises below your players will be ready to take advantage of the teams that are tired in the final part of the game.