Coerver is known throughout the world as one of the best training tools for young soccer players. Regardless of skill level or ability, each youngster that is taught the Coerver Coaching method is given all the tools to succeed in the game of soccer – all they need is a little determination and application.

Take 15 year old Yannick Martinoli for example. The teenager from Aukland, New Zealand is the latest young soccer player to have signed professional terms with a European based club.  Yannick signed up to play with Grasshopper-Zurich FC from Switzerland.

Yannick was identified and invited to participate in the Coerver Performance Academy where Coerver coaches helped him work hard to improve his skill and technique. This should be an encouragement to young soccer players and coaches throughout the country. Hopefully Yannick goes on to have a long and successful professional soccer career. Read more about Yannick’s story here.

Dream. Believe. Achieve!

Coerver Kid Signs Pro Terms is a post from: Coerver Coaching

Sad news this week as legendary Dutch soccer coach Wiel Coerver passed away on Thursday morning. He was 86.

Coerver was a pioneer of technical soccer training, inventing one of the most successful forms of soccer coaching. The Coerver method was developed from studying video tapes of successful players, such as Pele, and breaking down their technical abilities.

Coerver is prevalent throughout Europe and is taught amongst many professional soccer academies.

RIP Wiel Coerver.

Coerver Founder Wiel Coerver Passes Away is a post from: Coerver Coaching

One of the most time consuming items when coaching soccer is planning a training session. If you’ve been through the USSF or NSCAA coaching courses, you’ll know that planning a training session for your soccer team takes a lot of work. You have to keep it fun so your players will enjoy it, but you also have to make sure your young soccer players actually learn something.

Experienced coaches who’ve been coaching for several years often write their coaching points on paper and design a training session around those points. New coaches however should get in the habit of writing and planning out their coaching session weeks prior to the actual session. This should be done instead of writing up the session the day before. Often when coaches do this they tend to rush through it and miss some of the coaching points.

Fortunately, Coerver Coaching has released a soccer session planner to help coaches develop and plan training sessions to use with their soccer teams. The soccer session planner includes:

• Drills and Games that can be adapted to to any age and level
• Solutions to your Seasonʼs Session Planning
• Tips for both Coaches and Players: designed to improve every player

Wouldn’t you love to be able to plan effective and efficient training sessions to maximize your training plan and get the most out of your players? Visit the soccer session planner website to find out more.

Coerver Coaching: Soccer Session Planner is a post from: Coerver Coaching

For soccer clubs whose Spring season begins in March, it’s time to start making preparations for the new season. There are several weeks to go until you should start bringing your players back for pre-season training, so the more planning you can do now, the more smoother your season will go. Coaches generally look to assess how the Fall season went and will look to improve upon aspects they see which require attention. If your club doesn’t have try-outs in the Spring then you’re fortunate because you’ll be familiar with all the players on your team, and should know their strengths and weaknesses pretty well.

It goes without saying though, that if many of your players haven’t been playing indoor soccer or training on their own, they’re likely to be pretty rusty with their touch and technical skills could be off the pace. The beauty of Coerver Coaching is that it works on individual skills, and incorporates them in small-sided games so small group play can be improved. This means that the individual level of your soccer players doesn’t matter – they will all receive the same chances for improvement in a fun and creative environment – which player wouldn’t want to train under those conditions?

Depending upon where you’re located, it’s likely to be cold during the first few weeks of training during the season. With this being said, it’s important to keep young soccer players moving as much as possible, with dynamic warm-ups to start off with. An ideal way to incorporate technical training and to ensure the players are kept moving, small games of 1v1, 2v2, and 3v3 should be played.

The Coerver Box is also a great way to ensure players are kept moving whilst improving technical ball skills. Ball mastery is critical for young soccer players regardless of age or the position they play on the field. Soccer academies in Holland use the Coerver Box for dynamic warm-ups and for teaching ball control, it’s an essential part of their development.

Finally, and probably most importantly, it’s critical that your soccer players have fun. Don’t overwork them during the first few training sessions. Even though the Spring soccer season is a short one, it’s tempting to get your players fit and back in shape as soon as possible. Doing this could lead to players getting injured unnecessarily and their development could suffer. Player development is primary, and there’s no better way during pre-season to improve their development than with Coerver.

Coerver is a fun, dynamic, and creative soccer training method which can be used for 8 year olds and 18 year old soccer players. Give it a try, your players will thank you.

Preparing for the Spring Soccer Season with Coerver Soccer is a post from: Coerver Coaching

Many of you reading this may already be familiar with the Coerver Coaching Player Development pyramid. The pyramid is broken down into 6 phases of player development, with each phase contributing to a specific topic which then progresses to group play.

The Coerver Coaching pyramid starts off with ball mastery – the fundamental aspects which every young soccer player needs to learn and become familiar with. This is where the players start to manipulate the ball in different ways, using both feet, and are encouraged to be creative. Those of you who have academy aged soccer players between the ages of 7 – 10 should spend time in this area.

The next phase of play in the player development pyramid is passing and receiving. Internationally renowned soccer clubs such as Manchester United, Ajax, Barcelona, Arsenal and many other clubs throughout the world look for players who are cable of being able to receive, and pass a soccer ball. Receiving a ball on the move is a skill many coaches look for – is a player comfortable with taking a positive first touch and then distributing the ball sensibly and smartly?

At any level of the game, soccer is about winning individual battles on the field – 1v1s are critical in any area of the soccer pitch, especially the attacking half. The third section of the Coerver pyramid focuses on teaching players those 1v1 moves which can have such an impact and often create game winning scoring opportunities. These beat-an-opponent moves involve scissors, step-overs and much more. The younger players aged between 8 – 12 love to work on these moves, the more creative you can help them to be, the better. Instilling confidence in youngsters to use these moves is such an important part of soccer coaching.

In the modern game of soccer, speed is crucial. The fourth part of the Coerver pyramid focuses on making players quicker, so players learn how to improve their agility, power, and acceleration – with and without the ball. When you think of a Lionel Messi with his small frame you would imagine he would be overawed by the stronger more physical players. But look at his balance – he has such a low center of gravity, moves quickly, and has such a deft touch, he makes those stronger players look sluggish.

The fifth part of the Coerver pyramid is all about finishing. Finishing is a skill many people are good at, but few excel. At youth level soccer you will often find games with lots of missed chances – the team that has better finishers is often the victor. Coerver finishing drills and small sided games focus on instinctive play in and around the penalty area with a strong focus on technique. Without technique, the art of finishing is lost. Coerver establishes the fundamental finishing techniques, then puts players into situations to take advantage of those techniques.

The final, and sixth part of the Coerver pyramid of player development is about group play. If you look anywhere on the field of soccer, the game is broken down into different areas which normally involve around four players from each team at any one time. When players are given the skills and know-how to succeed in those group play situations, that bodes well for a successful soccer team. Coerver puts emphasis in this section on fast break attacks which involve breaking as quickly and as efficiently as possible using all the skills learned in previous Coerver pyramid phases.

To recap, let’s go over the Coerver pyramid one more time:

• Phase 1: Ball Mastery
• Phase 2: Receiving and Passing
• Phase 3: 1v1 Moves
• Phase 4: Speed
• Phase 5: Finishing
• Phase 6: Group Attack

The Coerver Pyramid of Player Development is a post from: Coerver Coaching

There are lots of sessions similar to the one explained below on Coerver DVDs. For more sessions like this one I recommend the Coerver Make Your Move DVD set.

I first discovered a mention of the Coerver Box in one of the PDFs which came with my subscription to the World Class Coaching magazine. The PDF explains a pre-season program which is geared to coach the Dutch 4-3-3 system. Part of the technical component in training was to use the Coerver Box. If you don’t subscribe to the World Class Coaching magazine, I highly recommend it.

The Coerver Box

Even though I’ve recently discovered this session, it’s already one of my favorite Coerver drills. This can be done as a warm-up, or as part of a technical passing session, or if you are working on developing your players’ first touch. Two or more players on each cone (but no more than three). The player has to get to the inside cone nearest him in two touches or less, perform a change of direction move, then pass to the next person in line (and rejoin the line). There should only be a maximum of 3 players on each outside corner cone.

The coaches emphasis should be on the players taking a positive first touch in front of them, and really ‘selling’ the change of direction move. The Coerver change of direction moves can include:

• Cruyff
• Dragback
• Inside Cut
• Outside Cut

I like these four Coerver moves because they compromise of using different surfaces of the foot to control the ball with. Once your players are familiar with performing these moves with the stronger foot, they should do every other move with their weaker foot. To keep the players on their toes, the coach should shout “left foot!” or “right foot!” to instruct the players which foot to perform the moves with.

Coerver Box: Progression

With the addition of four cones located centrally on the outside, this progression means there are a lot more Coerver moves involved. Players can go to the left or right (designated by the coach), perform a change of direction move when they get to the cone, two touches or less to the cone they started at, perform a change of direction move, two touches or less to the cone nearest them in the center, perform a change of direction move, then pass back to the next person in line (and rejoin the line).

With this drill the players will get a lot more touches and get used to performing change of direction moves in a closed space, essential for soccer players. The Coerver Box can be used with any age group, but with the younger ones the box should be smaller than it would for U17 or U16 players.

The Coerver Box is a post from: Coerver Coaching

Prior to starting coaching soccer, many coaches go out and spend hundreds of dollars on equipment that they may only use once or twice. In reality, there are only a few pieces of equipment which are necessary to run successful, fun, and energetic Coerver sessions.

As you will see in the Coerver DVDs, the same pieces of field equipment are used over and over again, yet the drills aren’t repetitive.

What You’ll Need:

Cones

An essential piece of any coaches equipment. Cones are what help you define the layout of your session and set guidelines for your players. For Coerver drills it’s no different. Different sessions will require larger or smaller areas which you can change easily and quickly based on the age group and number of players you’re coaching.

Balls

Every player needs to bring a soccer ball to practice. It is their responsibility to make sure it happens. However, it’s the coaches responsibility to make sure there are enough spares so that the kids who forget have a ball to play with. As a ‘punishment’ for the player who has to use one of the coaches balls, that player (or players) has to do one more Coerver move, or footskill than everyone else.

Pugg Goals

Pugg goals are the small goals that are flat then pop open. They come in different sizes. There is the 6 foot, 4 foot, and the newer 2 and-a-half foot. The goals are extremely easy to set up and remove – just fasten them into the ground and they stay. They’re also very durable. My Pugg goals have taken 2 years of abuse from my players but they still function like they were brand new. Another advantage of using the Pugg goals is that they teach the players to shoot low and hard.

So, with just three pieces of equipment you have everything you need to run a Coerver Coaching training session.

Coerver Coaching Equipment is a post from: Coerver Coaching

It’s so important for young soccer players to be comfortable with the ball at their feet. Fun Coerver drills which involve two or more kids encourage working as a team, getting lots of touches with the ball, and helping out team mates.

The video below shows several examples of coerver change of direction moves you can use in a warm-up or in an mini-camp style setting.

Coerver Coaching: Change of Direction Moves is a post from: Coerver Coaching

Many soccer coaches I speak to love the idea of Coerver Coaching, but often struggle to adapt Coerver in their training sessions. As a select / travel soccer coach, we train twice a week with games on a weekend. Our training schedule is Tuesday and Thursday. I make sure that one of those sessions is Coerver based and the other a more tactical / team session.

I’ve found it beneficial for my team if we do the Coerver session on the Tuesday, and here’s why – the last thing I want them to take from the Thursday night’s session is any instruction for the game ahead. I use the Tuesday night’s session as a confidence builder with lots of 1v1s, 2v2s, 3v3s etc.

Firstly, the drills on the Coerver DVDs can be adapted for any age group so if you’re coaching some of the younger age groups, let’s say U8 – U11, your area should be made smaller (depending on the numbers).

Secondly, and this is an important thing to remember, just because the kids are getting older does not mean you need to let up on their fundamental technical skills. In soccer academies in Europe the youth coaches spend the majority of their time working on ball mastery – one of the components of Coerver Coaching.

Thirdly, there are a wide range of Coerver drills which you can use. In the space of a season you may not use the same session twice – but you could of course incorporate many of the Coerver drills into a technical warm-up.

I think that if you take some of these ideas and use them in your own sessions, you’ll find your players have fun at training, they come ready to learn, and leave with confidence from successfully being able to do Coerver moves. Which soccer coach wouldn’t want that?

How to Integrate Coerver into Your Training Sessions is a post from: Coerver Coaching

Coerver coaching is not only popular in the United States, but in Europe and Asia too. In fact, a lot of the players progressing through to the professional ranks have had experience with Coerver. Why shouldn’t the youth players of today have the same kind of experience?

Reasons to Use Coerver

• It’s fun! The kids participate in a positive environment with no repetitive drills.
• With Coerver Coaching each player has lots of touches on the ball. This increases improvement and confidence on the ball.
• The players are encouraged to be creative.
• Kids are kept moving which increases their overall fitness.
• The players are made aware of both defensive and offensive responsibilities in the field of play.
• Players participating in Coerver are taught about respect and sportsmanship.
• Youngsters are taught moves which help them out in any area of the field.
• The Coerver DVDs provide a wealth of information to both coaches and parents.
• A lot of the Coerver training sessions can be customized for kids of all ages and ability levels.
• Professional players and coaches have given endorsements for Coerver and there is one common theme, Coerver has made them, or would have made them better players. Wouldn’t you want the same for your child or soccer team?

If you want to learn more about Coerver take a look at the most popular Coerver DVDs available today.

10 Reasons to Use Coerver Coaching is a post from: Coerver Coaching