The iconic Estadio Azteca at night, during the rain. This will be a relatively shorter piece to what I'm used to producing. Those close to me will know I'm steadily falling out of love with the beautiful game. It's been a long, gradual process, but when each new threshold is broken, there is no coming back. What has happened to football? Our game, the people's game, from its working class roots? We're never going to get it back, but for people like me, it has become our entire lives. How do we move on? Coaching Once an inspiration to many, Pep may now be leading a team several are citing ..read more

We’re behind, and their foundations mean we’re going to fall even further behind. Aztecs On Tour: Southampton Aztecs Women attend the Atlantis Mondial Femenin in Nantes. With lots of entertainment options available in modern life, why should you spend a few minutes reading this article? Futsal is not a major sport in England, so who cares that the French are better than us? Especially the women! Well, for one thing, it mirrors what can be achieved in football. And if you want England, or your own country, to be better at football, we should really embrace futsal. Both as a sport, and as a fo ..read more

This article was written by coach Gavin Murphy, from his experience in Sacramento during the summer of 2019. It has always been a dream of mine to coach in America, specifically California, and last summer I got to do just that. I was offered the position of “camp counsellor” at a soccer/futsal company based Sacramento, in northern California. After some delays, I collected my passport (with visa) at 6am on the 7th of June. Upon leaving the collection office, I booked my flight for 11am on the 7th of June. I got home, packed my bags and left for the airport. Twelve hours later, I landed in Sa ..read more

By now, you're likely well aware of the Interest Days with the PSV Coaching Academy. You've likely seen that they are highly recommended by ourselves and others. Perhaps you're considering a trip yourself. It's likely that most, if not all readers of this article will have not been to Eindhoven. So I thought I'd share my trip with you to show you how easy it is to get there and to get around. Questions you may have will likely include; How can I get to Eindhoven? How do I travel around in Eindhoven? Where should I stay? Can we watch games? How many days should I go for? From reading the bel ..read more

This will be one of the first of several pieces about the PSV Interest Days at the PSV Eindhoven Coaching Academy. A great experience that I highly recommend to all coaches. Keep your eyes peeled, as we'll go into more detail about various aspects. The experience at PSV, as you will have seen on social media, was so open and candid. They hid nothing. They treated us as equals and really made us feel part of the club. One of the reasons why they could be so candid is because of their belief in what they are doing, and their firm belief that it can't be replicated in other places. You could bui ..read more

If you're about to get into futsal, and want a general idea of what you're supposed to do and how the game works, here's some things I wish I was told when I first started. Finish the move https://video.wixstatic.com/video/e7de1a_90ced990f22c4f2fb97cf9b32162af6b/1080p/mp4/file.mp4 Think of it like this; if you don't score, the opposition will. Here's two chances where we should have scored, didn't, and conceded immediately. When attacking, you commit so many players forward, that you are left exposed and wide open for counters. When we say "finish the move" what we mean is that the ball must g ..read more

I've recently read some online discourse surrounding silent weekends at grassroots matches, with people arguing for and against them. We shouldn't need them, because parents should be have. But we do need them, because parents don't behave. But also coaches complain, because they aren't able to input as much as they'd like to. Which leads me to the question within the title of this article; do they actually know what they are supposed to be doing? I have long believed that a coach should be working hard to make themselves obsolete. Train and prepare the players so well that they don't need yo ..read more

If so many grassroots teams are acting like academy teams, where do the rest of the kids play? I find this to be a question worth asking more and more these days. Grassroots football in England is rapidly copying the pay-to-play model of American youth sports. We don't want that future. Kids are priced out of the game, everything is super serious, we lose so many kids from the sport, and very few actually enjoy themselves. Before I go into detail, I feel it's necessary to preface this with a couple points. Online discussions appear to lack nuance, and the people that partake in them tend to l ..read more

You're not a trained S&C coach. You don't have an array of fitness equipment. You barely even know what you're doing at the gym. So why are you doing bleep tests with kids? This summer, across the many camps I've worked, I have been inundated with stories from kids and parents of how their coach is insisting on preseason fitness work, and this invariably means bleep tests. I know it's not becoming to bash volunteers, and ripping on grassroots coaches trying their best is not always fair, however, these kids deserve better. What is the job of a grassroots coach? In a nutshell, grassroots c ..read more

Would you like a place where you can network for free with other futsal coaches? Somewhere that ideas and sessions can be shared and discussed? Would you like somewhere free from judgement, and without an agenda? Let us introduce our free futsal coaches community. Just click here. It's on the BFCN messageboard, and is separate to the jobs board. All coaches have to do is register. It will remain free, and not for profit. If nobody is paying to access, nor paying to advertise, then there will be no agendas being pushed, and nothing corporate being forced upon the participants. Whether you're a ..read more