You can’t be there for every single game that your kid plays. Even if you can, you want to be able to keep it for when they grow up. Or your neighbor asks about it. Or your third cousin brags about their kids and how they [read with nasal voice] “just use these soccer camera gimbals”, but you just dismiss them. You want that in your pocket, ready for whenever you might need it. But you can’t afford the expensive cameras that clubs use these days. Instead, you should use your smartphone! It is raining, you are confused between looking at your kid or looking at the screen, and in the end, your s ..read more

Tiki-taka is the style of play that has defined 21st-century soccer. At its peak, Barcelona under Pep and the Spanish National Team was dominating the world of soccer. That patient passing and keeping the ball until there was an opening was so beautiful, yet annoying to watch. The idea that you cannot concede a goal if you have the ball in your possession made it difficult to watch sometimes. The team would keep the ball for so long and always choose the safe pass. So essentially, we started seeing the backline passing to each other seemingly forever. The birth of the vertical tiki-taka was ne ..read more

“The better team lost today”. We have heard this statement when teams think they’ve been the better team. How did they measure them being better? Did they do that objectively? Sometimes one team had the majority of the possession and the opposition had only one set piece, like a corner or a free kick. Would the statistics tell us that the first team should win the game? Well, if the first team passed between the goalkeeper and the center-backs, while the opposition had David Beckham take a free kick, then it means that the data didn’t tell us the full story. The best soccer statistics books ca ..read more

Central midfielders are the most versatile players on the pitch. However, even they have some advantages that they can express, especially in attack. Being able to wear many hats, a mezzala needs to find the right time to drift to the wing and create an overload. Often cooperating with the wing-back and the winger, can truly create confusion for the opponents. If the three players on the wing have the pace to do overlapping and underlapping runs, the defense can have their hands full. Furthermore, if they end up dragging more defenders, then a quick switch to the other side or a cross can crea ..read more

“Kids don’t play soccer on their own and we have to do something about it”. I’ve heard this from every coach I’ve talked to. While kids don’t play as much as they used to, it’s not completely true. I keep hearing from my players that they play pickup soccer at recess. Or that they play after school or in their backyard. Or they play for the school team. The value of unstructured play or mismatched competition is incredibly high. We will explore where to find these games, the benefits of playing and how to make most out of it. Regardless of the format (5v5, 6v6 or 10v10), the location (grass, t ..read more

Have you ever heard of youth or amateur players getting blisters and can’t play soccer for some time? Of course, I have seen that often. While that used to be the case for professionals, it doesn’t happen anymore. It looks like they found out how to manage them and even play through them. While the root cause explanation can often be a bit hand wavy, the prevention and the treatment are so straight forward, that it’s a shame not to steal their methods. Let’s walk through the common causes and how to handle blisters in soccer. What are blisters? Why do soccer players get them? Blisters are area ..read more

“Soccer is no longer beautiful” – we would hear this so often. Soccer fans criticize that the systems that the coaches use today are so rigid. Most creative players have very little to give in a place where everything is pre-calculated. We also see teams that have no business doing well, beating teams that have spent eye-watering amounts of money on world-class soccer players. Now, how is that possible? Is it that they have mastered all soccer tactics principles or simply the game played in favor of their advantages? Finally, we see that in some clubs the highest-paid person is the coach and n ..read more

6v4 rondo is the soccer drill where 6 players are in possession and 4 players are defenders, trying to recover the ball. It is a natural progression from the 4v2 rondo and can be combined into a single drill. By creating real game-like scenarios, the 6v4 is a perfect balance to explore dominating possession while having numerical superiority. With increased complexity, players develop scanning and awareness abilities to a greater extent, the 6v4 rondos are great soccer drills to elevate your possession-based soccer players to the next level. The 6v4 rondo is used by professional coaches at the ..read more

If you live in a place with weeks and months of snow, you know how painful it can be to get there on the soccer pitch. Whether you are a parent trying to the kids to practice, a coach to get them to move, or just a player attempting to perform, you know how painful it can be to adjust to the snow and the winter weather. Obviously, if it is actively snowing heavily, there is nothing much you can do to get visibility. However, you can definitely do a lot to stay dry and warm on the soccer pitch, while avoiding injuries. Many players get injured because of improper clothing, which is inexcusable ..read more

The first time I played in a 10v10 soccer formation was in my early 20s. At my first job, I noticed a field just outside of my office. One day I was picking up lunch and saw a group of folks playing soccer. It definitely looked like just regular pickup soccer, some 6-a-side games with small goals. Obviously, I immediately asked to join next time. What I found out is that they play twice a week pickup, but they also played in a league on that pitch in the evenings. As the field was a multipurpose field, it didn’t have the right dimensions. It had the right goals, but it looked smaller. The leag ..read more