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

We've all seen them. £15 p/h for a B license coach at an academy. Unpaid internships that are basically a stressful 9-5 with the only perk being the name on the CV and the club tracksuit. What's going on, and what can we do? As I say frequently, sport reflects life. And for those who "don't do politics," you better. Because while you keep your head down and don't do politics, your landlord raises the rent, petrol prices increase, you can't afford to pay your electricity bills, and the country occasionally shuts down in the summer because we have record heat waves, year after year. The biggest ..read more

Twitter falling apart? LinkedIn too self-indulgent? Instagram too vain? Facebook full of older relatives sharing memes? The BFCN message board provides a place where coaches from around the world can interact for free. You can talk football with people who know football. Why should you join? It's free. Just like all the other apps and sites, it's free. But you won't be bombarded by ads, and you won't have your data sold to marketing companies. Only coaches use it. You won't be dragged into nonsense discussions by fans. No members are elevated above the others. The replies won't be full of ir ..read more