Coaching Blog

At the turn of the year, we’re afforded an opportunity to ‘start again’, ‘write a new chapter’ or ‘start a fresh’. Whichever way you look at it, moving into January gives you the opportunity to reflect on the past year and plan new goals, for the coming year. While...

When the going gets tough and results aren’t going as first envisaged, there could be the temptation to quash all your previous work and go back to ‘basics’. At this moment in time, there is a well known Premier League outfit that hasn’t had the best start to their...

The moment arrives just before the game, or even during it, where you as a coach or manager have to provide some sort of information for your players. Every team will have these talks (or we can call them meetings), to deliver, discuss and feedback on certain...

During your training sessions you will use a variety of different practices, in order to reach your objective (that should be the plan anyway!). While considering what you want to use, in order to execute a given intention, it’s important for you to analyse the...

We’re now entering the summer months here in the UK, which means the start of pre-season is on the horizon. Some clubs will be starting their preparation soon, where others may wait a little longer. One thing for sure is, that come the second week of July, all...

During your session planning design, how much consideration do you give to the direction of the practice or how many defenders you have? What moment of the game do you want to focus on, within your training structure? Your players currently take part in the game on...

The evaluation process How often do you evaluate? Throughout your everyday life, you execute millions of decisions - a lot of which are unconscious - to progress throughout your day. During your work place you will be given tasks to complete, with some needing to...

During your coaching journey, you will probably encounter some challenges very early on. Whether you deal with these yourself or seek advice, is clearly down to you. After this, a few months pass and again, you encounter further challenges. This time, you feel you...

Sometimes as a coach, you’ll hit a ‘brick wall’ and feel that you are well and truly stuck. Within these moments, you may question what you’ve been doing or what new direction you may attempt to take. When it comes to the topic of your training session, this may...

Throughout my journey, I’ve had many different experiences to date, as you may expect. Some of these experiences have been extremely memorable for good reasons and others memorable, for not so good reasons. Learning the coaching process is a very slow one and takes...

Last week, I detailed my journey on the pathway to receiving my UEFA A License. While this journey had many positives, there were also times when things got tricky and challenging (as expected). I’m going to outline a number of the key areas, that I feel each coach...

For this weeks blog, I’m going to explain about my coaching journey, specifically the coaching badges that I undertook. The journey started in 2012, when I took my first badge - which was the old version of the FA Level 1. This was with a local association over a...

When you step on to the field to lead a training session or game, it’s important to consider all of the external factors regarding the occasion. The factors will influence the environment and possibly the outcome, so it could some what hinder the process of the...

Upon planning your training session or match day squad, you will have to consider a number of factors as well what players will be involved. Some get confused of what football actually is, so to summarise, it is a players sport and it’s their decisions, which will...

For a training session to be a success, we can use a variety of practices that will combine in order, to contribute to the overall objective. Whether you have a small area to train in once per week, or you have the opportunity to train on a full size pitch, there...

The football coaching world can be a very subjective place. There are hundreds of thousands of videos and articles online, which deliver all types of messages. These could be recipes on how to play a certain way, or there could be explanations on how Guardiola sets...

Every week a coach takes to the field, to coach their respective team and in some cases, leads them in a fixture in the following days. For some this is voluntary and others, it’s paid. One thing that is the same for both coaches, is what they’re coaching…or should...

Communication in football is of the highest order, so how important is the language that we use? Throughout our everyday lives, our brain filters through millions of stimuli that are received through different means of communication. This then enforces some kind of...

Throughout your coaching journey you will have come across the format of small sided games (SSG), whether it be in foundation age groups (5-11), or youth development age groups (12-16). Within the senior game SSG’s are also used for many different purposes, that...

The exciting moment comes at the end of a training week and you wish to pick your team, ready for the game ahead. Before we discuss the formation, we really need to understand what it actually is? Traditionally the formation is the arrangement of players that will...

An area that can be used as a massive marginal game if executed properly, but why don’t more take it seriously, in preparation? After recently talking to a coach at a well known professional club, he highlighted to me that out of the last 4 managers he has worked...

For the past 3 months I’ve been mentoring coaches from outside of the UK - namely, Finland, Sweden and Estonia. We meet once per month via zoom, to discuss a topic that we have all recently studied. So far we’ve discussed team tactics twice, with this past month...

While watching numerous games over the Christmas period, I took it upon myself to view as many games as possible, with the view of trying to understand what respective teams were doing, during game play. The game is unpredictable and at times there will be...

For 2022, there will be weekly blog posts on ramblings from my coaching world. This will be from delivered in an objective and subjective viewpoint, to give you the reader an opportunity (to hopefully) gain some new knowledge and understand my views as a coach. Why...

We see it year after year, a football club needs to recruit some new players for the upcoming season and they invite player ‘X’ in for a trial. A trial is in place for the football club to assess the ability and potential of this player in question and if they are...

Park to Pro Coaching Blog - Update Due to a number of extremely busy months and updating CPD via a course format, the month of June has given us the opportunity to bring out our next blog post. This will now be a regular occurrence, with plenty of content coming...

Welcome to the Park to Pro Coaching Blog The Park to Pro Coaching Blog is here to help you improve your game. Whether you’re a coach, player or parent, there will be a series of posts that will be released at set intervals, to take your game to the next level. If...

After the latest announcement from the PM, football will be returning soon and we can't wait for it! The light can now be seen at the end of the tunnel.... There will be updates and official confirmation of our return date in due course, with plans for our summer...

More learning tonight with Adam from Park to Pro with NEFA Coaches Corner Monthly Webinar, Marink Reedijk will be joining February’s NEFA Coaches Corner. Marink has worked for the KNVB (Dutch Federation), West Bromwich Albion and Ajax. #football #Learning...