Blogs about youth football, we define youth football as U13-U19 football.
July 2017, rumors swirled that Barcelona were considering bidding 100 million euros for Italian superstar Marco Verratti. Los Blaugrana saw Verratti as Andrés Iniesta’s natural heir. “Is he your successor?” Asked Blaise Matuidi Iniesta after the French club defeated the Catalonians by 4-0 in the knockout match of the Champions League. “Yes, I think so,”…
My second blog post about the theme “transitional play” builds on the first presentation. This blog post starts with a passing exercise with a lot of movement and one of the focus points will be awareness. It’s extremely important overall, not just when talking transitional play, to always scan the area around you as a…
”In my teams, the goalie is the first attacker, and the striker the first defender.” – Johan Cruyff Coming into the 2019-20 season The International Football Association Board (IFAB) had approved several amendments and clarifications to the Laws of the Game with a series of changes; both major and smaller. For me, the rule change…
“See there’s a rule of life that says you’re either growing or you’re dying. The tree’s either growing or it’s dying. So’s grass. So’s a marriage. So’s a business. So’s a person.” – Lou Holtz Football is in an ever-evolving state. Most of the times in the smallest nuances, other times it can seem more revolutionary….
In my last blog post, I wrote about the importance of positioning yourself at angles to create better conditions for yourself and your teammates. In this edition, I have focused on a trend that has been widely used in recent years and still is developing. Namely, passing between the lines / breaking the lines. As…
As a football coach I want to spend as much time as possible on the pitch with my players. Working on their technical skills, the tactical aspects of the game, talk with individual players and work on improving some details in their development. But I have also realized, that to be able to reach the…
In the past week our scouts and our scout interns, watched 87 youth national team games. The scouts focused on the U21-U19 and U17 youth national teams from Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and Armenia. In the next 8 weeks, we will have a special focus on these youth national teams, for several reasons, but…
Talent development from the perspective of a young mind In the world of football, early specializing and early selection have been debated for a long time. The meaning about this topic is many, and the direction from the Danish FA, Dansk Boldspil-Union (DBU), is clear – specializing as late as possible. Some of the arguments…
Great and talented youth players, finding their way in to clubs first team, as many as possible. All with as high level and potential as possible and with the motivation and drive to succeed, to take the team, the club and themselves to an higher level, than seen before. That is the dream, for many…
The Inverted Wingbacks is not a new concept in football, but is not used very often. Some of the managers who actually have used it, within the last couple of years are; Pep Guardiola at Manchester City & Julian Nagelsmann at Leipzig – two wellknown managers with a great tactical mindset (after my opinion). The…