Midfielders – Manchester United – Espanyol
Hello everyone, and welcome back to Barcelona, Spain! When you last heard from me, we were finishing up the Individual Fundamentals per Position (IFP) of the full-backs and I was talking about our experience at the Camp Nou! This past week included everything from the IFP’s of the midfielders, attending the Espanyol vs. Valencia match, and hearing from a coach that worked at Manchester United. Let’s first begin with the IFP’s of the midfielders. Once Dr. Rude began explaining
Full-backs and the Camp Nou
Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain! When I last posted, we were studying the Individual Fundamentals per Position (IFP) of the center-backs. To begin the week, our focus was still on the center-backs. We had our first tactical workshop (tactical workshops consist of analyzing the IFP’s in video clips that Dr. Rude has organized) and it was a way a great way to apply our knowledge. How it works: Dr. Rude will play a short (~9 second) video clip of a game, and then it is our job
Player Structures and IFPs
Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain. In the final two sessions of the week, we started to dive into the structures of the player in terms of how to develop training sessions in addition to the Individual Fundamentals per Position or IFP from a tactical perspective. Let’s first begin with the structures of the player in relation how to train the player. Dr. Rude explained to us that when designing a training session, the coach must first analyze the player and adapt the session t
Drills vs Games
“Too many drills will kill the young players’ innate potential!” – Horst Wein The game of soccer is filled with continuous movement and flow, with unpredictable occurrences happening at any moment. Therefore, training sessions must prepare players to read and understand the game in order to experience success during their career. Within a training session, a coach can utilize different ways of teaching the game. One method of teaching soccer is by utilizing ‘drills’. Accordin
Press Conferences & Tactical Understanding Posted on September
Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain! The past three sessions have been packed with fantastic information, and I hope to bring you all up to date. To kick off the learning week, we began with the mock press conferences. As I mentioned in the previous post, Dr. Rude explained that as a professional coach, one of the best ways to manage the meta-game is thr Specifically, we discussed the Jose Mourinho vs. Pep Guardiola confrontation in the media during the 2010-2011 season. Due to
Psychology and Paradigms
MBP School of Coaches: Class #3 and #4 In class #3 (Friday’s class), we participated in another 4 hour session, but this time, we were learning from Xavi Garcia, who is one of the most important sports psychologists in all of Spain. Needless to say, we are incredibly fortunate to be able to learn from someone like Xavi. During the course of our first 4 hour session with Xavi, we discussed a wide range of topics ranging from identifying and regulating the emotions of yourself,
Soccer Structures
“In soccer, the master of the game is not the coach, but the game itself.” Welcome back to Barcelona, Spain! Today was our first real lesson in the MBP methodology, which lasted roughly 4 hours, and let me tell you, the time flew! To begin class, Dr. Rude presented us with 3 questions, which at the time seemed relatively simple to answer, but at the completion of the 4 hours, I truly realized the complexity of the questions and the sport as a whole. We were asked: What is soc
Welcome to Barcelona, Spain
For starters, I just want to quickly introduce myself before I bring you along my coaching journey in Barcelona, Spain for the next 4 months. My name is Brett Uttley, and I am 25 years old, currently living in Barcelona, Spain where I am attending a coaching school in order to learn a high performance coaching methodology. In order to embark on this unique opportunity, I decided to take a sabbatical from my role as an assistant coach with the Quinnipiac University Men’s Socce
Small-Sided Games in Zone 1
“The tragedy of coaching young players focuses on the fact that many coaches may know a lot about the game, but they don’t know their young pupils.” – Horst Wein Players such as Neymar, Alexis Sanchez, and Zlatan all of something in common other than being world-class professional soccer players, and that is they all grew up playing street soccer. Due to the soccer cultures that they grew up in (Brazil, Chile, Sweden), competing with friends in the streets was the norm, while
