Player Development: The Holistic Method provides the first holistic, evidence-based performance development method in sport. Focusing on the world’s largest sport, soccer, this book weaves together the interconnected layers driving player performance development to define a novel training method. In performance sport, narratives defining success or failure are steeped with stories of chance. The reality is that player performance and athlete development leading to career success is the byproduct of optimizing interconnected experiences toward maximizing the likelihood of individual success. It is the application of a holistic method that reduces the influence of luck and increases the likelihood of individual and team success. This book is the pathway to understanding and facilitating individual player development leading to elite performance success. This book reveals not only a holistic method, but also a universal method breaking down perceived and real barriers to provide a method transcending domains and specializations – a unified approach. The book introduces an evidence-based method toward performance development in soccer. It is key reading for students of coaching, talent development, sport performance and ancillary specializations, and practicing professionals in the field of player and performance development and coaching.

"Essential Practices for Player Development is a must-have book for all coaches aiming to offer their players a progressive pathway of development across a season." –Noel Dempsey, UEFA 'A' Licence Coach, Coach Educator, University Lecturer and Former FA Tutor and Coach Mentor Often coaches find that to keep their players motivated and engaged, they must create new practices every week. But when there are those particular practices that the players enjoy playing again and again which also provide the ideal environment for them to develop, why not use them more than once? With Essential Practices for Player Development, you will have 10 core soccer practices that players will find both enjoyable and challenging and that you as the coach will find develops key areas of the game. There are 9 adaptations provided with each core practice, making 100 practices in total. Every practice is linked to one key area of the game that is identified as being essential to player development. To support practice delivery, the book additionally covers key aspects of session planning so that you can produce the most effective learning environment for your players. Also included is information on long-term player development, recognizing and supporting individual player needs, interventions, and player challenges. This book is not only a resource for soccer coaches just starting out on their coaching journey, but it is also for more experienced coaches looking to adapt their practice sessions. All practices provided can be used exclusively to create training curriculum for a full season, meaning there is no need for a coach to create a new session every week. The sessions can also be used to form the foundations of the curriculum, leaving room for a coach to add in those favorite practices. Essential Practices for Player Development is a book coaches will refer to time and again.

The purpose of this book is to make it easier for all tennis players, coaches and everyone involved in the development of the player, to see a clear development path and to use this book as a community for everyone involved. Through this book, coaches can systematically and individually train their players step by step with the aim to first build the athlete then the player, which they’ll benefit from for the rest of their lives, not just in tennis. This document follows the player and become a community for everyone involved; the player, tennis coaches, physical trainer, parents etc. “Long Term Player Development - On Court Tennis” is 18 years of long-term development with 800 + ways to improve and 35 different tests. The coach is able to do 1-2 tests a week with the player for the player’s entire career.

Long clearances, aerial battles, hard tackles, 50/50 balls, all ahead forward moving mentality, constant changes of possession, hopeful crosses into a crowded goal area, functional players with limited skill sets… these are all ‘features’ of the Second Ball Game, the “kick it long and hope for the best” strategy that has permeated English football and in turn soccer in America for years. It is hard to imagine that whomever coined the phrase “The Beautiful Game” had this type of football in mind. At the other end of the spectrum there exists a style of play that features skillful players, build up play using short accurate passes in all directions and a premium on maintaining possession. This is Possession Soccer, also known as the First Ball Game, and it has seen a resurgence in recent years due in large part to the successes of FC Barcelona and the Spanish National Team. The main deterrent for coaches looking to implement this style of play is the dearth of players with the necessary skills, as youth coaching methods in many countries have catered to the long ball game mentality, producing players with skills limited by their functional roles and thus incapable of playing possession soccer to an acceptable standard. This book offers coaches an idea of the kind of training needed to produce skillful, first ball game players. Through the use of choreographed cone formats, players develop the first touch skills, vision and awareness required to play Possession Soccer.

Full of innovative drills designed to teach players skills and tactics while building the necessary physical conditioning level required in the modern game of soccer, "Innovative Soccer Drills" is suitable for the player, parent and coach at the junior league and junior high school level.

The identification and development of talented young players has become a central concern of football clubs at all levels of the professional game, as well as for national and international governing bodies. This is the first book to offer a comprehensive survey and assessment of youth development programmes in football around the world, to highlight best practice, and to offer clear recommendations for improvement. The book draws on original, in-depth research at eight elite professional football clubs, including Barcelona, Ajax and Bayern Munich, as well as the French national football academy at Clairefontaine. It adopts a multi-disciplinary approach, including psychology, coaching and management studies, and covers every key topic from organisational structures, talent recruitment and performance analysis to player education and welfare. Written by two authors with extensive experience in English professional football, including five Premiership clubs, this book is important reading for any student, researcher, coach, administrator or academy director with an interest in football, youth sport, sports development, sports coaching or sport management.

Blending contemporary sports science theory with youth specific coaching practice, this book offers soccer development strategies that are tailored to the needs of young players.