The Soapbox: Soccer Coaching Blog & Podcast
Heads and Volleys is a grassroots Soccer game that reflects the youth soccer environment.
The game was played as everyone VS the GK and you could only score with a header or a volley. Simple, right? Wrong. It was complex and fraught with arguments that resulted in 'taking my ball home' or some kind of one-off shot to determine if it was a goal or not. Much like those arguments, this podcast will embrace discussions, trends, and ideas to grow the game, and will not let anyone take their ball home early.
Heads and Volleys Podcast.
Welcome to my soapbox. This is where I think out loud about coaching.
You'll find long-form writing on coaching methodology, session design, game models and player development — plus every episode of the Heads and Volleys podcast. It's written for youth and club soccer coaches, directors of coaching, and anyone building a curriculum they want their whole staff to speak.
Most of what's here comes back to a few ideas: that soccer is 1v1s with help, that a Common Language across your club beats a clever drill, that the rule you add is the game you get, and that you can't coach what you haven't defined.
New posts most weeks. Start anywhere below, or grab the monthly newsletter.Popular Reads
The Common Language
- The Power of a Common Language
- The Common Language Methodology: The Game is Already in Your Practice
The 1v1 Series
Session & Practice Design
- Can You Recreate the Game in Practice?
- The Rule You Add Is the Game You Get
- From 1,000 Touches to 1,000 Decisions
- Optimize Your Training Environment
- The First Pancake Is Always Awful
Game Day
Player Development
Coaching 9v9
When I asked Twitter about 7v7, I got a flood of opinions. When I asked about 9v9, I got almost nothing. 'Follow the pathway and away you go.' That's either very reassuring or slightly worrying — depending on whether your club actually has one.
When I put the 7v7 question out on Twitter, I got a flood of responses. Opinions, debates, philosophies, disagreements — everyone had a take. When I put out the same question about 9v9, I got almost nothing back. The general consensus was: follow the pathway and away you go.
That's either very reassuring or slightly worrying. Reassuring if it means coaches understand that 9v9 is a continuation of what came before. Worrying if it means they don't actually have a pathway — they're just going through the motions for two years before the jump to eleven-a-side.
So let's talk about what 9v9 actually is, what changes from 7v7, and what matters most for the players who are in it.
What's Actually Different
The obvious answer: two extra players, a bigger field, slightly bigger goals. But the change that matters most isn't the numbers — it's the removal of the build-out line.
In 7v7, the build-out line gave your goalkeeper and defenders time. Opponents had to retreat past that line before you could play forward. It was a buffer — a moment of protection that let players get comfortable with the ball before the pressure arrived.
That's gone at 9v9. The goalkeeper takes a goal kick and opponents can press immediately. Players who had been trained to play short, build calmly, and find space — suddenly they're getting closed down before they've had a touch.
The good news: the penalty area still functions as a mini buffer zone. Opponents can't enter it, but you can. So a quick short pass back to the goalkeeper, who steps to the edge of the box, still buys a second or two before the press arrives. If you built a possession-based model at 7v7 and you're smart about using the goalkeeper as a starting point, you can adapt without abandoning what you built.
What you can't do is panic and go long. That's usually what happens when a club hasn't prepared for the transition — coaches lose confidence in their model when it gets pressed, default to pumping balls forward, and the previous two years of work evaporates.
The Middle Child Problem
9v9 is the player pathway's middle child. Not quite the simplicity of 7v7, not yet the full demands of 11v11. And like most middle children, it sometimes gets overlooked.
The temptation at this stage — especially if 7v7 was difficult, or if a coach has been to a seminar or read something new over the summer — is to change everything. New formation, new style, new expectations. I do it too. I read a book and I think: this is it, this changes everything. And then a few days later I realize that maybe it just adjusts one thing slightly.
That's the right instinct. Evolution, not revolution.
Whatever you built at 7v7 — the identity, the model, the individual development plans — it has to continue at 9v9. The players are older, the game is bigger, the environment is less forgiving. But they're not different players. They've spent two years learning to play in a certain way. Ripping that up at U11 because 9v9 feels like a fresh start doesn't serve them — it sets them back.
What US Soccer Expects at This Level
The U11 and U12 player, according to the pathway, is an individual fulfilling their role within a team. That's a meaningful distinction. They understand their position, their basic demands, their area of the field. They are not yet fully team-oriented — the sense of the whole, of how every player's movement connects to every other player's, is still developing.
You'll see this clearly when you need to move a player to an unfamiliar position. Ask your U12 center midfielder to cover at right back because someone's injured — and watch the face. Not panic about the position itself necessarily, but confusion about how they fit into the larger picture from there. That's not a failing. It's developmental.
The coaching response to this is position profiles — specific, written-out descriptions of what a player in each position is responsible for in each phase of the game. Not just "you're a right central midfielder, track back when we don't have the ball" — but: when you play the through ball to the seven, what do you do immediately after? What space are you covering when the seven takes the ball into the final third? When the seven gets tackled, where does the counter-attack come from and how do you intercept it?
Building this level of role understanding takes the whole of 9v9. It's what makes 11v11 feel like a continuation rather than a complete reset.
Everyone Stays Involved
At 7v7, you could sometimes forgive a striker who planted themselves on the halfway line and waited for the ball to arrive. Not ideal, but the field is smaller and the game is faster at that level, so moments of disconnection get covered.
At 9v9, the field is big enough that disconnected players become genuinely costly. The right back who doesn't tuck inside when the whole team shifts to defend the left. The striker who switches off when the goalkeeper has the ball. The midfielder who doesn't track the run in behind because they think that's the center back's problem.
These are 9v9 issues. Not because they're impossible to coach at 7v7 — they are — but because the field now creates enough space that they become visible consequences rather than abstract coaching points. Players have to be adaptable, have to understand that their role shifts depending on where the ball is and what the team needs, have to stay connected to the game even when it's happening thirty yards away.
That coordination — the whole team moving as a connected unit, not eleven individuals doing their own jobs — is the thing you're building toward 11v11. And 9v9 is where it starts to take shape.
Play Practice Play at This Level
Sessions should be sixty minutes at most. The structure that US Soccer recommends — and that I use — is Play Practice Play.
You start with a game. Players arrive and play. Within that game, you're watching for the things your session is addressing — maybe it's transition moments, maybe it's combining through the lines, maybe it's build-out under pressure. Then you move into a practice phase: a constrained game or environment that isolates the same problem in a more focused way. Then back to the bigger game, where the expectation is that what you worked on in the practice phase shows up.
The difference from 7v7 is that at 9v9 you can ask more from the practice phase. Players are older, they can hold more information, they can connect the dots between what the practice asked of them and what the game requires. The practice shouldn't be a drill — it should still be a game environment — but the constraint can be more specific and the expectation higher.
The final play phase is not free time. It's not "well done, go and enjoy yourselves." It's the test. You're watching for it. You're coaching in the flow. You're connecting the work from twenty minutes ago to what you're seeing now.
The Pathway Is the Product
The thing I keep coming back to with 9v9 is that the two years are a gift. A gift to prepare players properly for eleven-a-side — not rush them to it, not train them with a size five ball to "get them ready," not abandon the model because the build-out line disappeared.
If your 9v9 players are going to arrive at U13 ready for the full game, they need to leave U12 knowing their position inside and out, connected to the team's way of playing, capable of adapting when things go wrong. That's not built in a month. It's built across two years of consistent, progressive, intentional coaching.
Do you have a pathway? Do you know what your 7v7 built, what your 9v9 needs to develop, and what 11v11 is going to ask for? If not — go back to Ep54 on 7v7, and start plotting it from both ends.
The middle child needs a plan too.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 55 — Coaching 9v9
@LeeDunneSoccer
Coaching 7v7
I asked Twitter what to focus on for 7v7. The thread went on forever. Space, angles, compactness, overloads, switching, set pieces, throw-ins. And then I asked myself: do nine-year-olds really need all of this? My answer might surprise you.
I put a question out on Twitter: what do you focus on when coaching 7v7?
The thread didn't disappoint. It never does. Coaches from all over jumped in with their takes — spacing, body shape, compactness, working in pairs, breaking lines, overloads, combinations, forward passing, switching the play, set pieces, the build-out line. It went on and on. A whole game's worth of concepts, all apparently essential for a nine-year-old in their first proper competitive season.
And then I thought: is it, though?
The jump from 4v4 is enormous
One coach in the thread made a point that stuck with me. The game at 7v7 has 300% more players than at 4v4. Think about what that actually means. More teammates to find. More opponents to avoid. More space to read and navigate. Official referees. Proper rules — corners, fouls, goal kicks, the build-out line. Throw-ins.
The throw-in alone is a whole conversation. Eight-year-olds taking throw-ins that are called foul throws. The ball goes to the other team. The coach is pulling their hair out. Quick tip if you need it: have your players cross their legs when they throw. Suddenly the mechanics click. You're welcome.
But seriously — when you list everything that arrives with the 7v7 format, it's a lot. And the question isn't just what we need to teach them. It's what we should teach them right now.
Two ways to build a programme
There are two entry points for this conversation. You can build upward from 4v4, working out what your players need to transition successfully to 7v7, then to 9v9, then to 11v11. Or you can start at 11v11 and work backwards — if you're part of a club with a game model, you already know what the end product looks like, and your job is to figure out what the 7v7 version of that looks like.
Neither is wrong. But knowing which one you're doing — and being honest about why — changes everything about how you set up.
What Twitter said matters (and they're not wrong)
The coaching community landed on a consistent set of focal points. Space understanding — not just shouting "spread out," but actually building an understanding of what width means and why it matters. Body shape. Receiving on the back foot. Angles. Compactness when defending. Working in pairs: pressure, cover, balance. Breaking lines. Playing forward. Supporting the ball carrier.
These are all real. They're all part of the game. I'm not dismissing any of them.
But here's my concern: if you try to teach all of it at 7v7, you're going to overwhelm players who are already processing a massive jump in complexity. And overwhelmed players don't enjoy the game. And players who don't enjoy the game don't come back.
The most important thing at 7v7
They need to love it.
I know that sounds simple. It's not an answer that wins coaching debates over a beer. But I genuinely believe it. The most important thing a 7v7 player can leave the season with is a desire to come back next season. Everything else builds from there.
So before you get into the weeds on spacing and defensive compactness, ask yourself: do your players love being here? Do they arrive excited? Do they go home wanting to play more?
If the answer is yes, you're already doing something right.
How at home, why in training
Here's the framework I come back to. Players at this age don't train enough on their own. They're not kicking a ball against a wall for an hour after school the way older generations did. So one of the most valuable things you can do is give them a simple home programme — juggling for five minutes, some wall work, a little target practice. Short, easy, something a parent can do alongside them.
What this does is take care of the how. When they come to training, they've already worked on the mechanics. Now you can work on the why. Why do we play into this space? Why do we support on this angle? Why do we press here? The how is being taken care of at home. Training time is for the why — and the best way to teach the why is to put them in a game and let the game ask the questions.
Find two or three players on your roster who will do it. Highlight them. Watch others follow. You don't need the whole squad to buy in on day one. You need enough of them that the standard starts to pull the rest along.
Working in pairs
The one tactical concept I'd prioritise above all others at this age: working in pairs within the group.
Whatever formation you run, there are natural partnerships inside it — a winger and a fullback, two central midfielders, a striker and a number ten. Start there. Build those relationships. A player who knows how to combine with the person next to them is ready to learn everything else. A player who's still figuring out what 7v7 feels like needs that foundation first.
The honest answer
Understand your environment. Know where your players are coming from, what their experience looks like, what their families expect, and what the club is asking of you. None of that is fixed. All of it shapes how you coach.
Get them playing. Introduce rules through the game — don't stop and explain throw-ins for ten minutes, just play and deal with them as they come up. Let the game be the teacher. Get them working at home on the simple stuff. Build the pairs. And above all, make it somewhere they want to be.
The rest follows.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 54 — Coaching 7v7
@LeeDunneSoccer
The 48-Hour Rule
The 48-hour rule exists because coaches didn't do the work before the game. Here's the work that makes the rule unnecessary.
You know the 48-hour rule. Some clubs call it 24 hours. Some say 36. The specific number doesn't matter — the idea does: no parent can approach the coach after a game until a cooling-off period has passed.
And I get it. Nobody wants to be cornered in a parking lot while they're still carrying a kit bag and trying to remember where they parked. I understand why the rule exists.
But I want to make the case that if you need the rule, you've already missed the point.
What the argument is actually about
Let me tell you what parking lot conversations are almost never about: tactics. The scoreline. A decision you made about how the team played.
What they're almost always about: playing time.
Why didn't my kid play more? Why are other players getting more minutes? We drove two hours for this — and she got five minutes.
These are real concerns from people who care about their child. And in a pay-to-play environment, they're not entirely unreasonable. They are paying for their player to play. When that doesn't happen the way they expected, they want answers.
The 48-hour rule delays the conversation. It doesn't resolve the underlying issue. And when conversations get delayed repeatedly, they don't go away — they build. What could have been a calm discussion becomes a blow-up, because nobody ever addressed it when it was still small.
The Apple Store problem
Think about it this way. You buy a new iPhone. It doesn't work. You go back to the store and they tell you: come back in 48 hours. We can't deal with this right now.
That would be absurd. And yet that's essentially what coaches are telling families — we'll talk about your concern, just not yet, and not here.
If you've built the relationship properly before any of this happens, the conversation in the parking lot looks completely different. It's not an ambush. It's a parent who wants to understand. And that's a conversation you can have.
Do the work before the season starts
Here's what actually prevents parking lot arguments: everything you do before the first game is played.
Start with an introduction meeting. Not just "here's my coaching background" — actually tell families how the team is going to play. What the game model looks like. What they'll see at practice. What you want them to talk to their player about when they get home. Give them a framework so they're watching the game with some context, not just tracking whether their kid touched the ball enough.
Follow that up through the season. A weekly update — a review of last week, a preview of next week, what you're working on — gives parents something to hold onto beyond the result. When the team doesn't score ten goals but you've been working on building out from the back, and the parents know that, they're watching a different game than they were watching before you told them.
Set the expectations clearly, and early
If your club distinguishes between league games and cup games — fair playing time in the league, performance-based in cup competitions — make sure every family knows that before the season begins. Not buried in an email. Actually said out loud, in a meeting, where questions can be asked.
I've coached in clubs that ran it exactly this way. League games: everyone plays. State cup: you play if you're impacting the game. Players and families understood it going in. That doesn't mean everyone was happy when cup minutes were unequal — but it wasn't a surprise, and surprises are what lead to parking lot confrontations.
My own philosophy: I will give every player as much time as I possibly can. I don't believe in sitting kids on a bench, particularly at youth level. But even within that, the decisions I make are grounded in relationships with players and families that have been built over time. No decision should come as a shock if the communication has been consistent.
The IDP changes everything
If a parent wants to ask why their player isn't getting more time, and you can point to an Individual Development Plan — specific goals, a positional profile, challenges that have been set for that player — the conversation changes shape entirely.
It's no longer "why doesn't my kid play more." It becomes "here's what we're working toward, here's where they are right now, here's what needs to happen." That's a development conversation. It's the conversation you actually want to be having.
None of this makes parents stop caring about playing time. They're always going to care — as they should. But it gives them something more than the result to measure progress against.
You don't need the rule
Here's where I'll be direct: some coaches hide behind rules like the 48-hour policy because they're not confident in what they're doing. If you can't explain your game model, your decisions, your development approach — then a rule that delays those conversations is genuinely useful, because it buys time you don't know how to fill.
But if you've done the work upfront — the IDPs, the positional profiles, the introduction meeting, the weekly updates, the clear expectations about playing time — then a parent approaching you after a game isn't an ambush. It's a family who is engaged with what you're doing. That's what you want.
If someone approaches you and you're not ready for the conversation right now, say so. "Can we talk Tuesday at practice? I want to give this the proper time." That's not a 48-hour rule. That's respect. There's a difference.
Build the relationship. Do the work. The parking lot takes care of itself.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 53 — The 48-Hour Rule
@LeeDunneSoccer
1v1s Outside the Box
A 1v1 in a game lasts mere seconds and doesn't always end in beating a player. So why do we train it like it does? That question is what the book is built on.
Here's a question I want you to sit with for a second.
A 1v1 in a real game lasts a matter of seconds. It doesn't always end in one player beating another. There's pressure coming from behind, support arriving from the side, a decision to be made about whether to take the player on at all. It's a moment — brief, contextual, connected to everything else happening on the pitch.
So how do we replicate that in training without constantly resetting, rotating, and removing all the context that made it a meaningful moment in the first place?
That question is what led me to write 1v1s Outside the Box — and it's what this episode is about.
The problem with isolated 1v1s
The way 1v1s are typically trained, you get two players, a bit of space, and a go signal. One attacks, one defends. If the attacker loses, they restart. If the defender wins, they rotate out.
The problem is that none of that reflects how a 1v1 actually happens in a game. In a game, the 1v1 is never truly isolated. There's always help — for both sides. The attacker has teammates making runs and creating space. The defender has cover and balance behind them. The decision to take someone on is made in the context of what else is available, what's behind you, what the score is, how much energy you have left.
Train it in isolation long enough, and players become very good at isolated 1v1s. Put them in a game and they freeze, because the version they've been practising doesn't exist.
What the book covers
1v1s Outside the Box starts where I think every coaching resource should start: the game model. Before you can design a training session around 1v1s, you need to know what 1v1s look like within your team's way of playing. What does a 1v1 look like for your striker compared to your fullback? What's expected of each position when a 1v1 moment arrives?
From there, the book moves through positional profiles, the four moments of the game, and the principles of play — giving you the framework to understand not just what a 1v1 is, but where it fits within the bigger picture.
Then we get into planning. Specifically, how you use constraints to replicate game situations more accurately. Ben Bell has talked extensively about this — different goal types and game shapes elicit completely different behaviour from players. Change the goal, change the game, change the decision. Most coaches don't think about that deliberately. The book makes it deliberate.
The bulk of the content is session plans — a progression that starts with isolated 1v1s (having first challenged you to question whether isolation is what you actually want), then moves into small-sided games from 3v3 and 4v4 all the way up to 8v8 and 11v11, all working on the same underlying 1v1 concept but within increasingly realistic game environments.
It's my model — adapt it to yours
I want to be upfront about something. The session plans in this book are built around my game model, my philosophy, and my players. If you read it cover to cover, you'll basically have my playbook.
That doesn't mean you should use it exactly as written. The challenge of the book — the reason I wrote it — is to make you think about what you're doing and why. Take the parts that fit your environment. Adapt what doesn't. Push back on what you disagree with. The coaching community grows when coaches engage with ideas critically, not when they just borrow sessions wholesale.
There's also some periodization in there, at a level I can understand and explain — which, as the saying goes, is one measure of whether you've actually understood something.
The challenge
Don't just read it. Try something. Even one session. Even one constraint. Tell me what happened — what worked, what didn't, what surprised you. That conversation is how we get better, and it's the whole reason I put this out.
1v1s Outside the Box is available on Amazon.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 52 — 1v1s Outside the Box
@LeeDunneSoccer
Stop. Freezing. It.
I filmed a session for my US Soccer license and watched it back. Two midfielders made the same run. I stopped the whole practice to address it. Then I watched eight other players roll their eyes and wait to play again. There's a better way.
"Freeze there, freeze there. Come back here. Let's do that again."
That's me, on audio from a training session I filmed for a US Soccer Federation license review. Two central midfielders have both checked into the same space. The ball goes past them to a player receiving with his back to goal, and now both midfielders are behind the play. I spotted the moment, stopped the practice, and spent three to four minutes breaking it down.
I've watched it back a few times since. And here's what I noticed: while I was coaching those two players, the other sixteen were standing around. Some were in completely different positions than they were when the ball was last in play. Most of them had no idea who had the ball before I said freeze — because by the time I asked, they'd already forgotten. And more than a few of them were doing the thing all players do when a coach stops a session and starts talking.
Rolling their eyes. Waiting for it to be over.
The problem with stop and freeze
Stop-and-freeze is a coaching school staple. You see something, you stop the session, you bring the moment back, you explain what went wrong and what should have happened. Then you play again.
The problem is that the moment you're coaching is, in part, fabricated. The game moved on. Players shifted. Whatever was in front of them a second ago isn't in front of them now. You're asking them to rewind and replay something that no longer exists in its original form.
And while you're coaching those two players, you're stopping eighteen. The center back on the far side of the field isn't really listening. The goalkeeper has mentally checked out. The players who weren't involved in the moment at all are just waiting for permission to play again — and the moment they get it, they'll have forgotten everything you said.
The bigger issue is what stop-and-freeze can do to the players being addressed. When you pull someone out of a group of eighteen and say "why didn't you go here?" — in front of their teammates — they're not thinking about the answer. They're thinking about how to not look stupid. They give you a nervous half-answer or nothing at all, and you interpret that as them not understanding, when really they were just put on the spot in a way that made them shut down.
The alternative: coach within the flow
The clip I played at the start of the episode also contains a second moment — one I'm more proud of. The game is flowing. A player is about to receive a pass with a defender closing. I get alongside one player and quietly say: "When he checks in, go with him. Step, step, step — good." The game never stops. The coaching lands because the situation is live. The player reacts immediately, applies it, and the game moves on.
That's individual coaching within the flow. It takes the two midfielders to one side when the ball naturally goes out of play — not in a full stop-and-freeze, not in front of the whole group — and has a quick thirty-second conversation. Counter movements. One checks, one holds. Why, and what it gives the team. Then they go back in.
The research backs this up. A 2012 paper in the Open Sports Science Journal found that manipulating game rules and conditions is a more effective coaching tool than repeatedly stopping play. Ben Bell has written brilliantly about constraints for this reason — the right constraint creates the problem you want players to solve, so the game becomes the teacher and you don't have to stop it to make a point.
A test for you
Next time you run a session, film it. Then watch back the freeze moments. Don't watch the players you're talking to — watch everyone else. Watch their eyes. Watch their feet drift into different positions. Watch the moment your coaching starts and the session effectively ends for sixteen people until you say go.
Then ask yourself: could I have coached that individual, or those two players, while the game was still running? Could I have changed the constraint so the game itself created the problem and taught the lesson?
Almost always, the answer is yes.
Stop freezing it. The game knows what it's doing.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 51 — Stop Freezing It
@LeeDunneSoccer
Maximizing Time
I made kids run laps to burn off energy. I wrote it in my university dissertation and handed it in. It's one of the things I'm most embarrassed about in my coaching career — and I still see it everywhere.
I want to start with a confession.
When I was studying for my coaching degree in the UK, I wrote up a session in my dissertation where I had the players run three laps at the start to burn off energy. I submitted it. Got it marked. Moved on.
I think about that a lot now. Because that logic — they've got too much energy, let's burn some off before we do anything useful — is still present in sessions I watch every week. It just looks different. It's the long warm-up that works through a series of technical drills before anyone's allowed to play. It's the scrimmage at the end that players "earn" if they behave well enough. It's the five-minute introduction where the coach explains the setup while players shift their weight between their feet and try to look like they're listening.
All of that is time. And most of it is wasted.
Here are three things I do to maximize the contact time I have with players.
1. Send mastery challenges home
The hour or ninety minutes you have on the field is not the time to build ball familiarity from scratch. That work happens at home — or it doesn't happen at all.
Give your players a skill challenge. Film a short clip — an Around the World, a Rabona, something that looks hard and cool and makes them want to try it. Send it to parents. Tell players you want them to try it before next practice. Does every player do it? No. Do some of them? Yes. And the ones who do arrive with something to show you, having already spent time with a ball at their feet for a reason.
The argument I hear against skill challenges is: "But do they use step-overs in a real game?" Sometimes. But that's not the point. A kid practicing a Rabona at home means a kid with a ball at their feet, working on touch, control, and recovery. If they kick it away on the first attempt, they go and get it — and now they're chasing a ball, settling it, and going again. That's useful regardless of what the skill is.
Extend this beyond tricks. If you know a player identifies as a striker or a central midfielder, what do they need to be working on at home for that position? Send them something specific. When they arrive for your next session, you're not starting from zero — you're building on what they've already been doing.
The how happens at home. The why happens in training.
2. Organize the arrival
Watch a session that starts badly and you can usually trace it back to the first five minutes. Players drifting onto the field in ones and twos. No structure. Coach trying to get their attention while half the group is still putting their boots on.
Two options that work:
The first is a consistent, owned warm-up — the same structure every time, so players know what to do the moment they arrive. As players get older, they take responsibility for it. The coach doesn't run it. The players run it, and the coach observes, chats to individuals, and gets ready to coach. If you want to involve players in creating it — over a Zoom call, in a meeting, in a group chat — even better. Players who design their own warm-up have more buy-in to actually doing it.
The second option, especially for younger players: a game starts the moment they arrive. Goals are up, bibs are ready, a 2v2 or 3v3 is running before the session technically begins. Players join as they get there. Energy goes into the game instead of being burned off in a lap.
Arriving early helps too. If your session is at 5pm and players are there at 4:45, don't start the session at 4:45 — let them mess around. That's fine. That's valuable. But when 5pm arrives, you're on the dot, everyone is already warm and switched on, and you haven't lost a minute.
3. Pre-session communication
The amount of time spent at the start of a session explaining what the session is — describing the game, explaining the rules, pointing to cones, answering questions — is time that could be playing time.
Send it ahead. A picture of the session plan. A Tactical Pad diagram. A short video of the game setup with a voice note explaining the rules and the constraint. Send it the night before or an hour before training.
Not every player will see it. But half of them will. And when those players arrive, they self-organize. They explain it to the ones who missed it. By the time you say go, most of the group already knows what's happening. The explanation at the start of the session goes from three minutes to thirty seconds.
There's a bonus to this: accountability. When you share what you're working on publicly — even just on your team's group chat or your own coaching Instagram — you're holding yourself to it. This is what we're doing today. That focus shapes the session before it starts.
The bottom line
Coaches don't have as much time with players as they think. Between late arrivals, equipment setup, explanations, physical punishments dressed up as warm-ups, and scrimmages that get withheld until they've been earned — the actual useful coaching time in a typical session is a fraction of what it could be.
Send mastery challenges home. Design an arrival routine players can own. Communicate the session before it starts. Those three things alone will change what's possible in the time you do have.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 50 — Maximizing Time
@LeeDunneSoccer
Player Power
Not the type of player power that gets someone fired. The type that builds a team, earns genuine buy-in, and might even make the coach's job a little easier.
When you hear "player power" in soccer, you probably think of a dressing room revolt. Senior players going above the coach's head. A manager losing the group, then losing their job. It's a phrase that carries a pretty specific meaning in the professional game — and almost none of it is positive.
That's not what this is about.
The player power I'm interested in is the kind that builds teams rather than breaks them. The kind that creates genuine investment instead of manufactured compliance. The kind where players show up not because they've been told to, but because they feel like they belong to something they helped shape.
There are two approaches I want to explore. One is about empowering players within the team environment. The other is about empowering them to lead themselves.
Empowering players within the team
Think about how most teams get their identity. The coach decides on a style of play. The coach sets the formation. The coach writes the lineup. The coach delivers the team talk. The players listen, then go and execute — or don't.
Now think about what happens when players have a voice in some of those decisions.
Not all of them — this isn't about the coach stepping aside. But what if, early in the season, you asked the group: how do we want to play? What kind of team do we want to be? What do we want it to feel like to play in this team? You'd be surprised how much clarity players have about this when you actually ask. And you'd be surprised how differently they play for a style of play they helped define versus one that was handed to them.
Team talks are another opportunity. The pre-game address doesn't always have to come from the coach. Give a captain or a senior player the responsibility of setting the tone before a game. It doesn't need to be polished — it needs to be real, and it needs to come from someone their teammates respect. When a player hears "this is what we need today" from a peer rather than a coach, it often lands differently.
The same goes for formations and lineup conversations. I'm not suggesting you crowd-source the starting eleven. But involving players in tactical discussions — what do we think their striker will do when the ball is played wide? what shape do we want in transition? — creates thinkers rather than passengers. Players who understand why a decision has been made are far more likely to execute it effectively than players who were just told what to do.
This kind of shared ownership requires trust in both directions. Players have to trust that their input genuinely matters. And the coach has to trust that giving players a voice doesn't mean losing control of the environment. In my experience, it almost always has the opposite effect. Players who feel invested in the team's identity protect it. They pull each other up. They back the coach — because the coach has backed them first.
Empowering players to lead themselves
The second approach is more individual. It's about helping players take ownership of what they can control — and letting go of what they can't.
A player can't control who the referee is. They can't control the weather, the field, the scoreline at half-time, or how many minutes they get. They can control their preparation. Their attitude. Their communication. Their effort from the first minute to the last. Their willingness to be coached.
That sounds simple. It isn't. Getting a young player to genuinely own their own development — not just nod along when the coach talks about it, but actually feel responsible for it — takes time and consistency.
It starts with the IDP. What do you want to achieve this season? Not what the coach wants for you, not what your parents want — what do you want? That conversation, done properly, changes the dynamic. The player is no longer a passenger in their own development. They have a destination. They have a reason to show up and work.
From there, it's about giving them decisions to make and space to make them. Rolling substitutions where the player chooses when they need a rest. Challenges set for them to work on at home, not because they were told to but because they understand why. Questions asked in the flow of training that make them think rather than wait for instructions.
The players who thrive in this environment are the ones who leave the team and carry those habits with them. They know how to set a goal, prepare for a session, reflect on a game, and move on from a bad performance. Those are life skills. They happen to be built on a soccer field.
Why it matters
The best teams I've been part of — as a player and as a coach — have always had one thing in common. The players were invested in each other. Not just in their own performance, but in the group. They wanted their teammates to do well. They pushed each other in training. They had a standard that didn't come from a poster on a wall — it came from within the group itself.
That doesn't happen by accident. It happens when players feel like they own a piece of what they're part of.
Player power, done right, makes the coach's job easier. Give it a go.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 49 — Player Power
@LeeDunneSoccer
The Constraints-Led Approach, with Ben Bell
A constraint isn't a drill. It isn't a restriction for the sake of it. Done right, it's the thing that makes the game ask exactly the question you want your players to answer — without you having to stop and ask it for them.
I've referenced Ben Bell and his work on the Constraints-Led Approach across a few episodes now. This time I sat down with him properly to dig into it — what constraints actually are, why coaches should be using them, and what a training environment built around this approach is supposed to look like.
There's a lot in this conversation. Here are the key points.
What constraints are — and how they affect the game
A constraint, in the simplest terms, is anything that shapes or limits behaviour in the game environment. That sounds abstract, so here's a concrete version: if you play a small-sided game where the team that scores from a combination play gets two goals instead of one, you've just created a constraint. You haven't told anyone to combine. You haven't stopped the game to explain why combining is important. You've just made it worth more — and the game will start producing combinations, because the players will figure out that combinations are the path to success.
That's the power of a constraint. It changes what players attend to, what they try, what they risk. And it does it through the game itself rather than through instruction.
Constraints come in three broad forms. Task constraints — things like rules, field size, goal placement, and scoring systems — are the ones coaches have most direct control over. Environmental constraints include the surface, the space, the number of players. Individual constraints relate to the player themselves — their physical attributes, their skill level, their role in the game. All three interact constantly, and all three can be manipulated.
Why we use them
The honest answer: because telling players what to do doesn't work as well as most coaches think.
When you stop a session and explain that the midfielder should have checked away before receiving the ball, you're giving a player information they have to hold, process, and try to apply the next time a similar situation arises. By which point they've lost the emotional and physical context that made the moment meaningful. The information lands as theory rather than experience.
A well-designed constraint creates the situation again and again, at game speed, with real consequences. The player doesn't have to remember the instruction — the game keeps presenting the question until they find an answer that works. That answer, discovered through play, is far more likely to stick.
There's also a flow argument. Constraints allow the game to keep running. The coach can observe, adjust the constraint, and coach individuals in the flow rather than stopping everything for a group explanation. The session stays alive. Players stay engaged.
What we don't see when we use them
This is the part of Ben's thinking that I find most interesting — and most honest. And it's the part that sparked a conversation on Twitter recently that I wasn't expecting.
I shared a constraints study that looked at what happens when coaches deliberately manipulate the game environment. The tweet landed at nearly 19,000 views — which told me this struck a nerve. The reason, I think, is that the study surfaced something coaches know intuitively but rarely talk about: constraints don't only produce the outcomes you designed them for.
When you design a constraint, you design it with a specific outcome in mind. You want pressing. You want combinations. You want the wide players to stay wide. But players are creative, and the game is complex, and they will find solutions you didn't anticipate.
Two common examples. Add a two-touch limit to a small-sided game and players will move the ball quicker, find angles, support each other — exactly what you wanted. But they'll also stop dribbling. Stop trying to beat players. The freedom to take someone on disappears, because the constraint makes it the wrong choice every time. You got quicker passing. You lost individual bravery on the ball. That's the unintended consequence.
Goals are the same. Put two cones down as a goal, no goalkeeper, and players will shoot with precision — carefully, accurately, trying to thread it through the gap rather than blast it. No arguments about whether it went in. Great for accuracy under no pressure. But put a full-size goal and a goalkeeper in, and suddenly you get match-replicating finishing — proper technique, the decision about where to place it, the psychological challenge of beating a real keeper. Two different goals. Two completely different behaviors. Both constraints. Completely different games.
The constraint you set for the attacking midfielder has consequences for the center back. The rule that rewards playing through the lines changes how the goalkeeper distributes. The small-sided game you designed to create pressing situations is also, without you realizing it, shaping how the team defends as a unit. You only see what you're looking for. The game is producing a lot more.
This isn't an argument against constraints. It's an argument for staying curious — and for not assuming that what you designed is all that's happening. The unintended consequences are often where the most interesting learning takes place. Watch the whole field, not just the area you're coaching. You'll see things that surprise you.
Constraints and challenges for individuals
One of the most useful applications of the constraints approach is at the individual level. Rather than applying a rule to the whole game, you give a single player a personal challenge within the game.
This connects directly to the stop-and-freeze conversation — instead of pulling the whole group out of a 9v9 to address two midfielders who made the same run, you approach one of them quietly while the game is live. "Every time the ball goes to the striker, I want you to go away from the ball, not towards it." That's an individual constraint. The game continues. The player has a specific problem to solve. You can observe whether the constraint is working and adjust without disrupting anyone else.
At the individual level, constraints also link naturally to positional profiles and IDPs. If a player's development priority is receiving under pressure, you design a constraint that creates that situation repeatedly for them — without the rest of the group even knowing there's a separate challenge in play.
What a CLA training environment actually looks like
Ben is clear on this, and I think it's worth saying plainly: a constraints-led environment is not a chaotic one. It's a deliberately designed one.
The coach comes in with a clear sense of what they want to work on. They design a game that will organically produce that situation. They set it up, let it run, observe what happens, and adjust the constraint rather than stopping the game. More pressure on the defenders — reduce the playing area. Players not switching the ball — add a bonus goal for playing through a central gate. The intervention is in the design, not in constant coaching stoppages.
What it doesn't look like is a series of drills that build toward a scrimmage. It doesn't look like a warm-up, then a technical practice, then a small-sided game, then a bigger game. The game is the vehicle from the start. Everything is connected. The constraint is the coach's tool, not the instruction.
If you want to go deeper on all of this, Ben's book is the place to start. One of the clearest, most practical coaching reads I've come across.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 48 — The Constraints-Led Approach with Ben Bell
@LeeDunneSoccer