When you drive home after training tonight, ask yourself: how much of that session could my players have done on their own at a wall? Whatever the answer is, that's time you just lost.

Your players already understand this concept. They use it every time they build a squad in FIFA. The question is whether you're using it too — or just hoping the chemistry builds itself.

I ran a session, timed everything on my watch, and the ball was in play for 66% of a 90-minute session. I thought I was running a tight, efficient practice. I wasn't.

I recorded this on a Sunday morning in California, England playing later that day, Argentina having just won the night before. And I thought — this is the window. This is the moment. Are we using it?

I asked a group of campers if you can use your toes in soccer. Almost all of them said no. But if the ball is just out of reach, you are going to use your toes. We taught them that rule. And it's not really a rule.

Three questions I stopped asking: 'Do you have any questions?' — 'Does that make sense?' — and 'Why are you late?' Here's what I ask instead, and why it changes everything.

I've done all four of these things. And having done them — and now doing things differently — I think the behavior we call 'discipline problems' is mostly the environment we created.

When I was younger I had issues outside of soccer. I went into the sport I loved and found the same environment there — a coach who didn't ask questions, didn't listen, just told me what to do. I think about that a lot when I'm on the field.

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.

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.

The 48-hour rule exists because coaches didn't do the work before the game. Here's the work that makes the rule unnecessary.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.