The Complete Book of Coaching Youth Soccer

This is a good book for beginner soccer coaches. It gives a lot of detailed instruction about coaching basic skills and technique, great things to know for coaches trying to improve young soccer players. The book also gives a lot of good practice plan ideas. The only problem is that it can be long winded and get caught up in the details of perfecting technique. Other books provide much more of the good stuff: how to let the game be the teacher and let kids have fun. And a lot of websites now have great ideas for practices on line. Coach-Smart.com has a lot of fun games with great coaching tips. Saves a lot of time to have the good stuff: full practice plans with detailed instructions about fun games, simple diagrams, and expert advice on what to say to players. -Save Youth Soccer

I purchased about 5 books on coaching soccer, particularly youth soccer (13 and under). This was by far the best of the lot, most covered only rules and strategy and not teaching basic skills. This is the first coaches book I found that actually explained how to kick a ball! It does a great job in explaining how to teach the basic skills, which is what most of the young players need. The drills were helpful and made a definite improvement in the play of the team.

goes in detail of coaching young kids [fantastic

This is an okay book for beginner and intermediate level youth soccer coaching. There are two main problems with this book. One is that the illustrations are extremely crude, often reduced to literally stick figures. The other problem is that, having collected several other youth soccer coaching books and videos, I'm not sure that I actually learned anything new from this book, and so in retrospect, I don't think I would have gotten this book. For beginner coaches learning how to coach very young kids (i.e., ages 4-8), Karl Dewazien's "FUNdamental Soccer" is a better book in terms of the illustrations, and in its emphasis on how to handle these very young children. For a more detailed explanation of tactics and intermediate to advanced skills for older children (ages 8+), Alan Hargreaves' book "Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer" treats essentially the same topics in a much more thorough fashion. For teaching soccer dribbling "moves", Wiel Coerver's "SCORE!" is the ultimate book (although, as I noted in my review of that book, the companion videos, viewed in slow motion, are more useful). However, if you haven't gotten any soccer coaching books yet, and are looking for your first ever youth soccer coaching book for slightly older kids (ages 8+), this book might be useful. It does have a cookbook set of week-by-week soccer drills that will get you through your first soccer season, if you don't want to have to think too hard about what it is that you're going to have to do.