No Other Game Alike

⚽ Bringing quality Youth Football Education to You! | ⚽ UEFA A-USSF A-MA High Performance Football ⚽

20 Years of Experience packaged to help your teams...

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

The nature of today's society means that kids do not play amongst themselves in the street and in the park anywhere close to what we did as kids.

That means that the overwhelming majority of a player's development comes from the clubs and the coaches they play for.

Unfortunately, clubs and coaches don't fully understand that responsibility.

And it really shows.

There needs to be a complete overhaul and transformation of the education and training given to grassroots coaches.

[Kevin Middleton @coach_kevin_m]

A few weeks back, @alike_no sent me his game model, complete with detailed formation information for each level of the game.

With his permission, I just implemented the formations and details into @FootballGPT_co

Pretty cool! And I would love to include more user content if possible.

An AI solution with a community edge

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Here's the whole document I created.

You can feed all the images into it if you like 👍

https://t.co/iHFGVUnYqy

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

An FA coach educator told a group of us that if you try to do points systems like this with professional players they will not buy into it and you will lose them.

'They don't care. They'll think it's childish' was the reasoning.

I was the only person to push back. So seeing this is interesting

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

3 ressons...

Coach education - they don't realise it's detrimental to the players

Parent education - when a coach is more reserved, offering guidance & coaching over control & instruction, to allow the players figure it out, and things go wrong, parents might complain they aren't doing anything.

Coach ego/personality - they want to win or are neurotic and ignore their education to drive results or feed their eagerness for control.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

I used to say this to parents...

The strange part of true developmental football is that while you want to win every game, you also almost want to get a level of competition where you are losing games.

Obviously not because you are training or playing poorly, but because you are looking for an appropriate challenge for them to improve

[AB⚕ @AbsoluteBruno]

Gibbs white finish is absolute filth
https://t.co/x5H1xUGZIW

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Behave yourself.

United beating you and Arsenal has generated more headlines and airtime than your tweble and whatever else you want to add onto it.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Nonsense like 'windows', isolated technical stuff like 2 yard volleys back into a feeder's hands, synchronized passing drills and all sorts of other guff just won't cut it.

If you're around my age and older you will have done all of this in training as a player.

But that was in addition to playing before school, at break, at lunch, after school - every day.

Now those 1.5 hours you have them 1-3x a week is in for many, their only football. Or a massive slice of it.

It needs to be better.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Periodically I run sessions where I line the kids up and play 3-Team Winner Stays On.

I line them in up in height or age order. I am always delighted to see that my younger and smaller players dominate these tournaments.

This is great to run a little audit of yourself.

If your older, taller players dominate, you may be bias and mistaking maturity for ability and losing a lot of talent to those who are younger or late developers.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Coaches, don't use this passing drill unless you're players are also interested in synchronised swimming.

Absolute nonsense.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

If your only football is with a team or coach, then yes, development is stunted.

On a daily basis, I used to stand next to the radiator after lunch, shirt and pants wet through from the rain, trying to warm and dry up for the rest of my afternoon lessons.

Where is development?

At training with an under-qualified coach?

Or experimenting with the ball and a game against my peers for an hour on the playground?

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Society now means there is less and less informal play.

Children are brought to clubs and coaches, which now serves as the overwhelming majority of a player's development

That means there is massive responsibility on clubs and coaches who need to take this role seriously.

We can bemoan yesteryear and the loss of the park or street kick around games or revolutionise our coaching which actually inspires more informal play.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Or...

Coaches who want to make football a joyless place full of lines, laps and lectures should stay away from grassroots clubs.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

🚨Calling all grassroots coaches 🚨

How would you describe the quality of the coach education at your club?

Or the support you have in delivering your sessions/club curriculum?

I'm trying to get a gauge on something.

Comments and shares welcome

[Osku Partonen @Coach_Osku]

Most players don’t run enough off the ball.

✔ Not making recovery runs
✔ Not sprinting into space
✔ Not pressing with urgency

Teach them that movement creates chances—whether they get the ball or not.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

So many volunteer coaches in grassroots football with no support, have kids in lines. The kids get 3 touches every 2 minutes then are shouted when they inevitably act up out of boredom.

People who've downloaded my modules and use them report back with massive engagement from players, no discipline issues and overall tremendous development.

https://t.co/XyLuwkXa2u

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Coaching passing patterns is a nonsense.

You won't see the rose bush coaching the rose how to form its petals into a pattern, or a tree coaching the pine corn to form its bracts.

PRINCIPLES are embedded into it and the patterns emerge organically according to the environment.

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

This unbelievably simple trick is how I turned my boring ball mastery sessions into something:

Fun
Exciting
Engaging
Developmentally brilliant
One the players love turning up to...

[Michael O'Neill @alike_no]

Imposter Syndrome for me:

Coaching Players 😎
Coaching Coaches 😰

Even though I have 20 years experience, tons of success across different age groups & players, there's always nagging doubts & negativity swimming around

Probably a reason why I disappear from here at times...