The working life of a Director of Coaching (DOC) is a busy one. From managing and supporting the development of a team of coaches to planning season-long training curriculums and developing a positive club culture, it can often feel like there simply aren't enough hours in the day to fit it all in.
Fortunately, overseeing the day-to-day operation of a soccer club doesn't have to be carried out solely via pen, paper and numerous spreadsheets. Digital software gives you the tools you need to spend less time on simple administrative tasks, while also streamlining the process of making long-term strategic decisions and communicating them to your coaching team.
The Coaching Manual's suite of tools has been developed with DOCs in mind. Here are just some of the ways it can make your life easier.
Building a new coaching session requires creativity and the ability to effectively communicate instructions to players. Once upon a time, this meant spending hours huddled around a whiteboard, painstakingly moving magnetic pieces and drawing marker lines.
Today, thanks to our Session Planning software, sessions can be plotted in advance, ready to present when they're needed. You can design and save as many sessions as you could ever realistically require. What's more, while our platform is built on state-of-the-art technology, it's simple to pick up and use straight away, so your coaches won't have to waste valuable hours trawling through a help manual.
The best soccer coaches are able to draw on years of experience as well as their natural skill set. But what if your coaching team could learn from the accumulated wisdom of a global network of coaching experts?
Our content partners at The Coaching Manual include some of the biggest clubs and academies in the UK and the US, such as Rangers FC, Southampton FC and the New Mexico Youth Soccer Association. And we've got exclusive sessions from some of the world's most renowned coaches, including former Everton and Manchester United manager David Moyes. Use their vast experience at the top level of the game to educate and support your coaches.
Formulating a coaching curriculum spanning a full season can seem like a daunting prospect. Building a detailed plan with clear progression from session to session and week to week is challenging, not to mention time-consuming. And when you've finally pieced the puzzle together, you still have to communicate it clearly to your coaches.
With our Season Planning tool, it's possible to build a bespoke coaching curriculum in a matter of minutes. Follow our seven-step process to give us all the information we need - things like player age and the days of the week on which training takes place - and we'll create a tailor-made Season Plan leveraging our database of hundreds of training sessions.
Once we've done the hard work, you can use our digital platform to circulate your plans to coaches and players. The whole schedule can be viewed via an interactive calendar, letting you drill down into individual sessions and activities assigned to specific days.
Different people learn in different ways. When it comes to disseminating complex information - like new training drills - to a group of coaches, some prefer it to be presented visually, while others would rather "learn by doing".
In the past, DOCs had to either prepare multiple versions of the same presentation to communicate their ideas effectively, or risk their vision being misinterpreted. If you rely on paper handouts or a speech around a flipchart to get your message across, there is no guarantee that your coaches will understand the objectives of the session and deliver it in the way you intended.
With The Coaching Manual, we make it easy to combine video and digital tools to educate your coaching team. All sessions can then be shared and viewed at a later date, ensuring that important information is always available to your coaches and players when they need it.
Simple though it may sound, the ongoing task of ensuring that everyone - from coaches to players - has access to the right information when they need it can be time consuming and frustrating.
Worst of all, the longer you spend on admin activities such as this, the less time you have available to work on the things that really make a difference to your soccer club, like recruiting new coaches and developing your staff.
Our software allows you to share content - whether individual training sessions or entire Season Plans - with players and coaches at the click of a button. It may not be one of our most glamorous features, but it'll save you plenty of time and headaches down the line.
A DOC's job isn't easy. Some of the most demanding elements of the role involve introducing a new philosophy and playing style at your club.
You could find yourself inadvertently battling against your own coaching staff, who may have spent their entire careers working within a given system. Change isn't easy at the best of times, so it can be extremely challenging to persuade an old-school coach well versed in the various iterations of 4-4-2 to transition to a more fluid system.
Fortunately, help is at hand. We offer a wealth of support in communicating hard-to-grasp ideas and radical new approaches to your coaching team. Say you want to start playing with inverted full-backs, or need your attackers to start pressing from the front; we've got the content to help you explain your philosophy and put it into practice on the pitch.