Jacob Daniel

When you coach for a while, you start looking for "great" drills. In that search, it's easy to get so focused on the training program that one misses the proverbial forest for the trees. This book, though, takes a very broad overview and reminds the coach of the "big picture."

The book has four mostly equal-length parts ("Principles of Play", "Systems of Play", "Methods of Coaching", and "Finishing Touches"). The "Principles of Play" chapter is the most theoretical, as it discusses show more fundamental concepts like attack and defense. "Systems of Play" breaks down the standard formations (4-4-2, 3-5-2, 4-3-3, and 3-4-3) and discusses why each one might be used, along with the faults in each system. The book pretty much finishes with "Methods of Coaching," which is the practical application of some very specific plays. And "Finishing Touches" is really a miscellaneous chapter collecting some mini-essays on topics that don't quite fit with the main thoughts in the book.

Overall, the book is very good. It contains over 400 diagrams which are easy to follow. In many cases, it provides examples of "good thinking" and "not-so-good thinking" on particular plays. It even provides some drills (more suited to U16s and above).

The book, though, is slightly dated now. When the book was written (2003), the 1998 World Cup was still a recent memory. But that (and references to, say, the Dutch teams of the 1970s and the Brazilian teams of the 1980s) are now starting to become very dated. In the "Systems of Play" chapter, there's a short discussion about "alternative" systems (like 3-6-1) but as these were fairly new at the time of the book's publication, their efficiency isn't really discussed thoroughly.

This can't be the only book a soccer coach reads. But it's probably one of the few s/he should read before the beginning of every season. show less