Designing and Developing a Curriculum

“To improve is to change, to perfect is to change often.” according to Winston Churchill. I subscribe to this mantra.

When designing the curriculum for Vancouver United’s Academy I first needed to understand what the function of it was and why there was a need for it. Vancouver United FC (VanU) doesn’t have a senior men’s or women’s team that play in a professional or semi-professional league; so developing players for the first team isn’t the reason. The players in the Academy have teams within the club of their own and use the academy sessions as supplementary technical development.

I started my tenure with VanU by taking part in two holiday clinics, watching a few team training sessions and coaching in two academy sessions designed by the Club’s Technical Director. At this point, I turned to one of my former instructors (and someone I am lucky to count as a friend now) and current Sydney FC Academy Director, Kelly Cross, for inspiration. Kelly was hugely influential in writing the National Curriculum for Football Federation Australia in 2013 which used 4 “Core Skills” as its technical building blocks: Striking the ball, first touch, 1v1 and running with the ball.

These 4 pillars formed the basis for the autumn and winter academy blocks for which I was responsible. By progressing, adapting, and sometimes regressing the session plans from the FFA’s National Curriculum, I had a bank of sessions ready to go. I was also working with two U11 Gold teams (The league system which the boy’s teams played in is split into Gold, Silver and Bronze levels); this gave me a solid understanding of what players at that age and level were capable of. The sessions that I have to design for the academy must be easily changeable for younger and older players as well as players at varying levels but; must still have the same overall look, same theme, same repeated skills being honed.

The coaches within the academy have leeway to change certain aspects of the session. I started off by giving various grid sizes for exercises to accommodate younger, older, highly skilled, or weaker groups although; I have moved away from this and allow the coaches to set up the exercise areas to the size they feel fits the group best. After all, they are the ones who work with the group every week, and know what works well, or doesn’t. The coaches can change numbers to help exercises flow better, the length of time spent on individual sections (I have no problem spending more time on sections that players are getting value from or cutting time short on segments that aren’t working). Over the last 19 months I have grown to trust the coaches that work under me at the academy. There have been occasions where the coaches have completely changed the exercise from my session plan; and, I have applauded them for it. The rare instances that this has occurred is when the coaches know their group will struggle to complete the task at hand. They adapt that particular segment to fit the theme of the session but also fit the level of the players involved.

The next change I made saw a move away from the FIFA 11+ that was being prescribed as a club-wide warm up. We didn’t completely remove the elements of the dynamic warm up, they were shortened, and I add in rondo and injury prevention techniques. The FIFA 11+ warm up can be time consuming, if done in its entirety, and I wanted to keep the focus on player development (Think Andrea Pirlo’s musings on warm ups). Hence, getting players starting the session with rondos to increase the number of touches on the ball per session. This was not the most significant change of that particular academy block though. Many of the players that I have watched, played against, or coached since coming to Canada, do have a lack of some fundamental skills; and therefore, I used isolated technical development drills in some sessions. I always try to compliment them with variable and random exercises to add more game like elements into every session. And it was this that was the biggest change. I stepped away from development through drills and technique specific exercises. The spring academy block of 2017 was vastly weighted towards games, and game-like situations because players had a slim to non-existent game schedule. Between February and August some players took part in weekend tournaments (where kids play multiple games a day for multiple days – I’m not a fan of this format), some took part in an 8-game mini season, and others didn’t play a single game of football at all. 

I moved away from the 4 core skills and created a syllabus that focussed sessions into attacking or defensive development. The sessions created worked on topics that included: Supporting the counter attack, defending when outnumbered, penetrating the defence, and judging an interception.

I had two moments of push back during this block. The first was about the move towards game-like situations, and away from purely technical exercises. I explained the rationale behind the change, and informed the querying person that coaches would remove a player from a situation to work on their technique, if needed, and then return them to the conditioned game or situation — the answer didn’t seem to satisfy. The second moment of push back was for the U9 group. I mixed boys and girls in the same group. To me, the difference in skill between boys and girls was negligible, and physically, there was very little difference too so; why not mix them? It worked out that we had four groups of U9’s, the bottom group was a 50/50 mix of boys and girls. The third level group was mostly girls and a couple of boys; the reverse was true of the second-tier group with mostly boys and a couple of girls. The top group was all boys, and one girl. This is how the final academy session finished in terms of gender mix but, the four groups were fluid. At one point, we had three girls in the top group, and others we had none. The coaches were given discretion to move players based on a number of factors, and they co-ordinated the moves themselves.

The two points of contention disappeared across the course of the academy block and ultimately players, parents and coaches rated the mixed groups and sessions highly.

During the summer, I organised and ran two events for the club. One was a player development week, Train Like a Pro, and the other was a coach education weekend, Coach Like a Pro. I invited 3 coaches (2 UEFA A Licence holders, and an AFC Pro Licence holder) to join me on the pitch to deliver professional team style training sessions to our players, and give practical examples and theoretical content to coaches on a variety of topics and themes for a range of age groups. *

I know this doesn’t speak directly to how I create content for the VanU Academy however, the AFC Pro Licence coach I invited to join me in Vancouver was my AFC A Licence mentor, Kelly Cross. Kelly and I sat down for dinner one night, and, of course, talked football. We spoke about the curriculum for the academy and Kelly asked a very simple question after looking at the curriculum content, “Is that too much?” I knew exactly what he meant, it wasn’t too much training, there weren’t too many exercises per session, the sessions weren’t too long; it was all about the level and what players within VanU needed. He was right. Defending when outnumbered and supporting a counter attack count for nothing if you can’t pass a ball, control a ball, or tackle a player to win back possession.

Whilst I still like the idea of using more conditioned games, and game like situations in training when players are playing fewer games; the autumn academy takes place when players have a full fixture list. This saw a return to technical building exercises, with a softened focus on the game as the teacher. I reduced the number of topics down to three: First touch, striking the ball, and movement. There are sub-topics which fall under these three headings but looking back at what the players need, it is a better foundation of skills.

To return to the Sir Winston’s quote, the next improvement for the current academy block came in two parts. After consulting with the academy coaches, we reduced the variety of activities being introduced to the players. This has seen quicker explanations from coaches, more time playing and ultimately more touches on the ball for players. The second was the removal of team-based sessions for certain ages with a move instead to the fluid groups like the U9’s I described previously. I pushed for this change for a long time and have seen instant results. The tempo, the intensity, and quality of sessions has risen significantly. I wanted this change because certain teams had become complacent. They were comfortable training against the same players every week and weren’t pushing themselves to develop in every single training session. By moving players into groups that place like minded and like skilled players together, those that wish to push themselves do so, and those that are laxer or not as skilled are challenged by players of a similar level.

The next academy block will again be refined to trim any fat and increase the opportunities players have for decision making and touches on the ball; and although we might never reach perfection on the pitch, that doesn’t mean we can’t strive for it.

*More information is available on the Train and Coach Like a Pro events in my LinkedIn article ‘Bringing World Class Coaches to Your Club.”

(Originally published on 18th February 2018)

#CurriculumDevelopment #SessionPlanning