Montrose Soccer Club

COACHING PHILOSOPHY

Montrose Soccer Club believes in playing an entertaining, aggressive, possession-based style of soccer. Montrose soccer players will typify effective teamwork; proficiency in fundamental skills and techniques; and adaptive decision-making. Players will be encouraged to express themselves creatively, challenged to improve, and provided with opportunities for success in competing at the highest possible level.

CORE VALUES

Love: Have fun! Engage in meaningful relationships and memorable experiences.
Character: Your value comes from who you are, not what you do. Be the best person you can be.
Self-Control: Focus on your own thoughts, emotions, and actions. You cannot control others.
Fight: Always give your best effort and never quit. Seek, adapt to, and thrive on challenges.
Growth: Prioritize and take pride in your personal development. Raise your standards of excellence.

BELIEFS

Every team and every member of the club is valuable and contributes to the success of the club.
Every player is capable of achievement when provided with a positive, inclusive, and appropriately challenging learning environment.
Making players feel valued and developing their technical, tactical, physical, and psychosocial skills are the most important attributes for success.
Building the character of the person is more important than building the skills of the player. Teaching players the values of respect, resilience, accountability, integrity, teamwork, and sportsmanship will benefit them long after their youth soccer days are over.
Fairness does not necessarily mean equality. Each player is a unique individual with a unique situation.
Players come first and their personal development is more important than match results. Players need to have fun and love the game.
Players will be instilled with a mentality of aiming to win, but not at all costs. Success will be measured by a player or team’s level of performance in implementing the club’s objectives. Game results will take care of themselves as players progress.
Players need to know their strengths and areas of improvement. Players will receive regular constructive feedback.
A growth mindset is paramount to success. Players and coaches will strive to continually improve.
Players learn the most by playing. All players should be participating in game-based activities at least 70% of the time during practices. Each player on a team should play at least one third of every game.
Players need to play a variety of positions on the field, and be given the freedom to be creative, to make mistakes, and to solve problems for themselves. All players are expected to learn all skills and all positions.
Each player must be placed on a team which is most appropriate for his or her age and developmental level. Player movement between teams will be encouraged to provide quality competitive and developmental opportunities to every player and team in the club.

PRIMARY OBJECTIVES

Develop Teamwork: Coaches will employ activities that require players to communicate, make decisions together, and establish trust in each other. Teams of similar age and/or ability levels will train together occasionally and help each other improve. The strength of a team or club lies in its culture and cohesion. Coaches must promote and model inclusivity, and emphasize the importance of positive dynamics in their own teams and among all teams in the club.

Develop Fundamental Skills: Coaches will employ game-based activities that maximize the number of quality skill repetitions for each player. All skills in the game, along with proper technique, must be trained regularly in order to achieve mastery. Good ball skills demand the use of both feet with equal ability. Since most players demonstrate the use of a dominant leg at a very early age, emphasis must be added during all activities to force the use of the non-dominant or “weaker” leg.

Develop Decision-Making: Coaches will employ game-based activities that maximize the number of individual decisions each player must make, and demand the ability to think and to react quickly. While coaches must teach and drill tactics and proper decision-making, it is the players themselves who must achieve a true understanding of what is expected. Players will only learn how to respond and adapt to different aspects of the game by experiencing them.

SECONDARY OBJECTIVES

Develop player understanding and implementation of the MSC style and principles of play
Develop player understanding and use of the MSC terminology
Design and implement training sessions according to the MSC session structure guidelines