I wanted to share some insights I gained from the Anaheim soccer convention. First of all, I want to thank our club for providing this opportunity, as not many clubs do. It was a great experience on many levels, interacting with coaches from professional and national teams, as well as professional players. Getting their perspective of the game and learning from them was remarkable. It was great to see how humble they are, given their experience and knowledge. I have many takeaways across various facets of soccer, including technical, tactical, physical, psychological aspects, game analysis, game model, performance, and leadership. I can’t list all of them, but here are some of the key takeaways:

1. Focus on teaching players the principles of play for attack and defense to build a strong foundation and enhance problem-solving skills on the field.
2. Design training with the end goal in mind and contextualize each session, transitioning from simple to complex scenarios. Ensure clarity and realism, moving away from drill-based sessions. Incorporate the SCORE approach (Setup, Challenging, Opportunity, Realistic, Educate – did we effectively educate). Simplify training while adhering to principles of play, using constraints instead of restrictions, as restrictions might contradict the principles of play. Focus on the player’s perspective for clear and realistic training and evaluate team and individual performance based on principles of play, not just the result of a game.
3. Set up activities that are intuitive and realistic for players, to promote problem-solving and the development of instincts aligned with our game model.
4. Avoid stopping the game for single mistakes; instead, focus on recognizing and addressing patterns of errors.
5. Encourage players to develop a love for the game before focusing on achieving excellence.
6. Continuously align analysis with the game model to develop desired player instincts.
7. Maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses. Concentrate on strategies that enhance player strengths and reduce weaknesses.
8. Offer clear guidance on what players should observe during play and how to effectively use the information gathered, this can be done using a decision tree.
9. Motivate players to coach each other, to enhance and check their understanding of tactical concepts such as creating overloads, occupying space, and applying defensive principles.
10. Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for team assessment based on the team’s identity to assess performance and establish clear goals.
11. Focus on the importance of mental health, help players to be distraction-free and block the noise, reminding them that it is just a game and to enjoy it to alleviate pressure, following Jürgen Klopp’s philosophy.
12. Concentrate on enhancing players’ visual understanding of the game, focusing on what they see and how to adapt based on what the game presents, rather than what the coach sees.
13. Focus on how to build connections and empathy with players, which has been shown to improve performance. This involves understanding their perspectives, fostering a supportive environment, and creating strong coach-player relationships.

I look forward to implementing what I learned and transferring this knowledge to our players. Most importantly, I aim to deepen their love for the game of soccer.

The Fremont YSC Coaching staff attended the United Soccer Coached Convention 2024 in Anaheim, CA.

We are incredibly proud and committed to our continued education, and key component of being a coach, dedicated to continued education and learning.

On the course, Mounir Fellahi completed his Advanced National Diploma, while the rest of the coaching staff attended field sessions and lectures aligned to many different educational pathways, including, Academy Director, Game Model, Talent Identification, and Game Analysis.

Presenters included coaches from across the world, from a range of different coaching contexts, and speakers who are at the top of their field in different modules of sports psychology.

Overall a great educational experience, an opportunity to meet and network with coaches and friends from across the coaching landscape, and for Mounir the chance to meet Javier Zanetti!

Executive and Sporting Director, Dai Redwood, joins the Manchester City Academy Coaching Staff.

Dai will be joining the expanding Manchester City Academy program, which has locations throughout the world. Centered in Manchester, England, the Academy program provides opportunities for players cross the world to be trained to the standard of the homegrown players through is learning phase curriculum to prepare players for later sporting performance.

“I am thrilled to be joining one of the most successful clubs in the world, and retuning to the grass to be coaching todays youth. The position allows me to continue my work with Fremont YSC as Sporting Director, and gives opportunity to continually assess our own club footballing operations against that of the worlds finest. Although a Manchester United fan, the coaching philosophy of long term player development through a play methodology aligns with my own philosophy and research in youth sports, and therefore an opportunity I could not let pass.”

Congratulations Mounir on the successful completion of your USSF D License.

As coaches are life long learners in the sports specific knowledge or football, and the many accompanying disciples including physiology, and psychology.

Great to see the staff embracing their education both externally with National Governing Bodies, and internally with Fremont YSC.

We would also like to wish the best of luck to Nishant Raj, and Kyra Gupta, who will be traveling to Orlando, Florida to participate in the TopTekkers Nationals this month, following their selection from the recent TopTekkers event hosted in September. We wish the players and their families safe travels to the event, and the best of luck with the event and possible further selection to participate in the International Event hosted in Manchester, England.

We are incredibly proud to be sponsors of the Tri-City Volunteers Food Bank, believing in the importance of sports organizations supporting their community.

Please help to support our 2023 Thanksgiving Food Drive, by donating items from the list attached.

Thanksgiving Food Drive

We will be opening our office on Tuesday November 14th, from 6pm to 7.30pm, for donations to be dropped off (44100 Old Warm Springs Blvd, Fremont).

We greatly appreciate your support with the Thanksgiving Food Drive.

Relative age effect has a significant impact on the youth athletes sporting experience. It is often the reason that players are selected or deemed as talented at younger ages, as their effectiveness is misunderstood to be talent, where it largely the physical and cognitive bias due to their birth date; the bigger, stronger, faster, individual dominating over the smaller, slower, less physically developed individual due to their date of birth.

What is Relative Age Effect?

Relative Age Effect (RAE) is an observed effect where athletes at the top level of sports were born in months earlier in their sports relative cut-off period. If the cut-off for a sports league is December 31st, an athlete born in January is 11 months older than an athlete they are competing against who is born in December.

https://usatodayhss.com/2017/relative-age-effect-is-when-you-are-born-more-important-than-how-good-you-will-be

Impact of Relative Age Effect

Researchers have found that cut-off dates for school eligibility can have a long-term impact on student performance because it can cause some students (those born just after the cut-off date) to be older and more mature than others (those born just before the cut-off date) when they begin school. Skills accumulated in early childhood complement later learning, which means that relative age differences at the start of formal schooling can be long-lasting if relatively older students are better positioned to accumulate more skills in the early academic years because of their cognitive and emotional maturity advantage.

The idea that arbitrary eligibility cut-off dates can have sizeable consequences is even stronger in sport where, in addition to cognitive and emotional development, physical development plays an important role. After all, scouts choose children according to what they see.

Youth sports are organised by age brackets according to a cut-off birth date. In most European youth football leagues the cut-off date is 1 January. In the UK it is 1 September. Players born just after the cut-off tend to be stronger, bigger, more mature, and have more coordination, greater self‑esteem and better decision-making skills than players born at the end of the eligibility year. Since several months of development can make a huge difference in these variables, these players tend to perform better in a given game, watched by scouts, and are more likely to be identified as talented than those born in the later part of the eligibility year. Once selected, they benefit from having more high‑quality coaching, deliberate practice and experience, and are given more opportunities to further their development.

A skewed birth distribution over-representing individuals born early in the selection year has been documented extensively for many other sports, (including rugby, tennis, baseball and ice hockey), in many countries, and was found to be prevalent in youth and senior competitions. The effect remains even to the top level.

Of course, talent does not depend on exactly when you were born, so the talent detection system shows a huge relative age‑effect bias

https://www.theguardian.com/football/blog/2022/oct/24/next-generation-2022-why-scouts-select-players-based-on-the-relative-age-effect

What Can We Do About It?

At Fremont YSC we have addressed this in a number of different ways, and ways in which to support not only the individual player, but also to help support the parents awareness of relative age effect.

• What? No player in the U8 to U10 age groups is cut from the program, all players are welcome. We believe this should go up until U12, but we are also held back by the US culture of winning, as this has a knock on effect of how clubs are selecting players and approaching games on weekends.
  • This immediately removes the bias of selection, as coaches are not looking to pick a player to impact the team, but instead players are deciding whether they want to play for the club, and be part of a learning process.
  • Players are placed into groups of similar birth months, where physical and cognitive development rates are similar. In addition, our club structure allows coaches to move players throughout the season, where maturation is a consideration both physically and cognitively so placed in appropriate groups, and not groups being created based on effectiveness to win games.
• How? We do not place an emphasis on winning, but are process driven and encourage learning from experiences.
  • When coaches know they are not judged on outcome, but the environment created and alignment to the process, this has a positive effect o players as they are all given the same opportunities.
  • We do need the parent support with this, as external pressure will interfere and have an effect.
• Who? We account for all players from U9 to U16, early and late developers must be a consideration.
  • All players jersey numbers are assigned based on their date of birth, and not their placement on a team.
  • This helps as a reminder to parents about their child’s age within a group, and how factors out of their control can effect their rate of development, so not to compare to others.
  • As a club we define success as an individual journey, were our objective is to support players to reach the identification programs of external pathways into regional and national selection, PDP and ODP.

Through a framework and structure that supports the individual player, we remove the bias from relative age effect, and focus is always on the individual, and curriculum is designed to be proactive at age appropriate phases, factoring in the physical and psychosocial needs of the player. All curriculum design and periodized training is supported by evidence based research, which ensures the youth player is getting the best possible opportunity, no matter their date of birth, and being coached like a youth player, so not to be specializing early or treated like a professional. Professionalism comes from the clubs operations and coaches behavior’s.