Wednesday, January 25, 2006

Top Ten list of Soccer Coaching Books
WEBSITE NOTE:  Most of these books are meant for Intermediate/Advanced/National Coaches.

Here’s my personal Top Ten list of Soccer Coaching Books in order. This includes the books I would choose if I could only select ten.

1. “The Champion Within” by Lauren Gregg - The best soccer coaching book, bar none. If you coach girls it’s better, but it’s even great for coaching boys.
2. “The Vision of a Champion” by Anson Dorrance & Gloria Averbuch
3. “Coaching Soccer” - NSCAA book edited by Tim Schum.
4. “The Soccer Coaching Bible” by NSCAA
5. “Training Soccer Champions” by Anson Dorrance
6. “The Art of Soccer” by Mark Catlin, M.D – The book that explains that the game of soccer is really about what players do when they don’t have the ball.
7. “For the Good of the Game” – Robert Evans & Edward Bellion – Much more than a book for referees. Very entertaining and guaranteed to help coaches understand how games should be called.
8. “Coaching – Winning Strategies for Every Level of Play” – Dave Chambers (not soccer specific) but an excellent primer
9. “Catch Them Being Good” by Tony DiCicco & Colleen Hacker – An easy to read alternative to Bill Beswick’s “Focused For Soccer” about the mental side of the sport.
10. “Soccer, How to Play the Game: The Official Playing and Coaching Manual of the United States Soccer Federation” – A how-to book with lots of pictures.

Like any exclusive list some terrific books had to be left off. In deciding which to choose I excluded those books that are for coaching specific topics such as “Coaching the 4-4-2”, “Coaching 6, 7 and 8 Year Olds”, “Flat Back Four”, “Attacking Soccer”, and “Focused for Soccer”.

I also left off some good biographical books such as “The Beautiful Game”, "Fever Pitch" and “The Miracle of Castel Di Sangro”. I left out some good drills and games books such as “Teaching Soccer Fundamentals” and “Soccer Drills” and any of Lawrence Fine's great practice books.

There are some well written coaching books that are about other sports that also relate well to soccer, but aside from Dave Chambers book, I haven’t included them here. The hardest books to cut from the list were Allen Wade's and Charles Hughes' books but most of the books here are about a lot more than just X's and O's.

If you can only buy ten books about coaching soccer, these are the classics you absolutely want to have. They can take you from coaching U6 to coaching in the World Cup. They’re the books you’ll read over and over again – finding something new each time. Some of these are now out of print, so you may have to use the used books section of a website like Amazon.com to find them. Do it now while they're still available.

Ken Gamble