National Soccer Coaching Conference Review

This past weekend CFA coaches attended the National Soccer Coaching Conference held at the University of Toronto. There were 20 on field sessions along with a few classroom sessions. The event was very well organized and attended by coaches from across Canada, we met coaches from Edmonton, Regina etc.

The highlights from the weekend featured most of the Canadian coaches and Martin Vasquez from the current USA men's National team.

Danny Dichio, a former Toronto FC player gave a great presentation on his French soccer federation run UEFA course that he is currently taking. Interesting that the newly hired Toronto FC Academy director Greg Vanney is also on the same course. Similar to our academy training the French model uses plenty of small sided games. 

Dichio also ran one onfield session to demonstrate the French coaching method in practice. The session featured plenty of game scenarios and limited speeches from the coach. Dichio quickly gave out some pointers and let the kids play. He was using Toronto FC players during the session.
Two other Canadian coaches, Colin Miller and Marc Dos Santos, gave some great presentations. Their sessions were aimed at slightly older players but the drills could be adapted for younger soccer players.

The current technical director from Soccer Canada gave a classroom session on playing style and an onfield presentation of organizing an attack. His knowledge of the game and understanding of Canada's current soccer environment was obvious in both presentations.

The big name of the weekend, Martin Vasquez, ran an on-field session on Sunday after taking the red eye flight from Los Angeles to Toronto after the USA National team had played on Saturday! He used the University of Toronto team to demonstrate some possession drills and some scoring drills. the possession drill started with some triangular passing warm up and than on field positional play with a possession theme.

Overall the weekend featured some great learning opportunities for Canadian coaches. The conference is turning into a must attend event for all Canadian soccer coaches.

Dave Butler