If a person starting out to coach youth soccer asked me to recommend a good introductory book I’d suggest Coaching The Coach: A complete guide how to coach soccer skills through drills by Richard Seedhouse. It’s a nice, concise, no frills, 115 page introduction to coaching fundamental soccer techniques. In particular I like how it covers some key technical points, especially on 1v1 attacking that is rarely spelled out in other books.
I recommend Seedhouse’s book not so much for the activities which are similar to those in many other books. Instead I like this book because of the technical detail along with his Socratic approach of asking questions of the coach.
If you’re looking for information on tactics, formations or strategy you’ll need to look elsewhere because this book doesn’t touch on these subjects. But that is its strength: a laser focus on one subject – technique.
