Interview with Coach Tim

Coach Tim talks about creating greatness, how breaking down the game has become a lost art, and what coaches can do to improve in their home environment.

Coach Tim Bradbury is currently the Director of Coaching Instruction for the Eastern New York Youth Soccer Association, an organization which has over 100,000 registered youth soccer players. He holds a USSF A License, a USC Master Coach Diploma, a USSF DOC License, a Bachelors in Education from London University, works as a coach instructor for both USSF and USC, and also trains coaching instructors for the USSF (so not only does he coach coaches, he coaches coaches who coach coaches. The dude’s good.)

Coach Tim, thanks for taking the time. You were an instructor for one of my USSF Licenses and I was impressed by how you managed to uphold high standards of work in that context. How do you do that with the teams you coach?

Whenever I take on a team I initially go about building a culture. I put kids in pairs and ask them to come up with something they really care about. I get to give one thing too and then we pick 4 to always agree to. As an example, my U9’s decided they wanted teammates who were committed, worked hard, and who were thoughtful and kind.

Another one of the values we came up with is that we always agree to outwork everybody else. Every time a kid falls below that in practice, we get to talk about it. Initially it’s quite a frequent conversation. I have to ask them “Are you being the best teammate that you can be? Are you agreeing to the promise that we outwork each other?”

Then after awhile it seeps into the fabric of what the team is about. Once the behaviors have been established in a team you can build upon it and move on to a different value.

What do you do when players don’t act in accordance with the Core Values?

Well first I expect them to hold each other accountable because they created it. So it comes from the players themselves — which introduces the topic of self-management. And I try to teach them how they can do it. “Can Mia tell Donna that Donna’s not doing her best today? Yes, she can.” There are ways they can inspire each other and we talk a lot about that and give examples.

But if the kids aren’t following through on the values then I’ll talk to them individually. Normally a conversation begins with “It looks like you’re struggling today. Did you have a rough day?” because we always connect to the key piece of caring about other people.

If their answer is yes, I get to say “I understand. We have rough days, and those rough days can impact our behavior even with a team that we care about.” Then we do the human thing and we agree that I’ll keep an eye on them and they’ll do the best they can.

And sometimes their answer is “Nothing. I’m just being lazy.” And then my response is “Well that’s not good enough. So fix it.”

This typically does the trick. I think once in the last 3 years I’ve had to sit a kid out and make them watch, and that’s as far as the discipline goes. I decide that if they act unacceptably then I get to say “You have to coach then” and then they stand with me. And they don’t like that experience of standing by me, they’d rather be playing.

What examples do you give when you’re explaining what ideal expectations should look like?

I show them what great looks like. Before we start any exercise we discuss what greatness is. What would a great role model do in this exercise? What does great look like? How far are you from great right now?

We talk about what great looks like in terms of the effort and focus and also the skill performance. An example from my U9’s now is pinging the ball. So driving the ball on the ground with their instep, they land on their striking foot, they follow through the direction of the ball, and I show them that example.

You don’t need to do this before every exercise because a lot of exercises are repeated. That’s part of making learning stick. But if the exercise is new then we’ll talk about what great looks like. I’m fully aware of the kids who are so motivated, loving what they’re doing, that they’ll probably be a good example to use in front of the team.

Developing technique is a crucial part of coaching and one I’m always trying to improve on. How do you develop technique within your players?

I do a lot of things that contribute to a strong technical base. I have my players spend a lot of time with the ball outside of practice. They’ve all got juggling charts that they’re supposed to follow along with at home. These kids are doing 50, 60 juggles and they’re only 9.

But that translates to when we are working on skill acquisition and it’s always done within a game or activity. So passing with the outside of the foot in the middle of the dribble. We’ll put that into some sort of games-based activity and then for four minutes I will give them technical pieces to work on.

Changing gears slightly, but you also run coach education course for USSF and USC. What advice do you give to coaches who don’t have strong technical knowledge?

Let’s go through a perfect example. Some coaches at these coaching courses love to walk around shouting “Pressure!” That’s not coaching.

There’s 8 components of pressure and we’ll go through them as a group. I roll out a ball, then I’ll be the defender and we’ll talk about pressure just like building a cake. The first layer is the mental attitude saying “I can get the ball”. Mental attitude impacts our ability to work together.

The next two pieces are how I run. How do I get there quickly? Short strides, long stride, short strides. The next part is shaping my run which either dictates where the ball can go or closes part of the field.

We build the 8 components of pressure which makes them aware that walking around saying pressure is not really pressure. Instead of just shouting big words, perhaps it was Tim’s steadying distance that was wrong, perhaps I’ve over-committed and got too close, perhaps there was a time to tackle.

Once you start making them aware of all the pieces that contribute to a skill being performed, they start feeling a little bit guilty that they’re just being very broad.

This stuff has almost become forgotten knowledge and you have to inspire them to start thinking about all the pieces of the game. And some of that knowledge comes from the experience of performing the skill and then being brave enough to sit down and break it all down.

I have to ask. What are the 8 components of pressing?

Start with mindset, then do the running piece which is how you get to the ball and make sure you’re positioned so that you’re running forward and not backwards.

Then teach them how to sprint to close and the thirteen different body shapes they could use. Then start talking about how to force players on to their weak foot and the angle that you run. Then you’ve got the steadying distance and the different times to tackle. Some times to tackle are bad touch, when the ball is stationary between their feet, and when their head is down.

Once you’ve done the different times to tackles you can deal with types of tackling. If you take a crap touch can I get my body between you the ball? Then there’s more advanced pieces, like baiting. If I steady at an appropriate distance then I bait to tackle which might force a bad touch. There’s eight or nine pieces right there. All of this is coaching detail and you have to go a long way before you see someone who can employ that type of detail right now.

How do you develop awareness for something that a coach doesn’t even know about?

You model it. Typically I let coaches teach a little bit and then I’ll do some of the specific skill acquisition pieces and then we’ll talk about the contrasts.

And I always tell coaches to ask their kids. Kids will be honest with you. It could be as broad as “I want to know what specific coaching information I gave you that helped you perform a skill.” And if at the end of the practice they all come to you and said “Coach told me to keep it on the ground.” Then you know you failed.

How often do you use questions like that?

All the time. I overly want to help which people perceive as being A) too demanding and B) too critical. So I’ll say “Tell me how many times I caught you being good today with a specific praise.” And for me that means I told a player “Great pass, your head is down, you have a locked ankle, you played through the middle of the ball, it went with great pace.”

Do your questions focus on an aspect of coaching that you’re purposefully working on?

Sometimes I go through different moments as a coach when there’s a need to focus on certain things because coaching can be so broad. The overuse of questions is an example with that. The old National Youth Diploma was a very good course, but every coach who came out of it became the Riddler. They just started asking lots of questions, and questions work less with novices. True teaching is knowing when to impart knowledge, not just posing riddles.

I’ll give you an example with two banks of four. If you say to most kids who are 14 to go play two banks of four they don’t have a clue what two banks of four looks like, smells like, or just is. They wander around like sheep. And if you ask them a few questions, like “Can you get compact?” it doesn’t help. So you have to give them knowledge. You have to talk about why we have the line of confrontation, why the restraint, how to change distances based on the physicality of the kids, how to change their mindset, et cetera.

I’m doing a lot of work with Doug Lemov and he and I fully recognize that asking loads of questions has become a trend in education and that providing knowledge is really the key piece. Having people apply it is where the real learning happens, and perhaps that’s where you can use some questions. But people are asking questions when there’s no knowledge and it’s just a drain to nowhere.

Outside of formal education, what would you recommend coaches do in their home environment to make sure they’re improving?

The first question is how well do you reflect? Have you learned how to reflect? Have you got enough knowledge about the craft to reflect specifically on a skill? Without that piece you need a mentor. A trusted colleague, someone who has got more knowledge than you. You need a Yoda in coaching who can observe you, analyze you, have a bit of radical candor and be honest about you.

Those are really the two pieces that people need to have a targeted path forward because our craft is so broad. There’s so many pieces to it: goal-setting, motivational thinking, forming connections with kids, forming psychological safety, I can go on and on.

Your areas of improvement need to be based upon the work you do on the grass. And, in my opinion which we’ve already talked about, the biggest piece I see missing is this absolute lack of knowledge. Without it I can’t see how you can help kids.

I think there’s so many good insights here that can be implemented into how we coach our own teams. Specifically, examining and showing what greatness looks like within an exercise, breaking the game down into smaller pieces and layering them on top of each other to build mastery, and the importance of providing knowledge to players then using questions to build on it (a topic I’ve written about before).

Don’t worry though, this is only a fraction of my interview with Coach Tim. Make sure to subscribe if you want to read more about how he creates psychological safety within teams, what his own training sessions look like, and the biggest mistakes that coaches make at licensing clinics.

As an aside, I am traveling with my partner to visit her family for Christmas so there will be no newsletter next week. I hope everyone has a good holiday and a safe new year’s!