ADS COACHING PHILOSOPHY
“At ADS we aspire to ensure that every footballer within our system excels and ultimately achieves their full potential. We have helped thousands of young players to develop their game and have a proven track record of players signed by professional academies. This is evidence that our unique training model works”.
“Our coaching methods are aligned with the FA’s Four Corner Model. We believe in teaching all of our players the following five individual qualities that they require to play football at the highest level”.
Josh Richards
Academy Director
QUALITY NUMBER 1: FIRST TOUCH
Here at ADS we believe that having a good first touch is the most important quality our players must possess. We encourage our players to have a great first touch on the ball, never losing possession, with the ability to play the ball quickly when he’s closed down. To improve your first touch as a player we spend time with the ball, juggling, working on our touch, playing games under pressure to ensure your first touch is out of your feet.
QUALITY NUMBER 2: VISION
We encourage all our players to play with their ‘Head Up”, being able to see the field and know where their teammates are on the pitch. Vision is also about knowing the game, when to keep the ball and when to make that long pass. The key to developing good vision is to look around you and check who’s coming to pressure you before you receive the ball. Frankie De Jong is a master of this for Barcelona, always looking over his shoulder to see who was closing him down.
This also means opening up your body to see the whole field, which could just be turning your shoulder to face the field. We encourage our players to display their vision by finding those pockets of space between defenders to ask for the ball or play the ball. Good vision means moving to the right spaces on the field and constantly scanning the field before you receive the ball so you know where you want to make the next pass.
But the vision to pick out the player with a diagonal ball or a through ball, what’s most often called that killer pass, one that sets up a teammate for a chance to score, is the vision that separates the good soccer players from the great. To see the play and then make the pass requires that you have your head up and know when to play the ball, not too early but not too late either is what we develop at ADS.
QUALITY NUMBER 3: PASSING
We build our ability to play short and long passes through our innovative drills. Encouraging our players to play 1-2 touch forces our players to play crisp and hard passes. The most common and accurate pass is the inside of the foot pass. Every good player should be able to make both long and short crisp passes with the inside of the foot. With every pass the player making the pass should move into a better position to support the player who they passed to. Every player on the field should be ready to receive the ball and want the ball, no matter what position they play this is the ADS way.
QUALITY NUMBER 4: DRIBBLING.
We encourage creativity and individual technical ability, our focus is that all our player become great dribblers with the principle idea that they develop such close control that whenever a defender comes close they can cut one way or the other mesmerizing defenders with trickery, change of pace and excellent close control.
QUALITY NUMBER 5: MOVEMENT
We instil in all of our players the ability to move without the ball to get open and support your teammates. We encourage our players to move and make runs when they don’t have the ball. Sometimes the runs are to drag defenders away so another teammate can fill the space and get the ball. Sometimes it’s a run to support a player who’s under pressure. This good movement gives a player who’s under pressure a release valve – someone play the ball to for a second so they can get open again and get the ball back.