# How to Use this Book

## Developing Your Soccer Skill Stack

Soccer is a complex game with many subtle nuances. The goal of this book is to create in you, the player or coach, an awareness of the mental and physical techniques, the *Skill Stack* an elite player most likely possesses, along with an understanding of why it's important and how it ultimately contributes to your success on the field. This book will have less of an emphasis on *drills* and more on *gamesmanship*, though anything that constitutes "Good Soccer" is essentially on the table. While we may provide guidance on how to best adopt strategies, it is up to the player to familiarize, learn and internalize in the way they find themselves most capable. You will find techniques and drills go in and out of fashion through different decades and age groups, but the lessons stay the same, and those evergreen skills every player needs is our focus.

Intelligent, skilled soccer using techniques that create advantageous situations on the field . That is, we want to teach you to play effective Soccer.

## Doing So Chapter-by-Chapter

Each chapter will focus on a piece of that skill stack that you can add to your game, and should stand on it's own.  We will dive into many unexplored coaching nooks and crannies that are difficult for the average parent coach to articulate in detail, ones that even seasoned coaches in the heat of a training session have trouble imparting with the degree of simplicity required to allow young players to integrate them into their game. Some of this information might have whizzed by you in practice, maybe you "know" it but need a refresher.  That's perfectly OK. We're hoping we can provide the necessary illumination of those topics you might have missed or have never been privy to. A reference library to build your stack.

To that end, we're not going to make any assumptions about the skill stack you the reader already possesses. We will start by building a foundational understanding of some of the recognized approaches to playing the game, and spread out into different areas that we hope will benefit you and your team.

## As You Find Most Useful

We are going to cover a LOT of ground, and in doing so try to strike a balance between being dogmatic (giving you concepts we feel are universal to the player-base) and pragmatic (ideas you can implement and put into practice for use in game situations).&#x20;

There may be elements here that are already a part of your game and some that could use a tweak. There there also may be tactics that you feel don't apply to you, though we are obviously hoping those are few and far between. Feel free to skip around, or selectively read the chapters in any order you please.   You may also wish to read, digest and then re-read chapters to ensure you've got a proper understanding of the material.

As necessary we will refer to our companion web site \[[www.\\\[something\].com](http://www.\\\[something].com)] to provide visual references when it best serves the reader.

## Contact Us!

This book provides material about an evolving game as we understand it today, some of it gained by harrowing research and a heaping dose of it won in the trenches by various players and coaches including the author.&#x20;

That said, within this tome there exists no claim to soccer knowledge as a cornered market. There are going to be things here that need exploration, clarification and require refinement. Let us know! Contact us at \[address].
