With the launch of the 2013 Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma courses in England just over 2 ½ weeks away, we are pleased to announce that the course at Fulham FC on Saturday 15th & Sunday 16th June 2013 is now sold out.

Coaches from all levels of the game and from all over the world will descend on three professional club venues in London, Birmingham & Stoke during June 2013. Course attendees taking part on the on the highly respected 2-day course will be provided with expert tuition from Coerver® Co-founder, Alf Galustian (see below image 2012 Coerver® Youth Diploma – Manchester City FC).

At the time of writing there are now only a handful of places remaining for the course at Birmingham City FC on Saturday 1st & 2nd June 2013. Availability for the course at Stoke City FC on Saturday 29th & Sunday 30th June 2013 remains good although we are expecting that all Youth Diploma course dates will be sold out by the end of May 2013.

Coerver® Coaching UK Director, Scott Wright (see below image working with Manchester City U11’s at the 2012 Coerver® Youth Diploma) said “Participation numbers and general interest for this year’s Youth Diploma Courses here in England from both a national and international perspective has been phenomenal. As it stands we have coaches coming from many different levels of the game and from around 23 different countries across the world which really highlights the global demand for the Coerver programme”.

Scott added “We fully expect that the three scheduled courses will be completely sold out before the end of May. The dates in Birmingham, London and Stoke in June are the only Youth Diploma courses that we will be delivering in England during 2013 so I would strongly advise anybody that plans to attend but has not yet booked a place to do so within this period to avoid disappointment”.

Since the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma, in association with FourFourTwo Performance, launched in 2011, over 800 coaches from all levels of the game and from across the world have participated on the 2-day course. The 2013 Youth Diploma courses are set to be the biggest and best yet with a wide range of attendees that includes grassroots coaches, teachers, professional youth coaches and professional coaches working at senior level both nationally and internationally.

The Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma course not only provides a rare opportunity to learn from Alf’s 30 years of global youth development experience but also the opportunity to participate on an official, authorised Coerver® Coach Education course, which through the Youth Diploma has been the first time in the organisations 29 year history where this opportunity has been available to external coaches.

The purpose of the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma is to give attendees, from all levels of the game, a greater understanding of how to plan & deliver more effective coaching sessions. The focus of the course is the Coerver® Coaching Session Planner which provides a quick & easy solution for coaches who would like to construct weekly, monthly or even season long programmes using proven, high quality drills & games developed over 29 years by Coerver® Coaching.

Coerver® Co-founder and course tutor, Alf Galustian (see above image), said of the course “We had never had an authorized Coerver® pathway for Coaches until the last year, and we’ve been around 29 years, and we’re in 23 countries. Our new Diploma course is designed for Coaches who work with young players from 8-15 years old. We designed the diploma asking the question, how can we help coaches construct sessions for the week or the whole season?. The new Coerver® DVD’s and books Charlie Cooke and myself have devised, which is called the Coerver® Coaching Session Planner; is a formula that any coach can use to construct their season’s sessions, we have built the diploma course around this new material”.

Since 2011, the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma course has been attended by a range of people working at various levels of the game from parents who wanted to help their kids at home to coaches working with senior international players in the Champions League:

“These last two days on the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma course certainly made me a better coach, I have been a fan of Coerver® for many years”.
Jose Morais, First Team Coach – Real Madrid CF (below image – Youth Diploma 2011 Birmingham City)

“The foundations of great teaching have always been championed by Coerver® who have taken football and created a system by which any child, through hard work and good teaching can master the basic ball skills, that then lead onto their application in skilful play.

We are passionate about our football and the belief that we must develop our players to be the best they can be. The Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma Course has just made this whole job so much easier.”
Carl Lander, Assistant Head Teacher – St Aubyns School, Essex

“I enjoyed the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma course immensely, I feel the course did show me some variations on familiar themes and I enjoyed how both Alf and Scott presented the course”.
David Connolly, Southampton FC Striker

“I thought the Youth Diploma course was excellent, Coerver® is the building block on which all football should be taught. I thoroughly enjoyed the course and it has really encouraged me towant to become a better coach”.
Mark Williams, Grassroots Coach – Birmingham

“I thoroughly enjoyed the Coerver® Coaching Youth Diploma course, and would recommend that all coaches working with young players should attend”.
Richard Beale, Reserve Team Manager – Birmingham City FC

“Many thanks to all of you for what to proved to be a well delivered and interesting course at the weekend. I personally have taken a great amount away from it and intend to use the system to help me plan and deliver my coaching sessions , although I think the real learning starts here!.”
Lee Foster – Coach (Bristol – UK)

“I would like to thank you for the wonderful Coerver Youth Diploma course this weekend at Fullham FC. As a master in Physical Education I was very pleased about the Coerver Methodology. Also as a UEFA B coach and youth co-ordinator of the U6-U12 age groups, I will definitely use this methodology. So once again, thanks a lot, you did a great job!!. Hopefully I can attend again next year with more coaches from our local club.”
Kris Hermans – Coach (Pellenberg – Belgium)

“Really enjoyed the course over the weekend, picked up lots of new ideas to take back into my sessions”
Ben Smith – Professional Footballer (Crawley Town FC – UK)

“Can I firstly say a big thank you for an excellent 2 days. The course was fantastic, far exceeding my wildest expectations (life changing as a coach) and with Alf Galustian delivering the course what can I say!!! The man’s a genius in my books. I have been following Coerver for over 10 years, I truly believe that the only and most effective way to learn this beautiful game is the COERVER way.”
Javid Mukhtar – Grassroots Coach/Parent (Essex – UK)

“First of all I’d like to thank you so much for a great course this weekend at Fulham FC, we all enjoyed it immensely. It was an honour and great pleasure to finally meet you all, and especially having Mr. Galustian teaching us. We went straight home and gave the training you did with the U12′s on Sunday with our girls, so we’re really on our way!!”
Mats Wold – Coach (Fyllingsdalen – Norway)

“First of all, I would like to say BIG THANK YOU to all the Coerver team. I really enjoyed the Coerver Coaching Youth Diploma course. Your lecture and practical sessions helped me to understand Coerver Coaching and I will recommend your course to all my friends working with young players. After your course I believe I became a better coach.”
Michal Bainski – Coach (Lodz – Poland)

“I would like to congratulate Coerver for the incredible Youth Diploma Course at Fulham FC. It was so helpful and interesting to me as a coach. I found Coerver Coaching on the internet two years ago and I now strongly believe that it is by far the most interesting and effective coaching method for developing young players, keep up the good work!!.”
Ahanasios Adamos – Coach (Athens – Greece)

With the all-German UEFA Champions League Final on Saturday between Bayern Munich and Borussia Dortmund, I thought it would be a great time to share Coerver Coaching’s experience in German football.

In 1988, Charlie Cooke and I were approached by adidas in the USA to do a Coerver Coaching clinic in Cincinnati, featuring German World Cup legend, Karl-Heinz Rummenigge. Karl-Heinz told us he had no real knowledge of the Coerver Coaching Method, and I agreed to meet him at his hotel the day before to go over some Coerver Moves, which was the theme of the session.

In the 80’s our curriculum was mainly focused on Ball Mastery and 1 v 1 Moves. Karl-Heinz told me it was a great concept, and he had never been introduced to such a coaching program when he was a young player.

I explained that the Coerver Coaching Moves were modelled on great players such as Beckenbauer, Cryuff, and Stanley Matthews. We discussed creating a Karl-Heinz Rummenigge Move for the clinic the next day. A few hours later, practicing in his room at the hotel, we came up with what we now call in Coerver Coaching “The Side Step” Set. This comprised of the single and double Side Step. Karl-Heinz was a superb athlete, and above all a great pro. The next day, we did the clinic with Karl-Heinz and Coerver kids from our Cincinnati school. Hundreds attended and by all accounts it was a great success.

That evening Karl-Heinz and I went to dinner, and he told me that in Germany there was little emphasis on teaching technique in such detail, and he really wanted to introduce Coerver Coaching into Germany, as he felt technique was one topic that German players needed to improve on.

Karl-Heinz Rummenigge, Liam Brady, Peter Beardsley and Alf Galustian, Coerver® Clinic

We kept in touch, and in 1990, he contacted me about a TV project he was planning. The series was called Tele Soccer, a TV Football show hosted by him. The concept was to feature 10 of the greatest players of the day, giving tips to young players. He wanted me to write the coaching content, based on the Coerver Curriculum and to provide 12 young players to come to Germany for the filming.

We selected 12 young players from the USA and the UK and we went to film the series at the Olympic Stadium in Munich. Karl-Heinz would introduce the Star. The Stars featured included Jürgen Klinsmann, Franz Beckenbauer, Marco van Basten, Pierre Littbarski, Rudd Gullit and Karl-Heinz himself, demonstrating a Skill Topic and then our Coerver kids doing a drill to improve that topic.

The 12 part TV series was a great success and aired all over Europe. It was also a wonderful recognition of Coerver Coaching.

Tele Soccer TV show filming with Karl-Heinz Rummenigge

Following the success of this series Karl-Heinz, who was also the Vice President of Bayern Munich at the time, asked me to come to Bayern to instruct his youth coaches on the Coerver Coaching Method. This began a 17 year relationship between Bayern Munich and Coerver Coaching.

Working with Bayern Munich Youth Teams

Over these years I visited the club several times and did many clinics for the coaching staff.
Initially I worked with Björn Andersson, who was the Technical Head of the Bayern Munich Academy. I also knew the Academy Director Werner Kern well, and he was also a big supporter of the Coerver Program. The great Gerd Müller was one of the coaches, and Stephan Beckenbauer was also one of the most enthusiastic coaches when it came to learning about Coerver.

Alf Galustian and Björn Andersson coaching Bayern Staff

Björn Andersson also asked me to work on Ball mastery and Moves with individual young players, one being Owen Hargreaves, a young Canadian player who went on to be a Bayern, Manchester United and England Star.

At the 2006 World Cup in Germany, through adidas, and the support of Jürgen Klinsmann and FD21, Coerver Coaching did many clinics around Germany and featured at the World Cup Village in Berlin. In 2008 Klinsmann became Head Coach of Bayern and I again started working with the Bayern Coaches on a more intensive education program featuring Coerver Coaching.

Alf Galustian and Jürgen Klinsmann

German Football Coaching – background

In the 2000 Euro Championships, Germany did very poorly and they identified technical levels as one cause. They determined that the solution was investment and thought into Youth Development.

The talent education program started in the season 2002/03 with 366 DFB-bases across Germany.

1000 certified coaches are working there (fee-bais paid), coordinated by 29 fulltime regional directors.

The second step was that every Pro club had to build an academy, at the moment there are 49 plus a few academies from regional federations in regions without a Pro club.

The third step was that every academy had to work with one of the 29 elite schools of sport. The class schedule is balanced so that players have much more time to play football than in regular schools.

An additional benefit is that DFB-coaches and youth coaches from Pro-Clubs go into the schools to do extra training in the morning (in the afternoon they go to training at their academies).

The talent promotion has four steps:

Basic promotion (grassroot clubs & schools)
Talent promotion (elite schools of sport, academies, DFB bases)
Elite promotion (youth national teams, academies of Proclubs)
Top class football national team, international football, Bundesleague)

The Coerver® Influence

Since the National focus was heavily on improving technical topics, the Coerver Program became crucial to many coaches, through exposure to the Coerver Clinics or through the DVDs/Videos that had been on the German market since the 90’s. The credibility of many years working with Bayern also advanced the Coerver influence on German football.

Coerver® Coaching activities in Germany

Coerver Coaching has expanded all over Germany since I started working there in the 90’s. We have conducted many camps for young players nationally and coaches clinics at Bayern Munich; FC Nuremberg; FC Kaiserslautern; Arminia Bielefeld; FC Schalke 04, Alemannia Aachen and FC Cologne.

Aachen Coaches Clinic

FC Cologne Clinic

Schalke Clinic

We have written three articles for the DFB coaching magazine including one that was filmed, which is part of the DFB online coach education library. Several of the Coerver Coaching Videos/DVDs are best sellers in Germany and have been so since the 90’s.

The first Coerver Coaching Camp was in 2006 and in 2008 Rafael Wieczorek became the Director for Coerver Coaching in Germany. He has now 7 head coaches and 35 junior coaches operating across the country. In the last five years Coerver Coaching in Germany has delivered approximately 50 courses with more than 1500 coaches and we have worked with more than 100 different grassroot clubs.

In 2012 we had over 2000 players in Camps and football schools and 495 coaches in different clinics. We also do regular events with our official partner, adidas®. We have done 25 events nationally with adidas®, including introducing their latest products such as F50, Predator, micoach and the new nitrocharge.

adidas® event with Bayern & Germany captian, Philipp Lahm

Coerver® Coaching were on hand to assist their global partner at the adidas® lab which took place over 5-days during the build up and following the UEFA Champions League Final at Wembley. The purpose of the adidas® lab was to showcase four new, ground-breaking innovations that will launched in future seasons by the world’s leading football brand.

Special guests, retailers, bloggers and competition winners from across the world descended on Victoria House in London to visit the adidas® lab where they had the oppurtunity to test the new innovations which included the miCoach Elite Team System, the adidas® Smart Ball (see below image, Coerver® CEO Jimmy Galustian), in addition to the worlds lightest ever playing kit (630g) and football boot (99g).

Coerver® Coaching CEO, Jimmy Galustian and UK Director, Scott Wright provided coaching expertise during the event within the Smart Ball Zone. The adidas® Smart Ball, which has been in development for the last three years, has been designed to improve technique, power, spin and accuracy through an automated coaching system. Coerver® Coaching have been part of the project team, providing expertise on ball mastery and ball striking techniques.

German great, Michael Ballack and French legend, Zinedine Zidane, who were assisted by Jimmy & Scott, demonstrated their amazing shooting techniques in the Smart Ball zone (see below image of Michael Ballack in the adidas ®Smart Ball Zone).

adidas® ambassador, Zinedine Zidane (see below image of Zinedine Zidane in the adidas® Smart Ball zone) said, “I have been working with adidas for 17 years and throughout my career I have always known they have been leading the way when it comes to innovation in football. The adidas lab shows how the brand is shaping the future of football and is a great chance for fans to see it with their own eyes.”

Coerver® CEO, Jimmy Galustian (see below image – adidas® lab speed test) said “It was great to be invloved in such a high profile event before, during and after the UEFA Champions League Final at Wembley with our global partner adidas. This event highlighted that without doubt, adidas are the leading football brand in the world and are at the cutting edge of football technology. We are really pleased to be assisting with the development of some of this new technology showcased here at the adidas lab that will help to shape the game in the future”.

Coerver® UK Director, Scott Wright added “It was great to be working with different people from so many countries who had been invited by adidas to attend the event. Also having the oppurtunity to assist Zinedine Zidane and Michael Ballack was a fantastic experience, I even had the chance to play in goal againt Zidane, that was definitely a once in a lifetime experience that I’m not going to forget for a long time!”.

Coerver® Coaching Co-founder Alf Galustian was invited to speak on leading radio station TalkSPORT this week to discuss the Coerver® Coaching programme and youth development in the UK.

The interview was facilitated by Danny Kelly and Micky Quinn who contributed to a fascinating 60 minute discussion that sparked a huge number of questions from listeners across the world.

This Summers longest running transfer saga has finally came to an end as Tottenham Hotspur and Wales star Gareth Bale finally completed his world record £85 million pounds move to Real Madrid, signing a six year contract reported to be worth £300,000 per week.

Back in June 2007, the young Welsh wing wonder travelled to Coventry to be put through his paces by Coerver® UK Director, Scott Wright who recalls working with the world’s most expensive player.

“I was contacted by our partner adidas to author a pre-season training guide that was to be published in the up-coming pre-season addition of FourFourTwo magazine. The theme for the training guide was to use the attributes of the new F50 & Predator boots and to design a series of practical training drills that could be used by coaches and players to develop each attribute”.

“To bring the drills to life, I would be working with two adidas sponsored professional players, who were contracted to wear each respective boot. The first player was Micah Richards, who was to be the player representing the Predator boots. At the time he was only 19 years old but had already established himself in the Manchester City first team and he was really making a name for himself in the game, in fact I remember only the month after there being a reported bid for him from Chelsea in excess of £20 million pounds. At the time he was probably regarded as the top young talent in the country and had been touted as a future England captain”.

“The other player I was to be working with who would represent the F50 boots was a young welsh player called Gareth Bale who had just completed his £10 million pound transfer from Southampton to Tottenham Hotspur (see below image). I must admit, I did not know a lot about Gareth, who was 17 years old at the time, before working with him apart from him being a young player with a lot of potential. I certainly knew a lot about him by the end and it was clear to me that he had everything needed to make it to the very top of the game”.

“He was six feet tall, athletic, quick, had excellent technical ability using both feet but the thing that impressed me most was his work ethic and how polite he was. In fact his parents had came with him that day, it was his first campaign as an adidas sponsored player, and you could tell that they were a very close family and were very supportive of their son’s career which I think has been well documented during his rise to the top”.

“I worked Gareth incredibly hard that day, 1-2-1 work can be very demanding both physically and mentally but he just got on with everything that was asked of him and transferred the instruction I was giving him quickly into near perfect actions, first time. We worked on various Coerver topics throughout the day including warm-up movements, ball mastery, speed work, 1 v 1 moves and dribbling technique. We finished off the day with free kick technique which provided me with a story I still tell young players to this day”.

“We set up a full size goal with a 4 mannequin wall positioned in front (see above image). After working on the actual striking technique, I set Gareth a challenge where he would strike 10 free kicks from 25 yards out but he would have to hit the part of the goal that I called. I started with a call of “Top right”, Gareth quickly approached the ball and made contact with such power that it sounded like a canon ball flying through the air, the ball also swerved over the mannequins and into the top corner as I had instructed”.

“He then turned to me with a smile ready to take the next free kick. Was the first strike lucky or was this something he could repeat on demand, I was about to see this first hand. I worked my way through 9 further calls, “bottom right”, “top left”, “bottom right” and I have to admit to my surprise he hit every one as powerfully and as accurately as the first. In fact, by the end of the ten free kicks, such was the power he had used, the screws on the frame of the goal had been loosened to such an extent that the goal looked like it was about to collapse! (see the below image)”.

“After we had finished I asked Gareth what a normal training day would look like for him. He went on to explain that he would take part in his normal training session in the morning but would work on his own with the ball every afternoon for at least an hour and in his own words said “You can never be good enough with the ball”. At this point it was clear in my mind that he had the potential to go to the very top of the game. This type of work ethic and mindset to be the best that you can be, in tandem with the obvious attributes that he had, could be the difference between him being a good player or a great player and this has proved to be the case”.

“We even had time for a game of heads and volleys at the end with Gareth and I against Micah Richards who was unbelievable in goal, I think we only scored once past him!. I have followed Gareth’s career ever since and after a challenging initial few year at Spurs, he has really flourished into the player that I thought might be possible six years previous. I particularly remember the two performances against Inter Milan in the Champions League that really announced him on the world stage and he has progressed every year since (see above image). To see him now as the most expensive player on the planet and playing for Real Madrid is fantastic and I couldn’t think of a better role model for all young players here in the UK to follow”.

“The scary thing is that he is only 24 years old and if he can develop half as much over the next six years as he has over the last six years, he is going to be a true global megastar of the game and that is even more special as he is British and can hopefully inspire a whole generation of players here in the UK which I am sure he has already started to do”.

“Who would have thought that the 17 year old boy who arrived in Coventry that afternoon would be the world’s most expensive player, playing for the biggest club in the world just six years later (see below image). That shows to me that with hard work, determination and dedication, anything is possible”.