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S2 E6 - Shaun Green Soccer Coach TV
46 Plays20 days ago
Today we have Shaun Green as our on Session Share - The Coaches Podcast. Shaun is a highly respected and influential soccer coach with a global following. His online videos have been viewed by millions of coaches and players worldwide, and he is widely recognized as a leader in the field of online coaching education. With over 35 years of experience as a head coach at the NCAA Division One level, Shaun has an extensive background in developing players at all levels. He has trained teams in the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Puerto Rico, and Barbados, and mentored coaches in India, Nigeria and the Republic of Ireland. A great chat with a true legend of coach education!
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Linkedin: Shaun Green
Youtube: @SoccerCoachTV
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YouTube: @sessionshare4375
X: @SessionShareNet
X: @CraigBirtwistle
Facebook: sessionshare.net
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Transcript
Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:00:10
Speaker
Session Share The Coaches Coaches By Coaches Hello and welcome to the lightest episode of Session Share The Coaches Podcast. My name is Craig Burthesall and I'm very excited to have Sean Green as our guest today. Sean is a highly respected and influential soccer coach with a global following. His online videos have been viewed by millions of coaches and players worldwide.
Sean Green's Coaching Journey
00:00:38
Speaker
and he is widely recognized as a leader in the field of online coaching education. With over 35 years of experience as a head coach at NCAA Division I level, Coach Green has extensive background in developing players at all levels. His trained teams in the USA, Canada, England, Scotland, Puerto Rico, Barbados,
00:00:58
Speaker
I'm even mentored coaches in India, Nigeria and Republic of Ireland. It's an impressive list and Sean, I'm even more impressive with your dancing that you did during our intro. So how are you doing today, Mike? You know why it's an impressive intro is because I wrote it.
00:01:17
Speaker
Happy days. You're really pulling the curtain back. There's nothing better than writing your own in. There's nothing better than writing your own intro. You know, everybody wants to write their own intro, you know. But yeah, it's it's been a long journey for sure. You know, I've been in this game a long time. That's fantastic. Yeah. My yeah my my brother actually made the same joke during his speech. They praised me during our wedding speech and then said, it's sorry, Craig, I can't read your writing.
00:01:44
Speaker
So, yeah, so I'm all for that.
Inspirations and Early Career
00:01:48
Speaker
So Sean, tell me a little bit about your background. What got you all interested in football in the first place? Well, I'm originally Craig from Newcastle, England, you know, and I was brought up in a great working class town of Newcastle, which, you know, is famous for its coal mines and shipbuilding at the time. And um The only thing we loved to do was play football on the streets and just down the road from my house was a famous soccer club, youth soccer club, called Walls and Boys Club, ah who have produced be more professional players than any youth club in the country.
00:02:27
Speaker
And I joined them, I was scouted by Walsend when I was 11 and got asked to play for Walsend Boys Club and I played for them from when I was 11 years of age until I was 18 when I was captain of the club. And some great players there, you know, Alan Shearer, Peter Beardsley, and ah Rob Heimmarsh, Bruce. yeah. Bruce.
00:02:54
Speaker
Bruce was there, just a lot of great players there, but I knew at age 16 that I was really interested in coaching. I was a motivator on the field, I was a captain, and I wanted to see where it'd go. and Having one of the best coaches on this planet coached me as a youth coach.
00:03:12
Speaker
um was a great role model for me. And the mentor is
Coaching Milestones and Soccer Coach TV
00:03:16
Speaker
a man called Stan Nixon, um who coached 16 years at Newcastle United. And he was at Middlesbrough for 20 years as a coach. And he was my high school PE teacher and my high school coach. And he mentored me. it was like a sec He was like a father to me. And and like many mentors, i mean Many people get into professions. The reason they get into a certain professions, Craig, is because somebody in their life was a role model to them or a mentor. And they say to them, man, you know, if you had a good teacher, most people going to teaching do so because they had a great experience with the teachers they had.
00:03:56
Speaker
And Stan Nixon was just an incredible role model and he encouraged me to coach. And I started doing my coaching license at 17. You have to be 18 to take it in England. And I took it and passed on my 18th birthday. So I was probably the youngest coach in England to get a coaching license at the time. And then the same coach, Stan Nixon encouraged me to go to America to work at a soccer camp, get some experience.
00:04:26
Speaker
And that had never been really done before in the northeast of England. It's pretty commonplace now, but it was pretty rare back then. We're talking about nearly 50 years ago, 46 years ago maybe. um Went to the camp. And the guy who owned the camp was the head coach at Brown University, an Ivy League school in Providence, Rhode Island.
00:04:49
Speaker
And we really hit it off together. He liked my coaching style, my enthusiasm. And then I helped him organize a tour to take Brown to Newcastle for 10 days.
00:05:02
Speaker
And so I organized housing for these people they stayed with. You can just imagine what these Ivy League students are like staying in like, you know, these small houses in Newcastle, England with working class families, no showers, some of them, you know, and barely a phone and and the whole town took to them and they lived in separate houses and They played about five, six matches there. You got a civic reception from the mayor of Newcastle and just a bang up great tour. And then so the head coach at Brown offered me an opportunity to be his assistant coach at age 19 at Brown University. So I quit my job as an engineer and
00:05:47
Speaker
flew over to America and not really known anybody, and coached at Brown University for a year. And then while I was there, I was offered a scholarship but ah in West Virginia, a full scholarship to play in college. I attended there for four years, and then my senior year in college, spring break, I ended interviewed for the head coaching job at of a Division I program in Connecticut, and they hired me. And so I was there for 35 years as the head coach. Fantastic.
00:06:16
Speaker
so to get it A great, great coach, a great club when I was young and that inspired me. Watching them and the impact they had on young kids really inspired me to be a coach for the rest of my life. That's amazing and one of the things that I picked up on that, like the fact that you were an engineer and like into your soccer, into your football, lot And that brings me to like my next question. like i'm I'm a big fan of Soccer Coach TV. I've been a subscriber for many years. I got many great ideas from there. And I've seen lots of your other projects as well. Can you tell us a little bit about your passion for this and how Soccer Coach TV got started? Yeah, you got to go back a couple of decades. In 1997, I started
00:07:07
Speaker
program a website called suckerclinics.com now bear in mind that was before facebook google you name it i mean nothing was around there probably less than a million people on the internet back then it was the first of its kind the first if you can imagine the first ever sucker website for coaching ah on the internet and it was launched on february the 6th in 1997 And it was innovative and basically my thinking is when the internet started first days off the ground, I thought, wow, this is going to be a ah weapon of mass instruction.
00:07:46
Speaker
You know, we can go out and coach coach, I can go out and coach coaches all over the world. Obviously the bandwidth wasn't there yet for the quality of the video. So I had to develop graphics as a program to create great graphics. You see graphics now and I have a program which I designed with a computer engineer over 20 years ago. And it's a 3D program.
00:08:13
Speaker
Built to me, when you see the graphics, the best there is today. And we created that 20 years ago. And so getting on it early, I felt that my biggest reasoning was, no matter how good you are as a coach, Craig, you can be the best soccer coach in the world, the best educator in the world, and you want to get a message out. But back in the day, you could only hope for like maybe 100 people showing up for a clinic.
00:08:43
Speaker
Right? That's the best you could do. yeah But once the internet came in and and the bandwidth was there and we could get on to the videos and putting videos out there online now it's a game changer you can talk to every coach all over the world and it's it's amazing the coaches who do watch my video it there's not a continent that's not untouched that the footprint of socket coach tv the millions and millions of people who've watched those videos that i've created for soccer coach tv imagine every one of those coaches has an impact on 20 players so multiplayer that by the millions of coaches by all those players it's definitely has a big impact and i know coaches use
00:09:34
Speaker
my drills all over the world and at every different
Social Media's Role in Coaching
00:09:36
Speaker
level. I've seen videos of them using some of the stuff, which I think is unique the way that I created it. I've seen them copy it. And I've copied their stuff also. But you see my fingerprints on a lot of the content that's out there. And I can tell it's been an influence on not just on how they coach, but how they deliver their coaching websites, their content.
00:10:03
Speaker
So Sean, you've been doing coach education for many years now. um We spoke about it rees ah previously about how you've seen the birth of social media and you even started before that. How has social media impacted coach education?
00:10:21
Speaker
Well, I think that it has certainly enhanced the opportunity for coaches to learn on a much greater scale and have different perspective, different points of views. For example,
00:10:34
Speaker
I'd say when I was a young coach and I wanted to learn as much as I possibly can, I had to physically get out on a bus, drive to a practice and watch an older coach coach and write it down on a little notebook. Or I would spend my Friday evenings, every Friday evening I would go to the local library and take out as many books as I possibly could about football coaching and I used to do that regularly every Friday.
00:10:58
Speaker
and Now you don't need to do it. You've got some of the best experts and some of the novices right there in your hand on your phone. You could sit on your couch and learn. So it's it's really broad education as a whole. and But specifically here with football, and right to everybody's doorstep, right to everybody's hand, the education. So the access to information is tremendous. But what I have noticed when The evolution of YouTube, when you see it, not a lot of coaches my age actually get into any kind of really serious content development. And there's a reason for that, particularly if you develop in websites and you develop in platforms.
00:11:42
Speaker
A lot of coaches who older are used to are used to old school kind of technology. They don't have you know the and be the expertise in dealing with ah writing code or website design or all those kind of things. Really a deep understanding of video ah creation and editing. So as a consequence with that, a lot of the older coaches I think have turned off a little bit from social media.
00:12:09
Speaker
because they don't understand it to the extent where they wouldn't use it as a business model on their own. They would have to go out and hire a web designer or hire somebody who's skilled in social media. But what you're getting now is young coaches who are very good, some of these young coaches who are coming in, who do i have those expert, that skill set of being able to you know produce great TikTok videos, and ah put fantastic content on Instagram and so forth.
00:12:38
Speaker
I think one of the differences is with the younger coaches, they're not afraid to talk, they're not to be afraid to put themselves out there. I've noticed a lot of older coaches or experienced coaches, you really see them mic'd up.
00:12:52
Speaker
on the internet with doing videos and sessions because I believe that you know you're going to get judged, you're going to get evaluated, people are going to criticize you, people are going to you know dissect everything that you do. A a lot of people are reluctant to put themselves in that position. and But younger what I'm seeing is younger coaches do not. So I think it's a great opportunity for these young coaches to reach a worldwide audience.
00:13:21
Speaker
In my instance, now I've got a platform i and I get an opportunity to, I get invited all over the world to coach. As we said before, you know, we went Aruba, Curacao, Bonaire, Puerto Rico, Scotland, England, Ireland, but they've been invited all over Africa, India, all these places. That wouldn't have happened without social media.
00:13:44
Speaker
So it's opened opportunities for me, which would never have happened if if coach coaching didn't have this platform to share ideas with other coaches. I love that. And I couldn't agree more. I feel that um especially young coaches now want to get out there. They want to get seen. and They have the platform to do it.
00:14:05
Speaker
And the one thing I was always warned about is the fact that you've got to be a little bit hard skinned. Like it's very easy to be critical, ah especially of say a session plan. Like you can look at someone's session plan and find 10 things wrong with it without putting any type of compliment in.
00:14:22
Speaker
like you've you've been around in the in the game for many many years just like myself and but when you so first start you're very critical and you are over accepting of other people's advice so I feel like you have to kind of navigate the waters at times to make sure you understand the way you learn as a coach by making the mistakes, learning through them. And not, ah what I was always told is never accept criticism from someone you wouldn't take advice from. And I think that's some some strong information that our coaches need to hear. Yeah, I mean, and most probably you'll find is that if, let's say you put a YouTube out there and somebody writes a stupid comment about it, you know, it often is that they've got no subscribers, you know, zero subscribers. They just go out and, you know,
00:15:12
Speaker
kind of troll everybody, but that's part and parcel of it, you know? I mean, you can easily switch comments off. yeah You can do that. About 10 years ago, I had an incident with my website where I did a session with a team, at a local youth team, and one of the kids was a little bit overweight when he was overweight. And great kid, great enthusiasm, but he was not as mobile as the other players. And people started to make,
00:15:41
Speaker
you know, terrible comments about them online, right? And so I had to block them and... and I reported them. but It seemed like a whole group of young kids were doing it and I had to block them and I reported them to YouTube. As a consequence of that, though, I lost about a couple of hundred thousand subscribers because they started me from scratch. I don't know why they did that, but they started me from scratch. But I prefer to screen my comments. I just think it's appropriate, you know, because you do this. do
00:16:11
Speaker
ah Things like that, but you always gonna put yourself out there and that's part and parcel of it But you know the rewards are much better the friendships that have made Gary ah Craig ah from Soccer coach TV all over the world and get emails every week from
Future of Digital Coaching Education
00:16:29
Speaker
coaches. It's been phenomenal That would have never happened without social media platform and I think we touched on this the other day and I think it's worth pointing out to anybody who's watching and is that we talked about the the course content that you know coaches learn you know everything about tactics everything about techniques skill fitness etc etc but they never teach you about social media and that's very important if you're a young coach and i'll tell you why it's important because if you want to be a professional coach on that journey you'll probably have to find different ways to you know bring it a
00:17:04
Speaker
Have a side hustle bringing in money and that could be like a YouTube channel or could be selling products online All different things and doing a camp one-on-one coaching doing a soccer camp All of those are gonna need exposure on social media to promote it all of those you may need to develop a website maybe you want to create your own website like I have five websites that I have which bring in recurring income and But with that in mind if you are not equipped to learn how to build your own website, ah edit your own videos, you're going to be a prisoner to these people. So it's crucial that you are as a coach, be as skilled social media as you are at teaching players on the field. For me that you're going to need that at some point in your career as you go along.
00:17:51
Speaker
that's important. I said, I was in a podcast one time, Craig, and I predicted that what we're going to see in the future and not too distant future, we currently have directors of coaching like yourself at the club, correct? What we're going to see is directors of online coaching at everyone who's going to be able to deliver coaching sessions online on a Friday night at eight o'clock you know, over the winter without you leaving your house. And they're going to be good sessions too. And there's so many topics you could choose from, but have a full time director of coaching for your club. And it's probably going to be somebody with some experience of doing what you do right now. And it's much that I said, that it's just going to be a no brainer for me as we go. And this is how we learn. This is how we get our news. This is how we get our information.
Life Skills in Coaching
00:18:45
Speaker
This is amazing stuff and I'm sure I'm going to take a short break. I would like to talk more about coach education after this short break from Zencaster. Do you have a story to tell that the world needs to hear? Have you struggled with reaching new audiences who are engaged with your story? It might be time for you to start a podcast.
00:19:05
Speaker
Let me tell you about a platform we use here at Session Share. Zencaster makes it super easy to produce a high quality broadcast with 4K video recording from your phone and AI editing that automatically removes arms, arms, your nose and 22 other speech patterns. Zencaster makes it super easy to produce a podcast that sounds great. Ready to tell your story? Check out the link in the show description to learn more about Zencaster.
00:19:34
Speaker
Welcome back. And yes, if you're interested interested in signing up for your own podcast, we use Zencaster here. And if you do wish to do so, you can find my link in the podcast description, which will help you develop your podcast, but will also help our channel as well. So any help is greatly yeah achieved. so So we were just talking to Sean about coach education.
00:19:56
Speaker
Shon we spoke earlier this week off camera and you had some thoughts on how the governing bodies like the football association in england and the ussf in the states are kind of falling a little short of their goals could you go into a little bit more detail detail on this yeah i mean it was a discussion that we had a little bit about about how we felt short, poorly short, I think, and every international federation in terms of including the important areas of ah teaching life skills and life lessons to our what young athletes as part of the curriculum.
00:20:35
Speaker
They will, you go on a coaching license course and you'll do technical sessions, technical sessions. You'll do all different kinds of sessions, but they never talk about a holistic approach really to coaching and what the real purpose of coaching is. 99% of the players, even more than that, are not gonna be playing professional soccer. And so what are we doing with these kids? We've got an opportunity. There's no better person and the kid's life pretty much than having a coach who there is at a role model. It's somebody that the children respect and we're missing a great opportunity to really take that area seriously in terms of educating, using that platform there that we have to develop these young men and women, these young boys and girls to be better citizens in the community rather than better football players.
00:21:32
Speaker
If you said to every youth coach, or any coach at the beginning of the season, we're not talking about professional game right now. We're talking about the majority of players in every township across the country. And if you said to any coach, is it more important um for you to develop a better person who's going to be a great person the rest of their lives or a better soccer player, which one is the most important if you had to pick one?
00:22:01
Speaker
I think they would say the better person. Everything you've taught them in soccer in terms of technical skills, tactical skills, and all those lessons you've taught taught them in soccer are a waste of time once they finish playing soccer, they've gone. The only things they'll remember from that soccer experience that will be useful for them is the life skills that you've taught them throughout their career.
00:22:29
Speaker
And so there's so many of them. But I think that we need to really step back a little bit. And when you look at the the narrative that clubs use and association use, join our association and your kids are going to be better ah citizens. They're going to be better boys and girls. How do they do that? Because I've never seen in one curriculum that's been included.
00:22:53
Speaker
And so I think that fell short. And I think in our national curriculum, when you talk about the four pillars of coaching, the technical, technical, physical, mental side of it, there should be a fifth one. And that should be the holistic side of the player, where we develop them, develop their skills. Look at this opportunity that we have. And I think as a coach, if you look at it, is the best coaches that I have ever experienced.
00:23:19
Speaker
are the ones who I know care about me, who try to develop me as a person, not just a football player. And they've lasted like Stan Nixon, and we've talked about right now. I'm 66, and he was my high school coach. And I'm sitting there having a conversation about this guy, maybe 50 years later. Why? I mean, yeah, he was a great tactical you know coach, and he knew all this stuff. But he showed so much care in me, and he taught me so much about life. And that stuck with me the rest of my life.
00:23:48
Speaker
And so we have opportunities there and coaches should embrace it. Why shouldn't they? Like we said, the great mold models, these kids look up to them. A lot, close to half the families that the kids are coaching around the world that come from single parent families. So you're also a father figure or a mother figure to some of them. And so you have that chance. And so the challenge is, is that, yeah, I'll make my point again to you, Craig, is this.
00:24:20
Speaker
I haven't met one coach who can answer this question to the standard I'm looking at and say, look, hey, tell me what you think are the top five soccer skills that you must teach a player to be a successful soccer player. What are they? And then, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, they would nail them off, passing dribbling, shooting head, whatever whatever their priorities were. It would take them three seconds to seal a five.
00:24:47
Speaker
Follow up question would be, what are the five top life skills that you must teach as a coach to make sure that your kids successfully navigate at of adulthood, have a great chance, and to be successful not only in their personal relationships, but in their professional relationships in life? What are they? Crickets. So it's revealing.
00:25:12
Speaker
I mean, and and if they do respond, it's often is often just copying what's on the dressing room wall. Commitment, dedication, teamwork. Now there's hundreds of life skills. Are they the most important life skills that a kid needs to learn? But the the thing is, they never contemplated that question before. I never did. Like I said, I coached college for 35 years, Division I, and ah every preseason I would put down my whole season plan and it would be,
00:25:42
Speaker
what my tactics were gonna be, my technical work with my players, my fitness levels, everything. Not once on my clipboard did I have a section for what life skill am I gonna teach this player this week or this season. And if you stick to three, four, five in a complete season, you can get it in. The challenge is this. Some of the life skills, well, how do you measure a life skill? Whether or not it's appropriate for that age or whether it's just important to teach.
00:26:12
Speaker
I studied for about two years and my metrics, the metrics I use was dependability. How often are you going to depend on that? Is it going to be once in a while? Is it going to be every single day? ah For example, number two on my list and my top 20 that I come up with was up communication, which is a very easy one to teach in football and soccer.
00:26:35
Speaker
you can create a lot of different drills to teach communication. But communication, again, is not just talking. It's 50% talking, 50% listening, and then throw on top of that. Another 50% is your body language. There's 150. But you get my point. There's more to just communication. getting so That's an easy topic. I'm sure you've done ah ah talk Give me an example, Craig, when you're working with players, and when you talk about communication to a team, what's the best communication drill that you've done with your players?
00:27:10
Speaker
Best communication drill. um I've done it many times where like you you have to wear a hat instead of a penny. For example, so like then heads have to go up, you have to get eye contact. So it's not just that now, it's visual demands as well as verbal demands, and so on. I've done it where you're not allowed to say a word to so they can see the value of being able to talk and everything like that. And then you get players that like think smart and start clapping their hands and stuff like that in order to to be noticed and everything. So it it does require some thinking out of the box type things to force these players into these like uncomfortable situations. What sort of ah exercises have you done for that? Well, one of my favourites.
00:28:00
Speaker
One of my favorites, but particularly for communication, is that if we're in the locker room, I want or was sitting on the bleachers before practice. And before they get there, and i I write all the names on a piece of paper, like rip them up, they have their names on it, and I put it in a hat. And so I'll go around with a cap, and then I'll say pick a name out. Don't tell anybody who it is, right? So obviously if they pick their own name out, they throw it back in. but So everybody's got a name of a player on a team.
00:28:30
Speaker
And their job is to motivate that player. That player doesn't know who it is. So in that practice, so let's say you I picked your name out in training, right? So my job would be to encourage you and communicate with you the entire practice.
00:28:48
Speaker
So if you did something well, Craig, brilliant stuff, and that's fantastic. Keep going, I'll be talking to you, encouraging you. Craig, get your head up, it's all right, you know, forget it. Next shot's gonna go in the back and then I'd be encouraging you. Hey, keep it calm down, don't lose your cool. I'd be transmitting all this information to you in the game that built you to communicate. At the end of practice, okay, again nobody's revealed with their names who they are, right? So at the end of practice, I would go along the line, I'd say, all right, Craig,
00:29:17
Speaker
Who was your motivator? You should be able to pick him out or her out instantly. mean If they did their job, right? Instantly. No, it's amazing how many kids pick the wrong person or pick it out. You know, no, two things have gone on here.
00:29:38
Speaker
You go to the next guy, all right, David, who was he like, oh yeah, it was Johnny, I heard him. What did he say to you, right? And so he'll repeat back what he said to him, you know? And the next one, I thought it was somebody else, but it's revealing, it's not 100. You'd think an exercise like that, it would be 100%, everybody would know, and they don't. Try that with your team. I call out the buddy system. I call out the buddy system. But here's the problem too, which you've got to be aware of, and that's why I film everything is because Craig, you might have been doing a brilliant job of doing what I've asked you to do, was communicate, right, to Freddie. Every time, you you know, you was but you were you were talking, but he didn't identify you. Maybe it wasn't your fault. Maybe this guy just doesn't listen on the field.
00:30:24
Speaker
either. Right. So it's an example of you've also got to be receptive to people talking around you. A lot of people switch off and go into the wrong game or shut down. I don't want to be told anything by anybody else. It doesn't have to be the communication doesn't have to be a flattery the flattering thing every time it could be a demanding thing from a teammate. But it's ah You're really trying to develop influences on the team, people who will develop me people who will influence people others around them to better to better levels of football. But that's just one.
00:30:59
Speaker
um There's so many different, but communication is an easier topic to coach in football. um But what we fail to do,
00:31:13
Speaker
Every one of us, we fail to do this as a coach. We stop it to short the conversation. I'll give you i'll give you an example of what I mean. You've got your goalkeeper in goal. It's a free kick against you, and you're practicing it in training, okay?
00:31:27
Speaker
five-man wall, to keep us in there, line up the wall. And somebody crosses the ball or whatever, the ball comes in, the keeper doesn't call for the ball, and you stop the practice. Hey, Craig, you've got to talk more for the ball, right? You've got to communicate. You've got to communicate how many players you want in the wall. You've got to communicate if it's your pass. Do you understand the importance of that? Yeah, Coach, yeah, I got it. I got it this time.
00:31:51
Speaker
and we leave it there, why it's important. We've given them a lesson of why it's important to communicate on a soccer field, but you've also got to tell them why it's important to coach and to be communicate in life. It doesn't end on a football field.
00:32:09
Speaker
And so why is it important? And that doesn't have to be done right there, that split second, but if that themes communication, I'm going to wrap it up with a five minute talk about, guys, we've been talking about communication on the field and why is it important to communicate in the field? And I'll give them, they'll give me input, but we need this, we need that. And at the end of that, I don't say, okay, well,
00:32:30
Speaker
You're going to need these communication skills in every personal relationship you'll ever have. Because if you can't talk with your wife or your girlfriend or your partner, that relationship is not going to last long. And sometimes you're going to have some tough conversations with your partner in your life. They're not all going to be rosy. And sometimes you've got to listen. yeah have to It's ah iss both ways.
00:32:51
Speaker
professional job. If you can't communicate effectively, Craig, when you go off for an interview, and there's five other people sitting on the chairs waiting to get an interview too, if you can't effectively communicate to that person what your values are, what your core skills are, what you can bring to it, if you can't do that, you're not getting that job. That's why it's important for you to call on a corner kick, not just for this game. So we've got to relate those stuff to the big picture.
00:33:20
Speaker
okay and and And communications, I just want to give you an example in trust. The hardest thing to teach life skills in football is this. You have to demand creativity from coaches to incorporate it into their training sessions. They think that if a player is late for practice and they win that play around in front of the team before being 20 minutes late,
00:33:43
Speaker
Maybe you missed a bus, so I couldn't get a ride or whatever. A lot of times, you know, they're reading them out. They think, well, we taught them a lesson on punctuality, on discipline. It's not. It's something, it's like saying kick the ball once, not showing you how to volley it, you know? It's it's got to be repetitive. It's got to be ingrained into it. I'll give you an an example about trust, which is great.
00:34:05
Speaker
a great life skill. Is it a skill? ah For sure it's a skill. It's something you gotta work on. Trust is something you have to work on earning every single day. Trust is the hardest thing to earn. And you have to earn it over and over and over again. It's not just done with one good deed. But again, trust is the easiest thing to lose, right? And so the exercise we did with my players was we had and
00:34:34
Speaker
I got these training shit i got trainers shirts to me and I had the letters BTL on the back on it. I got it printed. And that means something very important to me, BTL. And it's a mantra that I live by. And I had my team. It was the first meeting with this team when we played in a tournament. And I took them out the box. I said, guys, I got new practice shirts for you. And it's got BTL on the back. I says, I'm going to give you a new shirt for practice. You can wear it for warm ups in the games. You can wear it in training. But the only condition is this. I'm going to tell you what BTL means, but you can't tell anybody in your life.
00:35:15
Speaker
other than who's in this room. That's it. If you can't accept those conditions, then don't take the shit. It's fine. Walk out now. They're all in. The whole team's all in. Promise will not tell anybody. we We're the only ones, our team. The manager was their assistant coach. They got one too. Everybody. So I told them what it meant. Okay. Do you want to know what it means?
00:35:38
Speaker
I don't know if you want to tell us, I don't want to break anyone's trust. I can't tell you anyway, I'm just going to say. I kind of fell for that one. Listen, so we all went out and we had warming up and their parents are like, what the hell's BTL mean? What's that BTL mean? I said, look, I don't care if it's your girlfriend, I don't care if it's your dad, your mom, your auntie, your grandma, whatever you're telling nobody. And I explained to them, I said, why is that important? Why is trust important? Again, it goes back to I'd say ah you're a young guy and you're in a relationship with a girl and you break up and everything, and but she's revealed stuff to you, right?
00:36:19
Speaker
And often people read when the're vulnerable ah the the reveal stuff you when vulnerable but to feel in her when they're feel inside, when they're feeling depressed, whatever. If you go out and share that on Facebook because you broke up and then you, you know, ah and she said these things and with trust to you, what kind of man are you? And so the thing is, is that can you keep a secret? Can you keep that trust? So these are all, these are all, every single week, we will have one life lesson that we'll focus on every single week. And we'll try and reinforce that.
00:36:57
Speaker
every teachable moment where we see situations, we'll reinforce that. But, Craig, it's planned. I think about it a lot before I go to training. and When I plan my practice, my practice plan takes me about two hours every time I try. My planning is much bigger than my actual sessions. And so I'll go out there and say, okay, how can we talk about this topic, ah particularly, you know, whether it's servant leadership, whether it's self care, whether it's empathy, trust,
00:37:29
Speaker
Whether it's number the number one on this life skill chart, the top 20, which we came up with out of the hundreds, after even asking tons and tons of players, and the number one concern, and again, I work in an academic environment at a university, so I get a chance to work, listen and talk with a lot of young athletes and young students at that age, and was ah finding their purpose in life.
00:37:59
Speaker
And can you call it a skill? Yeah, you can, because I think there's methodology to it. Definitely. You can come up with a roadmap to find your purpose in life. and There's no guarantees, but at least it's a roadmap to put you in a certain direction. But you need people around you and your coach as an influencer can help you with that. It doesn't have to be all about football.
00:38:22
Speaker
I mean, great, you've told this top this player how to, you know, check his shoulder to create spears, how to chip a ball, you know, 60 yards. That's great. It's useful to useful when he's playing, but the moment he stops, that chip pass is no good. That glance over the shoulder is no good. You give him stuff that will stay within the rest of their life. And it's a big challenge because it's a huge part of, I think, of our national curriculum that we've neglected. We haven't even considered as an important topic area.
00:38:52
Speaker
We develop all these great drills for skills. We could develop drills for life lessons. Why not? We got a lot of creative coaches out there who could bring it. But and finding your purpose in life, Craig, I mean, do you know what yours is?
00:39:12
Speaker
I love coach education. It's definitely one of the biggest things that's why the birth child of this podcast started and they session share a YouTube channel just because that really, really helps me in life when I go to bed happy trying to do the old analogy of teaching man to fish. So it's like trying to reach as many people as possible now. So yeah, that I would say that was my passion. Who inspired you?
00:39:38
Speaker
I've had many people inspire me, lots of coaches over the time, um too many to name, a few that like really stand out though that helped drive me in the direction. Give me one name, give me one name. Steve Spooner, Steve.
00:39:57
Speaker
What was it about Steve Spooner as a coach that you're actually talking about now in public? it's exactly said It's not about the fact that he taught me how to ping a pass It's not about like controlling the ball off a cross or anything like that. It's because he genuinely cared he would um Pull you aside when he thought you were down if it was something he kind of had an understanding like I I had him for three four years something along those lines and he understood like when someone had a bad day or He saw that like we were down about having a test coming up or something like that always found a way to kind of like
00:40:38
Speaker
resonate with you and understand so hundred percent agree with you wasn't about teaching us the tactics the formations the systems the styles apply anything along those lines it was treating you as a person. and Right and you know i mean that goes to say it means like how many players.
00:40:59
Speaker
How many people, are you know, 20 years from now are going to talk about you as a coach? say Oh, yeah, he's a great guy. He taught me how to chip a ball, you know? I mean, the little things, but they are. It's what we said before. I mean, you're influencing people. You're in a great position. He was in a great position, and he had a choice as a coach. He could have been one of those tactical coaches who just go in all business or show that he, you know, he's there to care. I mean, players don't care how much you know as a coach, like we said, until they know how much you care as a coach.
00:41:29
Speaker
But I think we have to rethink about the vast majority of young players playing, why they quit. and What are we actually teaching them? um One second here. Greg, I have to get it for one second. I'm sorry. I've got to plug my charger in here. No problem, pal. Play a commercial if you want. I'll be right back. I've just got to plug it in. And on that note, we'll play a commercial for a session show.
00:41:59
Speaker
Do you need fresh ideas for your football, soccer training? Then follow session share on YouTube and X. Our handles can be found in the show description. Session share, for coaches, by coaches. Welcome back. Just to wrap that up a little bit about teaching life lessons and life skills. There's a big difference between life skills and a life lesson, right?
00:42:25
Speaker
and
00:42:27
Speaker
and life skill is something you can work on incrementally to get better and better and better, right? A life lesson might be something spontaneous, you know? Like we said, it could be, hey, Craig, lend me 50 bucks, I'll give you it back tomorrow, and you'll never see me again. I mean, you probably learned something from that, you know what I mean? It's, ah so I would just encourage, if any, if the coach is watching this, I would encourage them to think a bit about that, because if I said to you, Craig, hey, listen, I need you to come up with three great dribbling drills for me, you wouldn't have a problem being able to do that. But I'm going to challenge you as a coach. So, Craig, I'm going to ask you to do this. Come up with five, just for the entire season, that's it. Five new drills you could do specifically, each one of them has to teach a different life skill.
00:43:22
Speaker
Love that, and I will type the challenge. It's not communication, specifically about that. But it's always got to end with how it impacts you as an adult. Why does trust impact? Why is it important? We trust each other's teammates, and I'm going to give you examples here. But as you get older, why do you think trust is important?
00:43:42
Speaker
Why do you think communication is important? Why do you think empathy is important? All these different kinds of things. Because listen, really, we're not we're not developing pro players. We're developing a business owners. We're developing bankers. We're developing teachers, right? These are the people we're developing on these teams, not professional soccer players. This is our community. We're investing in that. Every time you invest in a kid, you're investing in and your club.
00:44:11
Speaker
It's great for the stakeholders of the club to have that narrative. Who doesn't want a narrative of that? we We were taking it seriously. We're not just taking our football skills, but we're going to make, and which parent wouldn't want to sign up their kid to join a team where the coach doesn't help them get to be better men and better women? Not just talk about it, not just put it in their program or on their website, but actually you see them do it and in training.
00:44:37
Speaker
Yeah, there's lots of things that through the osmosis of football in terms of discipline, and in terms of the social interaction aspect of football are there, but We can evolve it to a totally different level if we take it serious. I have a website called socketteambuilding.com. It has all the videos of me teaching life skills, massive section on how to teach life skills, what they are, not just me talking about it, but me actually doing the sessions.
00:45:08
Speaker
communication sessions, stuff like this, on the field with the players, exercising, trust is all there. We have these t-shirts and all that kind of stuff so you can see firsthand. And all the building blocks of of team building is worth looking at as a coach to take a look at it if you're looking for ideas. But I'm just one person you can get ideas from many, many people.
Meditation and Mental Well-being
00:45:29
Speaker
Fantastic. and One thing that I've really loved about our conversation here, Sean, is the fact that um you're you're very much an out of the box thinker, but with strategic targets in mind. So like in the beginning, like you yeah obviously your background with engineering helped with your soccer background into half how to build this program before.
00:45:51
Speaker
these programs even existed and then like what we just spoke about like the life lessons it's not something that coach the average coach if you will thinks about but I'm sure a lot of people after this podcast will be thinking very closely about it One of the other things we spoke about before was when we were speaking about the life lessons, you said one of the big lessons that you learned was about meditation and how that helped you. Can you talk to us a little bit about how you found that breakthrough and how you feel it can encourage players and coaches to do this as well? Yeah, I mean, obviously, um anxiety and depression is a huge issue in our society and every country, you know,
00:46:37
Speaker
let alone athletics in terms of, it I think our kids get, there's a lot of pressure on our kids. They deal with a lot of different things. Craig, to all the teams you coached in your career, I guarantee you there's kids on that team is what as good as you can be as a coach. There's kids on that team that you have no idea what they've gone through, none. You know, it's like some of the most
00:47:06
Speaker
Great. ah I've met some great people in my life, Craig, who took their own lives. And ah there was no signs of it. No signs. We had what a guy who was a referee. He was refereeing again two weeks beforehand. He's a well-known referee for many, many decades. And he committed suicide. You would never know having a conversation with a guy. And I'm just saying, you never know as a coach what's going on in people's personal lives. and um And so I think it's just,
00:47:36
Speaker
I don't know, it's just important. What was the question again? What was the first question he asked? Yeah, we talked about meditation and how you feel. All right, meditation. yeah So listen, I went to a liquor store. I used to get my wine there. I don't really drink anymore, but I used to get my wine there. And this guy from Pakistan was, we were talking about meditation because I was trying to meditate over COVID.
00:48:03
Speaker
And he recommended this place called Deepasana, and it's it's an international organization. And it's for meditation and for wellness. And he says, you should go to this institute. It's 10 days away. And ah he says, it'll be a great experience. So I applied for it. It's free, by the way. You don't pay a penny, right? So I was accepted at the last second on the waiting list. They called me up and said, hey, we've got a spot. Do you want to come? It's like a day before. I says, yeah. I didn't have to throw anything in my bag, really. I put sweatpants on.
00:48:38
Speaker
Took two t-shirts with me because when you're there, it's basically you're down to the bare minimum, right? the When monks, right, first arrive at a monastery, they rip them of they take away all their personal belongings. They have none. They're not allowed to keep anything. And they get a raggy old robe, right? They got ah got a little linen robe and a pair of sandals. That's it.
00:49:02
Speaker
And they do that because they want you to be humble. They want you to be, you know, a sense of um all these world worldly possessions really don't mean a thing. And they take that away from you. So were with don't you can't wear any designer stuff. So we're on their bare minimum there. But anyway, the concept is this.
00:49:24
Speaker
We spent 10 days. We arrived there, your hand and your phone. There's 50 people, 25 women, 25 men, two gurus, one for the women, one for the men. weren' this like It looks like a small college in a way out in the wilderness in Massachusetts.
00:49:39
Speaker
and ages from, you know, guys who are in the 70s down to 21 year olds from all different professions, students, engineers, millionaires, you name it. And ah the gun would go off at, you know, five in the morning. They said, we have no phone. We're not allowed to talk to anybody. You're not allowed to look at anybody, no eye contact for 10 days. And we would meditate for 10 hours a day straight. Well,
00:50:07
Speaker
like a 10 minute break in between each hour. And it was one of the most challenging things I've ever experienced. The first three days were how do you meditate? The technique of meditation. So the taught is a technique of doing our breathing skills. And so you'd sit there for now, and work on your breathing skills, meditate, take a break, do it again, and do it again, do it again. And I can get into a meditative state pretty quickly now.
00:50:35
Speaker
But before then, before I went in this course, I would try to meditate, but just end up falling asleep. and But the advantages of meditation is great. I mean, all your top athletes, you know yeah all of them, Ronaldo, all of them, master technique to take the pressure off them. But the thing is, is that when you're there, what do you think about for 100 hours?
00:51:08
Speaker
And obviously, you're reflecting back on your own life, the decisions you've made in your own life, the scenarios, it's like a movie, you play it all back. And a lot of people in there, I don't have any skeletons really, but a lot of people in there pull back the band-aids and everything. But it's a really interesting challenge for you when you come out of there. The guy told me I'd feel a lot lighter and I didn't know what he meant when I came out.
00:51:36
Speaker
um you really learn to get in a state of being in the moment. It's really been in that moment. It sounds so cliche, but when you are in that moment and you're totally focused just in the present, it's so calming, it's so relieving. And why I think meditation should be a part of every coach's toolbox. Every team I coach, I teach how to meditate because Think of it this way, these kids are going through struggles off the field, and they need to decompress, or at least have an option if they want to decompress. When your kids come on from tournaments, they didn't play very well, or they they're upset at whatever whatever's happening, how do they decompress? Teams at the end of practice will have a cool down, a physical cool down, a cool down on the muscles, but I never see a coach having a mental cool down with the team to decompress.
00:52:36
Speaker
What tools are you giving your players to go home to be able to resolve those issues and get in a calm state and relaxed and be peaceful? And so, yeah, meditation is huge. And you know what? It doesn't cost a penny. No equipment. Anybody can do it. Any age you could do it. And it's I would encourage it to anybody. If you're looking vipassana, I mean, when you're there, you eat differently.
00:53:02
Speaker
you It's just an amazing experience. What I learned there was one of the big things was not to ah not to judge people, you know just observe.
00:53:16
Speaker
And we we tend to do that. We tend to judge people, but a there when you can't talk with anybody or you you're looking, you're just observing people. And when you get to meet them, they're totally different from what you would have if you did judge them what they look like. But I would definitely, it's something that obviously you're not going to do in training every day. You're not going to sit and the guys want to meditate for 15 minutes.
00:53:38
Speaker
But what you do, you teach them. And it's very easy. The videos are on my website on Soccer Coach TV. You can see how I teach them. It's about four or five. And actually, there's there's two videos about that whole thing when I was trying to be trying to be a monk for 10 days. You see the whole thing, and the experience, you'll see the facility, you'll see inside it and everything there. So check it out on Soccer Coach TV. But at bare minimum, what you've done, you've equipped them as a coach. some but Most of them may not you know act on it.
00:54:07
Speaker
But if you're impacting three or four-year players who can get into meditating and to learn that skill, it can help them tremendously. You know, you've got your exams coming up, they're stressing out how they're dealing with it. If they can learn to meditate, I think it's just another skill that you can add as as a soccer coach that I think will benefit everybody, including the coaches. You should be meditating.
00:54:31
Speaker
I think I will. I'm going to try it at least. that i'mm I'm a very open person that will try everything once basically to try and benefit me as as we've mentioned today as a person, let alone a coach.
00:54:44
Speaker
So really, I would really consider Craig to go on that course. Like I said, it's free. You know, you give a donation if you want, if you feel that it's benefited you. But there's a lot of famous people to take this thing. I mean, so in Colombia, they incorporate Vipassana in the prisons, in the prison cells.
00:55:04
Speaker
They have to do Vipassana courses there, ah where it's really helped that, you know, the prisoners in there to meditate, less stress, everything. Actually, believe the violence in that prison went down tremendously once it started putting. Interesting. But I challenge you to go on the course, check it out. You got no excuse. It doesn't cost a penny, son.
00:55:22
Speaker
You've really put me on the spot in the middle of the podcast right there. Well, I told you the thing was, i and my mistake was I announced it before I went on social media, I was going to do this. And so there was just an LA of like, text and comments, you'll be back in two days, you won't be able to get off your phone and and said there was yeah tons and tons of comments. I said, no way I can let them win, you know. So yeah, I'm glad I did stay though. It was it was absolutely great.
00:55:51
Speaker
That's that competitive person in you again. ah I love that, that's great. Sean, this has been fantastic and I honestly could go all that all night.
Global Coaching Experiences and Closing Remarks
00:56:01
Speaker
But ah I would like to leave one final question. And I like to ask all our guests this as it leaves us knowing the person as much as the coach. Although we've you've kind of an open book. You've told us everything and everything today, which I love. ah So Sean, what's your favorite moment in sports? It can be anything as a player, a fan, or a coach. Well, my favorite moment. um Honestly, I have
00:56:30
Speaker
I've been blessed. I've had so many different memories. It's not just about winning things. Some of my favorite moments have been recently, or the last few years, really traveling the world, coaching. It's spending time in in Puerto Rico, in Ponce, coaching ah with Tico Lopez. He's a fan of Soccer Coach TV. He invited me out to Puerto Rico. I've been talking for about four or five years.
00:56:56
Speaker
and ah we flew out there hadn't met him before such ah such a great guy I mean he was such a great host ah working with his players there on the worst field I've ever seen on this planet it was just dirt with rocks and we worked worked for five nights and it was like 85 degrees and dust was a dust bowl but we had the top they wouldn't stop at the end of the practice they wanted to keep playing and playing and playing and it's it's just the appetite of these kids playing in that environment and the enthusiasm of this coach Tico Lopez. um It was one of the most memorable things you know we complain about all kinds of things here you know we got the best facilities in the world in the US and when you think about around the world what people have to work with they don't have what we have to work with a lot of them some countries do but you know in Puerto Rico we had a blast in Aruba coaching down there when
00:57:50
Speaker
we went down with the ah and did some clinics for the Aruba Soccer Federation and the director of coaching there for the whole country met us. And um ah they put us in a five-star luxury hotel. We get to this camp of these kids and we didn't even know it, but everybody, they made soccer uniforms with Soccer Coach TV. I mean, real nice jerseys with Soccer Coach TV, um jerseys and shorts and kit. And they were fantastic kids. And
00:58:24
Speaker
He goes on and on, Barbados. I mean, I've coached him many, many times, Barbados. I love Barbados. It's a great country. I've worked with national team players with kids who are underprivileged there and some poor facilities and the national stadium. that It's great, but the vibe down there is fantastic. I got married there two years ago on a beach down there in Barbados. Wow, awesome.
00:58:52
Speaker
I have a great love for the country there but yeah I would say traveling for me I could go on and and on about the countries and the people I've met and for me soccer's been coaching has been a vehicle to that and ah you know spreading spreading soccer coaching and and and my belief in how it should be taught and to love the game and to enjoy it and to not take yourself too seriously as a coach. um You know, we we're all not as good as we think we are. You know, we've all got mistakes. We've all got bad. I'm not the best coach in the world, not even close to it, but
00:59:30
Speaker
People seem to like my style of coaching. I try to be upbeat. I'm definitely motivational and if it's not fun, I'm not doing it. I don't care what team or that's a pro team or amateur team or a kids team. you know I love to have fun on the field every time we go to training. Hard work can be fun if it's done right. It doesn't mean if you're having fun, you're not doing hard work. You can do a lot of hard work and it can be fun at the same time. so
00:59:57
Speaker
Could not agree more, Sean. Thank you so much for your time. I've had so much fun and I really believe our listeners will find this conversation extremely beneficial. um With that being said, Sean, if it's okay with you, I'm going to put your details in our podcast description so people can follow you on Soccer Coach TV, Facebook, and all that jazz. Sound good?
01:00:21
Speaker
If they just, yeah, they just type in Socki Coach TV on the tick just TikTok or Instagram, um LinkedIn, YouTube, ah all those. social media networks will find us. um and if if If you're a soccer coach watching here and you like to connect with me, ah ah my email is producer at SoccerCoachTV.com. So if you've got any questions, you want to reach out, if you're interested in us visiting your town and come in shooting some footage for Soccer Coach TV and coaching your team, let us know.
01:00:53
Speaker
Craig, thanks for your hospitality. I love your show too and that's why I wanted to be on it. ah Before we even invite, I watched you ah on the with them Tom ah from Japan and I thought it was a great show and I said, man, I got to get on there and everything. You got to clean up your noticeable in the back of your background there. and that you it's like Is that your grocery list you got back there? you picked the player one yeah Yeah, exactly.
01:01:18
Speaker
Hey, I got to call the club, man. You got to start pulling the influence and start getting a better backdrop from the club, man. You really you got an important important position in the club there, the director. You got to get a director's ah couch back there. We've guessed like you, Sean, soon I'll be able to afford it. I totally thank you very much, mate. Well, that's all about the time we have for this episode of Session Share, the Coaches Podcast. Thank you again to Sean Green for joining us.
01:01:45
Speaker
Be sure to get in touch across all our socials to offer your opinions on all that we've discussed today. ah You can find the social media platforms in our podcast description. This has been Session Share, The Coaches Podcast. Thank you for listening and thank you for coaching The Beautiful Game.
01:02:08
Speaker
session share ah coach's four coaches by coach