LUV Football

Introduction

Hi everyone. Welcome to LUV Football. I created this space to share some simple and effective ideas for individual and pair football training. My videos are aimed primarily at the U12 age group but I believe these exercises also have the potential to be useful to players of all ages and stages.

After having watched a lot of online videos on this subject I found that, while there is a lot of good content out there, there's also a lot that is unhelpful: videos designed to be easy to watch but which are of little practical benefit to their audiences. The greatest danger with these videos, however, is that they deceive us: sucking us into spending time watching YouTube rather than actually playing the game!

For all young players who are keen on developing their skills my advice would always be: put the phone down, and just get a ball at your feet. Any touches we can get on the ball will improve us as a player. As a certain structure to our practice might be helpful to some, however, I have decided to share some simple routines that I have found, from extensive practice, to be both enjoyable and effective. I hope you find this content useful. Please feel free to adapt and use as you like. And, as always, have fun and good luck!

Individual Training

Passing & Receiving

Aerial Control

Pair Training

Fun Games

At the Park

More reading

The value of individual training (and its limitations)

For anyone looking to develop their football skills, practicing on our own can be hugely beneficial. It's a great way of getting lots of touches on the ball and developing our basic skills; I genuinely believe that the exercises I've shared here, if practiced regularly, will help your game considerably. It is also important to remember, however, that the skills we can develop in individual training are only one part of the game. There are a huge number of attributes that go into making a good footballer (be those physical, mental, tactical or technical), so it's important that we don't over focus on, or take excessive pride, in that relatively small skill area which can be developed in individual training. If your goal is to be an effecive player, I would always recommend that you prioritise playing with friends. Individual training should always be seen as an extra on top.

Why "LUV" Football?

Amongst the endless number of possible football drills it's easy to get lost: to almost freeze and not know where to get started. The "LUV" in LUV Football is a mnemonic aimed to quickly bring to mind the three most common patterns which we apply to our practices: the "L" pattern, the "U" pattern, and the "V" pattern. Following the maxim "less is more", LUV Football is designed to offer a few simple, easy to remember, go-to practices.

The importance of making mistakes

The internet abounds with videos where content creators perform perfect repetition after perfect repetition of bewildering convoluted drills. Mistakes, it appears, never happen. (They do, of course, they're just left on the cutting room floor.) For young viewers viewing this content, this false image of reality has the potential to be damaging for it's not only dispiriting, it also sends entirely the wrong message. The truth is that for any repetitive drill which we perform, if we're not making (occasional) mistakes we're not challenging ourselves enough, and we're not learning. Mistakes are essential to the process of learning.

It is also the case, however, that when the difficulty level of any exercise is too high, and mistakes are frequent, there is also the danger that our training can become frustrating and unenjoyable. What's important, therefore, is to always modify the difficulty level of the exercises we're performing to find that sweet spot, where we're always being challenged but not excessively so. In the exercises I present here, there will often be ideas for how the challenge level can either be increased or decreased. In general, however, if you're struggling just slow it down, and build up the speed gradually.

What you need

Undoubtedly one of the greatest things about football as a sport is its accessibility: all we really need to enjoy the game is a ball and some space to kick it around in. When training on our own, however, especially when practicing our passing and receiving, a wall is our best friend. To perform the routines presented here you'll need to find an outside wall that you can kick the ball against. As you'll see in our videos, we're very fortunate in that we have a garage that we have been able to convert into a practice space, but this isn't essential; a wall at the end of your street, or the side of a building in the park, could be just as good. In the interests of keeping things simple and accessible, the only other “equipment” we use in our videos are occasional cones, or flat markers, but water bottles, or jumpers, or just about anything else will work just as well!

About me

My name is Michael Hopcroft (also known to the girls at Kilbirnie Ladeside as “Coach Mikey”), and I love football! As a coach for Kilbirnie Ladeside Girls' U12 team, and the father of an 11 year old daughter who has a passion for the game, I have given a lot of thought over recent years to children's football. Motivated by my own experiences in the game, and a regret that I didn't continue playing organised football beyond the age of the girls I now coach, my driving aim is to provide all the young people who I work with, with the opportunities and supportive environment that will help them develop both a technical ability and a love for the game which will allow them to continue enjoying the sport for years to come.