It's Heeeree...
Soccer iQ
The first great book written for soccer PLAYERS!
It is with much joy that I am scratching a long-standing item off my life’s to-do list, and let’s face it, I’m a big, big fan of scratching things off lists. I am now the published author of a book (‘published’ being the operative word). That’s right, an honest-to-goodness, hold it in your hands, my name on the cover, made it all by myself… book.
Wanna join my celebration? Cool! Buy my book.
No, seriously, you need to have this book. And not just because it’s the best thing ever written – which it clearly is. But also because Izzy’s going on a hunger strike until I’ve sold a thousand copies (albeit involuntarily). So please, don’t starve my kid. Buy the book. It’ll be easy to do, right here at the Poet and on amazon.com. Plus, it’s cheap. That’s right, cheap. It’s like half the price of a good book, so in a sense you’re actually making money. It’s a win-win, yes?
Okay, so the book is called Soccer iQ and realistically you should buy it if:
- You’re a soccer player 14 years or older
- You have a daughter who is 14 years or older and wants to be a smarter soccer player. Even if she is already in college, she needs this book. Trust me on this one.
- You are coaching soccer from U-12 to the pro level. There’s a lot of good stuff inside that you’ll find really helpful as a coach.
- You, as the coach referenced in the previous bullet, want your players to be way more savvy and thus realize that if each one of them had a copy of my book, your job would be SO. MUCH. EASIER.
- You’re the director of a soccer club and realize the previous bullet also applies to you and you recognize how you can finally get your club ahead of the curve.
- You’re my friend and want to upgrade your status to really good friend.
Here’s the long and short of it… there are a thousand and one books written for soccer coaches, but there’s nothing really written for players. All the soccer books are about how a coach should train the team – what drills to use, what system to play, how to organize free-kicks; but there is nothing telling a player what she should do in a specific situation. Until now that is! I’ve gone and written a soccer book… for soccer players. Crazy, right?
So why did I write Soccer iQ?
I’ve been coaching (and therefore recruiting) since 1991., and the genesis of this book was derived from watching zillions of games at recruiting tournaments and showcases. You see, the players in 2012 don’t look anything like their predecessors from 21 years ago. Players have gotten so much better since Kris Kross was makin’ us Jump Jump. They are far superior in technical ability. In 1991 if you had five girls on your team that could strike a ball with their laces, you were a national power. Now every player can do that. A player who could bend the ball with the outside of her foot or strike a half-volley was hailed as a savant. Now almost all players have those clubs in their bags. The talent level is eons ahead of where it once was.
Physically, today’s players are bigger/faster/stronger. They look radically different. In 1991, female soccer players looked pretty much like every other girl at school. These days, when you see a female athlete walking through campus, there’s no mistaking her. You know she’s an athlete.
The progress in technical and physical development of female soccer players has been staggering. But what hasn’t changed is the scarcity of fundamental soccer street smarts. Tactically, today’s players are still making the same silly mistakes that were being made in 1991, and those mistakes were silly even way back then. There are still way too many players getting to the collegiate level with no true…umm…. Soccer iQ.
Okay, I could have just as easily written that last paragraph back in 1997, which is when this idea originally struck me. At the time I happened to be reading Sun Tzu’s The Art of War, and I thought it was really intriguing because of how the ideas he presented were so brief and specific and presented in such a nuts and bolts fashion: when the enemy does that, you do this. It’s was like the Cliff’s Notes for waging war.
By that time I already had a menal list of the most common tactical errors I’d seen players make in my seven years of coaching, and reading Sun Tzu gave me an idea. I was going to write down all these little head-scratchers on a stack of index cards, then, at the end of each training session, I was going to present one as the “tip of the day.” Made great sense to me.
Well I never quite got around to doing that, but I thought about it year after year after year. And as it turns out, another 15 years of soccer development in this country still hasn’t rendered these tips obsolete. Not even one of them.
I’ll give you a great example. Recently I was observing a game between two high level teams. One team was awarded a free kick deep in their attacking end, about two yards off the endline and three yards inside of the sideline. Basically it was a corner kick. So what did the defending team do? They assembled a four-player wall. A FOUR PLAYER wall. Really? Yes, really. FOUR players. For a corner kick that happened to be disguised as a free kick.
Is it a mortal sin? No. Could it lose you a game? Absolutely. Every player in that wall is one less player available to challenge for the serve that will ultimately be floated into the penalty box. It was a moment that cried out for some common soccer sense, which really isn’t common enough.
It’s not like these girls were bad players either. Oh no, no, no. Quite the contrary. Some of them will be playing in World Cups. And if that doesn’t dictate a need for a new avenue to educate players, I don’t know what will.
Let me put it this way… in a roundabout sense, coaching soccer is similar to teaching history. It’s a memorization course and the field is your classroom. You have your kids on the field, you put them through exercises, and along the way you periodically make your coaching points. And then you hope they remember them. Well, could you imagine taking a high school history course without a book? I mean, what’s wrong with supplementing what players learn on the field with some good old-fashioned text book learning? Why not give them an off-the-field reading assignment? Isn’t it just on more teaching tool? One more way to make your point to stick?
Want to know if your child or your team needs this book? Okay, here’s the take-at-home test. The next time your team has a one-goal lead with five minutes to go and the ball rolls out for a throw-in, see how many players from your team run to get the ball. If the answer is more than zero, it’s time to get reading.
Do you like poker? Poker is 100% tactical. There’s no technical or physical ability required. It’s entirely decision-based and bookshelves are overflowing with books on how to play Texas Hold ‘Em. If you read a book on how to play Hold ‘Em, it will tell you how to play a middle pair from the button; or how to play low-suited connectors from the big blind; or what to do if the guy in front of you raises. And that’s more or less what Soccer iQ does. It takes specific situations where players routinely make bad choices and gives them a better answer and explains why it is a better answer. And by the way, these are NOT complex topics. These are very simple concepts that players can implement the next time they step onto the field.
So anyway, I assembled 51 chapters worth of these little nuggets, mainly because when I’m sitting at a showcase for ten hours, I want to watch better soccer. And I want us as a nation to produce better, SMARTER players. So this is my contribution to U.S. soccer. I can leave this world with a clear conscience because I’ve done my part to lead the horse to water.
I’ve shown Soccer iQ to about ten trusted friends in the soccer world. You know what the most common remark has been? “I can’t believe nobody has done this already.” I agree. You know why? Because I was thinking the exact same thing as I was writing it. No lie. I felt like John and Paul when they were writing ‘Eight Days a Week’ and knew it would be a hit. Except I don’t know if my book will be a hit. I just know that it’s really good and any player who reads it will be the better for it. And honestly, if someone else had written it, I would be buying a copy for every player I ever coach.
If I had my way, U.S. Soccer (the organization) would buy a copy for every soccer-playing female between the ages of 14-16 in this country. Then, each passing year, when a 13-year old turned 14, she’d get a copy. Would that make me filthy rich? Of course it would. And I’d bear the burden of a higher tax bracket. But that’s a price I’m willing to pay for a smarter soccer America.
I hoping parents will buy this book for their daughters. And I’m really hoping that coaches will buy it for their teams. I know a couple of coaches who have already committed to doing exactly that. And I’m hoping that somewhere out there a Director of Coaching at some club will have that same epiphany and buy copies for every player in his organization.
And in case you were wondering, there’s even a chapter on RECRUITING because players make as many mistakes off the field as they do on it. I sincerely believe that chapter alone is worth the price of the book many times over.
So thanks for reading my infomercial! I hope you’ll buy my book!
"Dan Blank has just written soccer's first definitive text book."
- Colin Carmichael - Head Coach
Oklahoma State University