Why Should Children Be Encouraged To Play Soccer?

In today's media we are constantly being reminded of a health time bomb that is about to explode as children today are not active enough.

There are so many competing distractions for our children's attention, video games, endless channels to watch, these can all lead to sedentary lifestyle if they are not kept in check.

Soccer is the beautiful game, played by millions of young girls and boys (aged 6 to 18) across many continents, whether it's on the beaches of Rio, the back alleys of a major city nearby or the local park, you will find someone kicking a football around.

In today's society there has been a shift to more organised soccer practice for our youth players. Gone are the days of jumpers for goal posts, as streets are littered with cars and grass verges now have houses built on them.

Having a more structured approach is both a good and a bad thing; on one hand young players get structured development and education through willing volunteers who show them how everything from how to warm up correctly, develop their technical ability with the ball right through to skill development and organised small sided games to wrap everything up together to provide a total learning experience.

Today time is limited and therefore there may be only an hour or two devoted to structured soccer practice during the week, what happens when practice is over?

Getting your child to participate in an organised soccer school or club can bring tremendous benefits to you and your child.

Soccer can help increase your child's self esteem, which feeds their self talk which ultimately drives their performance. But soccer isn't the only winner, quite often it can be seen that academic performance can increases to!

Studies have shown that getting young children involved in soccer at an early stage promotes a real healthy attitude towards the game and this attitude continues with them into adult life.

The number one reason why children play soccer is to have fun; if soccer is fun and enjoyable then players will want to continue playing. This benefits their overall fitness and reduces their health risks considerably.

Soccer is made fun by coaches worldwide who willingly give up their time voluntarily to organise youth soccer practice and coach teams.

Gone are the days when soccer, for the really young players, was an 11 a side game with offside rules and no touches of the ball for massive periods of the game.

Youth soccer from the age of 6 to 11 is typically about having fun, playing small sided matches such as 4 v 4 with no goal keepers, promoting lots of touches of the ball and player interaction on the pitch.

Through playing soccer and encouraging children to take regular exercise many of the risk factors that are associated with heart disease such as obesity and diabetes can be reduced significantly. It is stated that childhood obesity has increased by more than 50% since 1976, which is a really scary fact.

Getting your child involved in soccer doesn't just improve their health. We've mentioned already the improvements at school.

Social benefits, such as mixing with others, having to work as a team, contributing through individual effort to a collective goal, experiencing the highs and lows, picking each other up, competition, striving to be the best, aiming to win and supporting and helping others are all by products of playing soccer.

Many of the life skills that the players learn through soccer are beneficial in later life, how to form and build relationships, developing a sense of co-operation, how to lead people, how to handle adversity, what commitment means and punctuality, are all key qualities that will benefit the players in adult life.

If your child is already playing soccer, great. But what can you do if you want to get your child involved in a local soccer team? Here are seven must ask questions that you and your child should consider when attempting to find a suitable club...

1) What level of commitment is required in terms of practice sessions and games at the weekend?

2) When are the training sessions? When are games played, what's the format and how much time will you need to devote?

3) How far are you willing to travel to training and to matches? Some clubs will operate travel teams where distances can be considerable, including overnight stops.

4) What are the costs involved? Some clubs adopt a pay when you play, others a more structured approach. The most expensive clubs are not always the best, ask yourself is what your paying in the equivalent to what your child is getting out?

5) What do you and your child want out of playing soccer? This needs to be aligned with the prospective clubs philosophy, is it about having fun or winning?

6) How best will your child learn, develop and stay interested? Are they happy just to be involved or would they thrive in a more competitive environment?

7)What is the clubs constitution and philosophy to soccer, how long have they been in existence, the experience of the coaches, location, facilities etc.

Once you have considered the above questions what are your next steps to finding a suitable club or soccer organisation for your child?

You can...

i) Get in touch with your local Soccer Association by searching the web or looking in yellow pages. They should be able to provide you with a list of clubs and organisations in your local area.

ii) Ask other parents/guardians about local junior and youth soccer teams. You'll be surprised at how many adults or their children are involved.

iii) Encourage you children to ask their school mates where they play their soccer. Knowing some of the team can be a real advantage as players integrate themselves into a team.

iv) Ask your child's form tutor or headmaster if they know of any clubs or organisations. Many clubs have formed good relationships with the schools over the years.

v) Read the local papers or local news websites you'll be amazed at how much coverage youth and junior soccer gets.

These five practical steps should enable you to find a club that meets yours and your child's soccer aspirations. However, if there still isn't a club near you that can satisfy a need why not look to set up your own team!

Claim your complimentary copy of the 'Soccer Coaching Guide' provided by Junior Soccer Coach and receive hints, tips and techniques to improve your team's performance AND your expertise as a coach. Grab your copy now, visit the website today... http://www.JuniorSoccerCoach.com/public/462.cfm

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Superiority Method

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets is a series of articles that describe some well known and well used statistical techniques that will help the soccer punter make more informed bets. Each of the techniques has its own advantages and disadvantages and using them in isolation will improve your chances of winning. However, together they will prove invaluable in your battle with the bookies. In each article we will describe in detail how a particular method works giving you enough information for you to go ahead and create your own forecasts. We will also give you information as to where you can already find websites that use this technique in comprising their weekly forecasts.

The statistical methods described in this set of articles will help you to arrive at a better decision about the match, or matches, that you are betting on.

In this article we will be describing the well known Superiority method. The Superiority method is based on goal difference (superiority) for both teams in a fixture over the past set number of games.

Here are the basic rules?

Get goal difference for each team. This could be either;

a) All home games only for the home team and all away games only for the away team over the last N games.

Or

b) All games for each team over the last N games.

Next we need to count each occurrence of a particular goal difference. We need to do this for both the home side and the away side. We create a table which holds the counts and in our case we have chosen to have thirteen rows in our table that represent the following goal differences:

INDEX GOAL DIFF
1..........>-5
2..........-5
3..........-4
4..........-3
5..........-2
6..........-1
7..........0
8..........1
9..........2
10........3
11........4
12........5
13........>5

So for our N matches we will add one to the content of each index whenever that goal difference is encountered. This may be a little confusing so let?s look at an example.

Arsenal v West Ham

ARSENAL 2 -1 0 0 3 -2 1 1 1 5 1 0 0 -2
WEST HAM 0 0 -2 -3 -1 3 1 -1 -1 2 1 3 0 1

The above shows the goal differences for the last fourteen matches for Arsenal and West Ham, now let?s add these to our goal difference table:

INDEX GOAL DIFF ARSENAL WEST HAM
1..........>-5.......0..........0
2..........-5.........0..........0
3..........-4.........0..........0
4..........-3.........0..........1
5..........-2.........2..........1
6..........-1.........1..........3
7..........0..........4..........3
8..........1..........4..........3
9..........2..........1..........1
10........3..........1..........2
11........4..........0..........0
12........5..........1..........0
13........>5........0..........0

Now each home team array count is added to the opposite array count for the away side. So, the home teams? array index 13 is added to the away teams? array index 1, the home teams array index 12 is added to the away teams array index 2, etc. In our example this gives us;

INDEX GOAL DIFF COMBINED
1..........>-5.........0
2..........-5...........0
3..........-4...........0
4..........-3...........2
5..........-2...........3
6..........-1...........4
7..........0............7
8..........1............7
9..........2............2
10........3............2
11........4............0
12........5............1
13........>5..........0

The forecast can now be determined. If we assume that a draw is represented by array index 7 then array indexes 1 to 6 represent an away win, and array indexes 8 to 13 represent a home win. So, the home win counts are totalled and so are the away win counts. In our example this gives us;

AWAY WIN9
DRAW7
HOME WIN12

The total number of counts = 28
Therefore,
Away win possibility = 32%
Draw possibility = 25%
Home win possibility = 43%.

Now it?s your turn?

Of course you may choose to use different values to those shown above and by experimenting you may come up with better values to use.

If you have the necessary skills you could go away and build your own spreadsheet of data or even write a piece of software to take in results and fixtures and apply the Superiority method to your data. Or, if you?re lazy like me, you could grab some free software that already does this for you. If this last option is for you then visit 1X2Monster where you can download a FREE copy of the Footyforecast 2.0 software which utilises all of the statistical methods described in this series of articles. You will also be able to download FREE weekly database updates for your software, how cool is that?

Here is a list of all the articles in this series?

How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Rateform Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Footyforecast Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Win Draw Loss Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Simple Sequence Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Score Prediction Method
How To Improve Your Soccer Bets Using The Superiority Method

Malcolm Nossiter is the owner of 1x2monster.com and footyforecast.com. He has been providing hundreds of 1X2 tips every week since 1999. Please visit 1x2monster.com for a fountain of information on soccer betting.

Lessons in Global Leadership: From the Soccer Field

Business leaders tasked with building international teams as part of their global expansion program should learn how its done on the soccer field. Where once national squads considered only domestic talent, many teams are increasingly becoming multinational. Even the captains are foreign. Here is an outsiders view on soccer and international leadership.

Zudig the Grand Master, is preparing his students for a years internship on planet Earth to learn about our ways. Todays lesson is about international leadership. Xandi, a bright but rebellious leadership student challenges Zudig. Eavesdropping on the conversation, we hear.

Xandi: Hmmm. So how do they celebrate winning?

Zudig: Oh, that half of the amphitheatre with the same colors as the man whos just put the leather globoid into the net, jump up and down, take off their top, jump on their heads, and wave arms about, make thrusting movements and then sit back down.

Xandi. What, just like those players in red and white have done?

Zudig. Thats right Xandi. Theyre from Zod.

Xandi. So why do they do that Zudig?

Zudig. Because the leader of the Zod team has successfully inspired them to score a win over Deng, the players in blue.

Xandi: Ah! I see. So the captain of the Zod team is that man over there, sitting down, not even playing hes the inspiration of it all?

Zudig:Thats right.

Xandi: But hes not even from Zod he has a Deng name! Why he is inspiring his players to play against the Dengs?

Zudig: Because that crowd over there with their faces painted the same color as the team from Zod have chosen him, and the players are happy to be led by such a leader.

Xandi: But the players are not even from Zod. Some are from Zupit, two are from Engis, three are from Bidu and the rest are from Midon!

Zudig: Yep. He has chosen his international team well, all experienced players who know the tactics of the other side. For that, he has rewarded them well, has inspired them to achieve great things, and knows they will deliver great results.

Xandi: OK, so let me get this. This crowd from Zod, who has just spend a whole day traveling to Midon, which is not even the home of the Dengs, have their faces painted, are jumping up and down, taking off their tops, jumping on their head, waving their arms about, making thrusting movements, are happy? And theyre happy because the team in red and white, who represent Zod, but are not from Zod but from Deng, Zupit, Engis, Bidu and Midon have kicked a leather globoid into a fishing net, have scored a win over the Dengs, - and all this is inspired by that man sitting down over there, who is not from Zod either, but from Deng, but is elected by the crowds with painted faces from Zod to represent them, because he is the man who can provide inspirational leadership to the men from Deng, Zupit, Engis, Bidu and Midon, who are very happy to play for Zod and score a win over Deng, because they have a great inspirational leader, and have been well motivated and rewarded?

Zudig: Uuuuuh! Yep, thats right. Its called international leadership building the right teams to achieve international success.

Xandi: That must be some leadership. Look. Hes even inspired them to kiss that metal cup. Dont they normally drink from cups?

Zudig: Youre right. But thats called sweet smell of success. Any more questions Xandi?

Xandi: Er, yes. In yesterdays lesson about commerce, you talked to us about how earthlings sell their products and services to each other. You told us that those companies that succeeded were those that achieved an international mindset, right?
Zudig: Yes, so whats the point Xandi?

Xandi: Well, I dont understand. If they achieve this level of success when kicking leather globoids around the pitch, and thats how the onlookers cheer them on, then why are leaders and shareholders not more open to building international teams? Surely, brand to the company is just as important as the national flags that are waved by spectators?
Zudig: Thats right.

Xandi: And surely, the teams that work to build that brand will best come from the markets they are selling into right? And surely, business leaders would by definition be leaders from other countries, experienced in managing international teams? So, why doesnt it happen more often? Better awareness of international markets equals better international performance? I rest my case!

Zudig the Grand Master, is preparing his students for a years internship on planet Earth to learn about our ways. Todays lesson is about international leadership. Xandi, a bright but rebellious leadership student challenges Zudig. Eavesdropping on the conversation, we hear.

Xandi: Hmmm. So how do they celebrate winning?

Zudig: Oh, that half of the amphitheatre with the same colors as the man whos just put the leather globoid into the net, jump up and down, take off their top, jump on their heads, and wave arms about, make thrusting movements and then sit back down.

Xandi. What, just like those players in red and white have done?

Zudig. Thats right Xandi. Theyre from Zod.

Xandi. So why do they do that Zudig?

Zudig. Because the leader of the Zod team has successfully inspired them to score a win over Deng, the players in blue.

Xandi: Ah! I see. So the captain of the Zod team is that man over there, sitting down, not even playing hes the inspiration of it all?

Zudig:Thats right.

Xandi: But hes not even from Zod he has a Deng name! Why he is inspiring his players to play against the Dengs?

Zudig: Because that crowd over there with their faces painted the same color as the team from Zod have chosen him, and the players are happy to be led by such a leader.

Xandi: But the players are not even from Zod. Some are from Zupit, two are from Engis, three are from Bidu and the rest are from Midon!

Zudig: Yep. He has chosen his international team well, all experienced players who know the tactics of the other side. For that, he has rewarded them well, has inspired them to achieve great things, and knows they will deliver great results.

Xandi: OK, so let me get this. This crowd from Zod, who has just spend a whole day traveling to Midon, which is not even the home of the Dengs, have their faces painted, are jumping up and down, taking off their tops, jumping on their head, waving their arms about, making thrusting movements, are happy? And theyre happy because the team in red and white, who represent Zod, but are not from Zod but from Deng, Zupit, Engis, Bidu and Midon have kicked a leather globoid into a fishing net, have scored a win over the Dengs, - and all this is inspired by that man sitting down over there, who is not from Zod either, but from Deng, but is elected by the crowds with painted faces from Zod to represent them, because he is the man who can provide inspirational leadership to the men from Deng, Zupit, Engis, Bidu and Midon, who are very happy to play for Zod and score a win over Deng, because they have a great inspirational leader, and have been well motivated and rewarded?

Zudig: Uuuuuh! Yep, thats right. Its called international leadership building the right teams to achieve international success.

Xandi: That must be some leadership. Look. Hes even inspired them to kiss that metal cup. Dont they normally drink from cups?

Zudig: Youre right. But thats called sweet smell of success. Any more questions Xandi?

Xandi: Er, yes. In yesterdays lesson about commerce, you talked to us about how earthlings sell their products and services to each other. You told us that those companies that succeeded were those that achieved an international mindset, right?
Zudig: Yes, so whats the point Xandi?

Xandi: Well, I dont understand. If they achieve this level of success when kicking leather globoids around the pitch, and thats how the onlookers cheer them on, then why are leaders and shareholders not more open to building international teams? Surely, brand to the company is just as important as the national flags that are waved by spectators?
Zudig: Thats right.

Xandi: And surely, the teams that work to build that brand will best come from the markets they are selling into right? And surely, business leaders would by definition be leaders from other countries, experienced in managing international teams? So, why doesnt it happen more often? Better awareness of international markets equals better international performance? I rest my case!

Trevor J. O'Hara, is the founder and president of Renarc, a consultancy that specializes in helping firms with international expansion. O'Hara is a seasoned internationalist, having lived and worked internationally for the last twenty years. Educated in Dublin, Oxford, Paris and Berlin, and with fluency in German, French and Spanish, O'Hara now speaks and writes internationally on how to achieve global success.