About Smart Coaching Systems

I have been coaching football (soccer) for a long time. Every age group from under 10s all the way through to men's football, and just about every situation you can imagine in between.

And here is the thing nobody tells you when you start out. The football part is actually the easy part.

Getting eleven kids to play out from the back, sure, that takes work. But it is nothing compared to managing a sideline full of parents and grandparents who all think their child should be playing more, or trying to motivate a group of sixteen year olds who have just lost four games in a row and stopped believing in themselves, or figuring out why two of your best players suddenly can't stand each other and it is affecting the whole squad.

And it is even harder if you have never coached before in your life. So many grassroots coaches, particularly at the younger age groups, are parents who have been handed a bunch of kids, a bag of balls, and an hour on a pitch, with no idea where to start. I have seen it countless times and I have deep respect for anyone who puts their hand up and gives it a go.

That is the stuff that keeps coaches up at night. And when I went looking for help with it, I kept finding the same thing: another drill, another exercise, another set piece routine. Technically useful, sure. But not what I actually needed.

When I went back into education and completed my Masters, I spent a lot of time studying business management, leadership, and organisational behaviour. And somewhere along the way something clicked. The frameworks being used to run companies, manage teams, resolve conflict, and build culture were exactly what I had been missing on the training pitch. Nobody had just joined the dots.

So I did.

Smart Coaching Systems exists because I am passionate about coaching, but I have also lived the hard parts of it. The parents who corner you after a game. The kid who only shows up when it suits them. The training session that falls apart because it's a full moon or something and you don't know how to fix it. I have been through all of it, across every age group, and I can tell you that the challenges shift as the kids get older in ways that surprise you. When they are young the kids are easy and the parents are hard work. Give it a few years and that starts to flip.

Everything on this site is what I wish I had access to when I was learning to coach. Not more drills. The other stuff. The leadership, the communication, the conflict resolution, the people management skills that nobody thinks to teach coaches but every coach desperately needs. I built it because I needed it myself, but I'm hoping the content will help hundreds if not thousands of other coaches around the globe.

If that sounds like what you have been looking for, you are in the right place.

Lastly, if you're reading this, it's likely you are a coach, and it's likely you are doing it as an unpaid volunteer. As an ex player myself (amateur) I just wanted to thank you, because it's people like you that gave me such an enjoyable sport throughout my life, and inspired me to give back as much as I can.

Ben Foulis