My friend Pau wanted to start coaching a football team. He was a complete beginner. He had only played some matches when we were kids.

He asked a veteran coach at the club how to learn and improve, and these were five pieces of advice he gave him.

1. Watch football games

"Imagine that you arrive in the US and want to be an American football coach. You have never seen a single match of this sport. You don't know the rules, or the players' positions on the field. You can't teach it."

If you want to be a football coach (even if you are a volunteer), you must understand the game and its logic.

You must watch lots of football matches to learn it.

On the other hand, watching different football styles will help you form the way you feel football. Each coach has their own style, and your coaching will be different if you love a physical style with quick transitions, or you lean more towards a style where you use possession as a tool to hurt your opponent.

2. Learn the basic skills

"If you never played football, your technique will be the same as kids'."

We are in the same situation as before. You can't teach technique.

So you need to improve yours. Learn the basic passes using different parts of the foot. Learn how to kick the ball with proper technique (YouTube is full of tutorials).

I'm not saying that you have to be at the same level as a professional football player, but you must be able to control the ball before you teach them.

3. Understand roles and players’ positions

"Football is a complex sport. It has eleven positions, but within a position a player can have completely different behaviours. You can play with inverted full-backs, a back three, or a false 9 because you don't have a strong forward. Everything depends on your players, but you need to learn how to analyze them."

Every decision as a coach depends on your players' level, characteristics, and weak points. You must know them and adapt their roles, your playing style, and therefore how you train.

4. Details

"A good coach is the one who knows how to teach details that will improve players' level."

There are macro behaviours that are common to different positions, like closing gaps when your team is in a defensive phase, or closing down the central space to the winger.

On the other hand, there are micro behaviours:

• Body position depending on the area the player is in.
• The part of the foot you must use to make the exact pass you need.
• Controlling with the farthest leg.

Knowing and teaching these micro behaviours differentiates a very good football coach from the rest.

5. Plan a simple soccer training session

"You don't have experience, you will be nervous, try to control what you can control. Make it simple, don't make your life difficult for yourself."

One of the most common mistakes beginner soccer coaches make is overcomplicating their sessions. When you're just starting out, knowing how to plan a soccer training session with a clear structure saves you from losing the group's attention - and your own confidence.

A simple soccer training session structure that works:

• Warm-up (8-10 min): Light movement, dynamic stretching, touches on the ball. Keep it active - no static stretching in a circle.
• Activation game (10 min): A rondo or small possession game. Players get warm, touches multiply, and the session has energy from the start.
• Main drill or small-sided game (20-25 min): This is where you teach the main objective of the session. One clear focus - don't try to coach everything at once.
• Cool-down (5 min): Lower intensity, bring the group together, short feedback.

That's it. Four blocks. When you're new, the goal is not to design the perfect session - it's to run a session where players are active, learning one thing, and leaving better than they arrived.

Analyze which exercises work best for you and rotate between them. Stay away from static drills where players need to wait in a queue.

I got tired of planning sessions scattered across notes, so I started building a simple tool just for my own workflow. Still early, but if that's something useful for you too - join the waitlist.

Anyway - hope this helps. What would you add for a first-time coach?