“If you have the ball the other team cannot score.”
“If you have to sprint it is already to late.”
—Johan Cruyff
“Beachside affects eternity. We can never tell where our influence ends.”
—Mickey Kydes
The foundation of the Beachside soccer philosophy is our structured, disciplined and stable environment where commitment, personal values and principles are the priority. Our methodology develops each player’s understanding of his/her connection to their team, with and without the ball. This holistic approach to player development promotes a positive outlook and personal growth so players can take responsibility for their own development. While winning is part of the process in our club, nurturing and developing a winning and professional attitude is more important.
We focus on four major areas:
- –Character Development
- –Technical Mastery
- –Tactical Application (soccer intelligence)
- –Creative Play
Working in partnership with parents, we provide the opportunity for character development, to prepare players for the pressures of playing at the highest levels of soccer in the U.S., and for life beyond. We focus on technical mastery and its tactical application, to build strong decision-making and problem solving skills.
Deliberate practice (repetition) is at the heart of the Beachside learning culture: not only for developing a high level of technique, but also the personal strengths we value. Our training curriculum focuses on ball mastery and technique, with an overload of emphasis on passing and receiving, thinking, possession with emphasis on breaking lines, pattern passing to goal to create and finish, and pressing to recover the ball. Importantly, we encourage players to express themselves and be creative, and to solve problems on their own; ultimately soccer is a player’s game.
Building out of the back, maintaining possession, using every player on the team, stretching the field with quick and short ball circulation, with improvisation, flexibility, and taking risks to create opportunities are essential to our playing style. In transition, we expect and demand an instant reaction to loss of possession in order to recover the ball quickly, by pressing and making the field smaller. Defending with inferior numbers also becomes an important part of the training methodology as players develop and evolve through our program. All these team concepts are implemented – via age-appropriate training – starting at U9 and remain consistent throughout our club.
Our purpose is to provide all members with a total soccer education. This includes the education of the players, coaches and parents – through this process we expect to earn full commitment to our philosophy.
Ours is a long-term developmental process: patience, fairness, balance and support are important. We aim to provide young children with an education that goes far beyond soccer technique and tactics; it helps make them good people, with strong values. We are not defined by wins, goals, championships, etc., we are defined rather by the impact we leave on people that lasts a lifetime.