Book Basics

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What's the Book? Thoughtful Soccer: the Think First Approach to Playing and Coaching, by Russ Carrington (Spring City, Pa.: Reedswain Publishing, 2002)

What's the Book About? It provides a detailed, step-by-step plan for developing youth soccer players. It explains the different parts of soccer and what they should look like. And it provides competitive, entertaining practice games that bring those parts to life.

What's Different About It? Thoughtful Soccer offers these exciting features:

Learn-by-doing skill games mean more fun for the players, less stress for the coach.
Clever scrimmages mean goodbye Bunch Ball, hello thought.
Detailed rule sections mean no guesswork about the games.
Bird's-eye-view soccer scenes mean easy-to-visualize ideas.
Fractured fables mean quick understanding and a break from soccer lingo.

What Are Readers Saying?

"Thoughtful Soccer is a how-to manual that has a flow to it missing in most books on coaching youth soccer
. . . Even experienced coaches of select or high school programs should give this book a read, simply because it presents information in a strikingly different way."
                     -Tim Brown (read complete review).

"This book will be of great value to the U8 coach and above (a lot of the ideas will also pertain to the younger age groups) . . . One of the best parts of the book is his ideas for how to run scrimmages involving certain specialized rules that immediately correct thoughtless soccer (e.g. aimless booting)."
                     -Alexandria Soccer Association

Who Should Read It? Since it's advanced stuff made simple, Thoughtful Soccer has something for everyone:

New coaches get up and running quickly
Experienced coaches find useful practice activities and theories
New players are drawn in by the fractured fables
Experienced players find new ways to think about their sport
Soccer parents gain insight into what they're watching

Where Can I Find It? At Reedswain.com, the number one distributor of soccer publications. You can also find it at an ever-growing number of web sites, including Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and Wal-Mart.