Blog — TacticsBoard

Research-based articles on football coaching: practice planning, player development, game-based training and practical coaching tools.

All blog posts

• 5 passing drills for youth teams - by age group — Five research-based passing drills for different age groups. From gate passes to rondos - practical instructions and difficulty scaling.
• Football practice planning - a guide for coaches — A comprehensive guide to session structure, age-group recommendations, and season planning fundamentals. Based on research.
• Why we built Tactics Board — Tactics Board was born from a coaching need. Learn how real problems with practice planning led to building a digital tool.
• How to keep 20 players active in one training session — Research shows 31% of youth training time is lost to inactivity. Three principles to keep your entire group moving.
• Game-based training – why drills aren't enough — Research shows game-based training develops decision-making, skills and fitness more effectively than traditional drills. Play-Practice-Play in practice.
• Digital practice planning — paper vs app? — We compare paper and digital planning based on research. When is a notebook enough, and when should you switch to a digital tool?
• Five common mistakes in youth football coaching — 70% of children drop out of organised sport by age 13. Five research-backed mistakes coaches can avoid through better session design.
• Football coaching tools compared — We compared six football session planning tools: Sport Session Planner, SoccerDrive, Football Planner, CoachTools, The Tactics App and TacticsBoard.
• Adapting drills on the fly — when and how? — A session plan is a hypothesis. How to recognise when a drill needs adjusting mid-session, and which changes actually work.
• Season periodization for youth football coaches — Periodization does not require a sports science degree. Season structure, weekly rhythm, and load management in practice.
• Youth football physical training: what works at 10–14 — Speed, strength and endurance for ages 10–14: what to train before and after the growth spurt, FIFA 11+ Kids warm-ups, and how much is too much.
• 1v1 dribbling — how to train beating a defender — Why dribbling ability matters and how to train it with small-sided games and game situations. Research on Finnish juniors and 1v1 skills.
• 1v1 defending — how to teach it — Finnish juniors lose duels to international opponents. Research on why defending is body control rather than speed, and how to train 1v1 defending.
• Team events — games and line-ups in your team calendar — The new team events feature: a team calendar for trainings and games, plus a lineup for each match. For clubs and teams.
• New in Tactics Board: animation, 3D goals and six languages — A timeline with per-phase durations, three-dimensional goals and a tilted view, two-finger zoom on a phone, and an interface in six languages.
• FIFA 11+ Kids warm-up: fewer injuries in kids' football — A seven-exercise warm-up for ages 7–13 cut injuries by 48% in a large trial. What FIFA 11+ Kids is and how to run it with your team.
• Strength training periodization for youth players — What to train before, during and after the growth spurt — and how strength work fits the football season. A practical, research-based model.
• The planner, rebuilt for phone and tablet — The pitch now fills the phone screen, landscape has a layout of its own, and the tool menu leaves the pitch visible. What changed in the Tactics Board planner.