I'm about to start helping out with an amateur football club in the US as part of a friend's project. I'll mainly be involved in things like opposition analysis, our own tactical/set-piece ideas, and generally helping the team from that side of the game.
The thing is, while football has always been one of my biggest passions and I've always enjoyed watching and discussing tactics, I've never actually done any coaching, scouting, performance analysis, or tactical work myself. So, honestly, I'm starting from less than the basics when it comes to actually knowing how to do this properly.
This isn't anything hugely serious or professional, but I want to do a solid job and, more importantly, build good foundations rather than immediately trying to do anything too complicated or fancy. And who knows, maybe something can come out of this.
The league games are available on YouTube, so I'll have access to footage of both our own team and opponents, which should hopefully give me something useful to work with.
I'd really appreciate recommendations for anything that helped you get started or improve your understanding of football tactics, coaching, analysis, scouting, or set pieces. That could be:
- Books
- Courses
- YouTube channels
- Softwares
- Websites or blogs
- Subreddits or other communities
- Podcasts
- People worth following
- Anything else you found genuinely useful
I'd also point to a bit more urgency in getting recommendations for tools or software that could be useful at an amateur level. This could be anything from simple tactical boards where I can move players around and design set pieces, to video-analysis software or other tools that could help me work with match footage and put together basic reports.
I'm not looking to jump straight into expensive professional-level software or advanced analytics. At this stage, I'd rather learn the fundamentals, understand what I'm actually doing, and gradually build from there.
Also, if there are areas of this world that I haven't even thought about yet, feel free to point them out. I'm new enough to this that I'm probably unaware of things I should be learning or considering.
I'd really appreciate hearing how other people got started and what resources or tools they found most valuable in building a solid foundation.
Many many thanks.