With over half the club away at various football tournaments today, we hope you all did fab by the way, the rest worked fantastically hard on the hottest day of the year in the spots hall!

No new players this week but a new coach! Welcome to Aide, who will be joining properly for the start of next season. He will add to the ever growing group of coaches Bootham Futsal has.

We started the youngest players with some chasing games, where they had to copy what their partner did, great fun to watch. They played some matches on a smaller court and boy were they on fire – their passing and control where outstanding. Goal of the day went to Imogen B, what a piece of skill for a 10 year old, amazing! The other groups worked on some 1v1, 2v1, 2v2 and onward transitions, with limited touches and coaching on when to play fast and when too slow down, look what was on and then try and score. The play for these two groups was as good as we have seen all year, a brilliant session from so many players, all the coaches were all smiling!

Click here to see all the pictures from the session

Player of the week for the first hour was Funmi – she started very slowly in her futsal journey but as the season has developed, so has Funmi. She is becoming very confident with the ball, always looking to have a touch before trying to play, and never seems in a rush – well played Funmi!

Player of the week for the second hour was Olivia – her face when she was the last to be put into a team, to the face when she realised who she was playing with! She scored a couple of fantastic first time goals and really should have had a hattrick but best of all did it all with a smile on her face – fantastic young lady Olivia!

Player of the week for the third hour was Clare – she admitted to me she was tired and hot but still worked her socks off and scored a great goal towards the end. Her touch is always pretty much spot on and she can definitely see a pass, well played Clare, now go cool down now!

Final thoughts of a coach – it’s an interesting watch, especially with the older players, when they play with and without restrictions. Should we restrict players whilst they play? – On one hand no, let them show you what they can do, on the other hand we use them to develop certain parts of a players’ technique. Today we asked the players to play 2 touch and saw some exquisite futsal, some of the best we have seem, but after we removed the restrictions players went back to running the ball constantly into trouble! Frustrating to watch and left me wondering why? Perhaps the football part of their brain is still too dominate, no ideas, more thought on this me thinks…