Name: Gus Perez
Role: Football Coach & Academy Director
Qualifications: BA in Sports Science (Football), Strength and conditioning coach, Miniroos certificate, Foundation of Football, Coaching Licence C, Working With Children Check, Blue Card, First Aid & CPR Certified, Sports Psychology & Player Development Certification
Well, I’ve been in this sport for over 22 years. I started at the age of 8 or 9.
Playing academies playing for clubs in my country play third division in my country as well for my local club. At the age of 17 when I was playing third division over there I started working with the club running all the juniors and under eights, under nines, tens, twelve.
I did a four-year Bachelor’s Degree in Sports Science specialising in Football, and got my coaching certificate. That’s how I started coaching and once I moved to Australia, I just kept doing it — private, small groups, one-on ones and then jumping to the clubs. So I’ve been coaching Under 23 Seniors as well, and just working in development always.
Football has been in my life always, and every time I try to take a step away from the sport, it always brings me back. I don’t know why, I don’t know how. But at a very early age, I was dreaming to be a professional soccer player, and if not, a coach.
Well, I think the main thing is to understand the sport and you need to understand the direction that you want to take. Either you want to be a coach or you want to be a developer. And I’m the second one — I care more about the development of the player, so I really want them to be the best player on the field. When it goes to the other way, tactics and all the stuff, I can do that, sure, but I can also leave a lot of it to the other coaches as well.
You have to have passion for this. This is not a job for everyone. You need to have love for the sport and really understand the game.
Also, you should always look at the best, the top coaches in the world. Again, it doesn’t matter if it’s a normal coach or developer coach, you always need to look at the successful coaches and see what they’re doing to be on top of every single training.
Charisma, good personality, plus a lot of patience. Working with kids, you need to have a lot of that. You need to understand the kids —but not just understanding the way they play, but also psychologically and physically. You need to understand each age and group you are working with, and where they are at from a development perspective.
You can’t just put pressure on a kid who’s only eight or nine years old, and then you’re pushing them to do stuff that they shouldn’t be doing. You need to know when it is appropriate to push a kid, based on their developmental readiness.
Well, it’s a lot of different stuff. As Academy Director, there’s a fair bit of admin and business development I get through during the day while the players are in school. You’re going through emails and phone calls, answering enquiries. We have a lot of people calling or sending emails to ask questions about the Academy, what we can offer. And just basically looking for new talented players and their communities to join us.
On the coaching side, I spend time planning my afternoon sessions and then running the kids through the training. So what I do in my sessions is I try to give a lot of time to the player with the ball, because that’s how I believe that the player develops quicker. The more time you spend with the ball, the better you get. So every drill, every training that I create is focused on player development, always allowing the player to have a lot of touches on the ball. So basically in one of the 90 minute sessions, the player will have at least one thousand touches on the ball. Each step is linked to each other to progress them.
You see the improvement on every single player from day one through to 10, 20 or by the end of the year. It’s the improvement that that player takes every day. I get a huge amount of satisfaction to see how the player develops on the program over time.
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