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ACADEMY
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Academy: Welcome
Southampton Aztecs Academy
We are building academy teams for boys and girls in the Southampton area. We want to make futsal a more prominent sport in England, and develop a pathway from youth to senior competition.
These teams will operate in two year age bands; U16, U14, U12, U10, and we will make a commitment to the player that they are in the team for the season. If you want to get involved, fill out the form below.
Academy: About
What will academy teams receive?
Futsal specific training.
Sessions run by qualified futsal coaches.
Training following our bespoke training curriculum.
Regular competitive schedule of games.
Match kit and training kit.
We have a one year guarantee. This means that we will not cut or replace players within a season. Trials will be held each summer. When you sign for the Aztecs, you put your faith in us. We make a commitment to the player, because we understand that development is non-linear. Players experience peaks and troughs in performance, and are more likely to grow in an environment of safety and trust.
Academy: About
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HOW WE TRAIN
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Our training session exercises are very games based. We base much of it off a concept called teaching games for understanding (TGFU). This involves competition, direction, opposition, gamification, realism, and much autonomy.
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We work off the idea of Perception Action Coupling. In simplistic terms, Perception Action Coupling is the coordination between vision (including time and space) and movement, particularly of the hands and feet. It's the link between what we see and what we do. As you can imagine, that's quite important. Our exercises look and feel like part of the game, and draw upon the visual cues present in matches. This is what is known as representative task design, where the thing you do in training, looks like, feels like, and takes place in the part of the court that it happens in.
Everything that happens in the game is a relationship between the individual, the environment, and the task, with a little bit of input from the coach. The players gather information from the world around them, and based on their knowledge, understanding, and tools available, decide upon an action plan. The action plan is the movement goal, which could be a shot, pass, dribble, control, tackle etc.
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We believe you get good at what you do. When piano players make mistakes, the coach doesn't make them run ten laps around the piano. Futsal is all about decision making. As coaches, we show players where to look, without telling them what to see.
Below you will see the ideas that underpin our practice design. Ultimately, it looks and feels like a game. We avoid the isolationist approach of performing decontextualised drills, and the reductionist approach of breaking everything down into its smallest components. You'll see our exercises typically include opposition, transitions (all four moments of the game; in/out possession), direction, competition, and game context. We like a lot of rondos, 1v1/2v2 exercises, and small sided and conditioned games.
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“Futsal has been very important in my life. In developing my technique, quick thinking, short movements. I think futsal is fundamental in a footballer's career. It was very important in mine.”
Neymar
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