This interactive resource employs the EA Sports soccer game engine to illustrate U.S. Soccer’s coaching book “Best Practices for Coaching Soccer in the United States” which serves as the sport’s definitive player development guidelines. John Hackworth, U.S. Soccer Development Academy Technical Director and U.S. Men’s National Team Assistant Coach introduces each video segment with expert coaching advice for players ages 8-12 and their coaches to help them improve real-world technique.

The U.S. Soccer “Best Practices for Coaching Soccer in the United States” manual is an invaluable training guide created by U.S. Soccer’s Coaching Education Department to give youth and junior level soccer coaches in the United States a set of fundamental tools to help open up the game of soccer to young players in ways that celebrate the sport’s spontaneous qualities. The Best Practices Manual is available for free download at ussoccer.com. EA Sports uses sophisticated physics and its animation engine to bring the resource to life by helping players and coaches visualize the professional benefits of drills and convert that to precision on the field. 

Specific features of EA Sports Interactive Training include:

• Six videos focused on drills –  Passing, Dribbling, Heading, Shooting, Receiving and Defending
• Three levels of complexity for each video module 
• Expert instruction from John Hackworth, U.S. Soccer Development Academy Technical Director and U.S. Men’s National Team Assistant Coach

Given the insatiable appetite EA Sports is seeing for digital content among youth demographics globally, this online resource is likely to resonate with young players and help U.S. Soccer in its mission to help continue the development of soccer at all recreational and competitive levels. Since last June, more than 500 million online game sessions of EA Sports games have been played, and more than 2 million game highlight videos have been uploaded to EA Sports websites.