Age drives the teaching
What a nine-year-old needs to learn does not change because the league put the team in 4v4 instead of 7v7. The teaching follows the age of your players.
The DARUM method
A season that teaches something, in order.
Most team apps give you a calendar and leave the content to you. This one starts from the content: what a child should learn at each age, in what order, and how you know it happened.
Three rules the whole model follows
The decisions that come before any activity.
Format drives the game
The final game of the session follows the format your team actually plays. Field, player count and whether there is a keeper come from the league.
The federation rule gets cited
Ball size, heading limits and match format are quoted from the published rule, with the source named, so you can show a parent where it comes from.
Eight stages
Named by age, because that is what you coach.
The age group a club registers a team under is a league decision. The stage is about the child in front of you.
Discover Ages 6 to 8
The ball and the body. One child, one ball, as often as possible.
Cooperate Ages 8 to 10
A teammate appears. Look before you receive, and find whoever is free.
Connect Ages 10 to 12
Three players and a space. The pass has a purpose and the move after it has a reason.
Understand Ages 12 to 14
The game has phases. What we do when we have it, when we lose it, and in the second after.
Build Ages 14 to 16
Playing out, occupying the field, and the collective idea the team holds under pressure.
Compete Ages 16 to 19
Reading the opponent, managing the match, and the role each player takes inside the plan.
Perform Adult
Competition load, the weekly cycle and performance without losing the game model.
Goalkeeper Inside each stage
The keeper trains inside the stage, with the same principle as the rest of the team, not in a separate track.
The season
Three blocks of twelve weeks.
A standard club season runs August to April. Take out the Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year weeks and you get 36 training weeks.
Learn
Weeks 1 to 12. The principle is introduced, named and practised. The expected mistake is part of the plan, not a failure.
Train
Weeks 13 to 24. The principle goes under pressure: less space, less time, a defender who is trying.
Master
Weeks 25 to 36. The principle lives inside the real game, and the check rule tells you whether it is actually happening.
36training weeks
6weeks between festivals
2sessions in a standard week
266activities with a full card
2years of activities per stage
Inside a week
What you actually get on Tuesday evening.
The principle of the week
One sentence a nine-year-old can repeat. "Look before you receive." Everything in the session serves it.
Two games and a practice
The session opens with a game, works the principle in the middle, and closes with the game of the stage.
The check rule
A scoring rule in the final game that makes the principle visible. A goal after a side-on reception counts double. If nobody scores one, you know where to go next week.
The coach's question
What to ask the player at the end. Not "did you like it", but "which foot did the ball arrive on".
A festival every six weeks
Formative competition against other teams or inside the club, to see the work under real conditions. There is no table.
Year A and Year B
A player who repeats a stage gets the same sequence with different activities, so the second year is not the first one again.
Sources
What this is built on, and what it is not.
The content is written by DARUM. It draws on the work of Horst Wein on game-based development by age, on Francisco Seirul·lo on structured training and the player as a whole, on the published coaching material of the Barça academy for the game model, and on FIFA and US Soccer guidance for safety, format and the development rules that apply in the United States.
Where those sources give a number, we use it and say where it came from. Where they do not, DARUM sets its own number and says so. The sources are named inside the Coach Academy, in text, at the end of each stage.
DARUM is an independent product. Nothing here implies partnership, certification or endorsement by any federation, club or association.
Read it inside the app
The whole method is in the Coach Academy.
One track, from the basics to the professional game, with a knowledge test at the end of each block. It comes with the trial.