Understanding game styles can help your players thrive in practice sessions and on matchday. And in this episode, we’re joined by Abdoullah Kheir, FA coach development officer, to explore the importance of game styles and how to incorporate them into your sessions. Abdoullah shares his story, from playing street football with his brothers to becoming a regional coach developer for the South West, with a focus on supporting coaches from underrepresented backgrounds. We dive into Abdoullah’s experience, discussing the challenges he faced being thrown into the deep end when he first started coaching and the valuable lessons he's learned along the way. He offers advice on how coaches can better understand their players and uncover what they really want to achieve from a season. In this episode, we cover: What game styles mean and why it’s crucial for coaches to understand them. The different styles of play and Abdoullah’s personal play style. How to communicate the principles of play to younger players and ensure the terminology is clear. Practice design tips to help reinforce principles of play in training sessions. How to connect game styles in training to matchday performance. Balancing the amount of information coaches give to players when developing game styles. The tools to give players to empower them to solve problems on the pitch. Player ownership and how it supports player development. Top coaching tips and a practical session idea from Abdoullah. And more…   Transcript on England Football Community⁠ - (https://bit.ly/4ezCS4Y) ————— Do you have any coaching questions you’d like answers to? Or perhaps you’re facing a coaching challenge that you’d like help with? Simply head over to our England Football Community forum (https://community.thefa.com/coaching/f/youth-club-football-forum) and post them there. Or leave them in the comments below. We can then put them to our guests in future episodes to get their advice! Already listened to this episode or the previous seasons of Coachcast? We’d love to hear from you! Pass on your feedback by contacting us via [email protected]. LEARN MORE England Football Learning - https://learn.englandfootball.com/ England Football Community - https://community.thefa.com/ England Football Learning on YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCisPO86aEIhWRTnTS1vrSVw England Football Learning Twitter - https://twitter.com/EnglandLearning Email - [email protected] LISTEN Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4sA9fHoldaH1x5Wn3vdmsB Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/coachcast/id159180480 Editing and show notes by Claricast.(https://www.clarioncast.com/)