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Getting to Know La Liga’s Gari Fullaondo

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With NorCal Premier Soccer’s exciting docket of summer coaching education opportunities fast approaching, it’s time that you get to better know the world-class clinicians NorCal is bringing to our June 29 – July 2 Summer Coaching Symposium and July 7-9 La Liga Formation Methodology Level 2 Course, both to be held in Livermore.

Each week, we’ll preview a different set of the exciting minds that you, the coach, will get a chance to learn from at the pair of events.

While we previewed our first four clinicians last week, this week we’re focusing on just a solitary instructor: La Liga’s Gari Fullaondo.

The former Director of Methodology at the storied Basque club Athletic Bilbao, Fullaondo now serves as a technical and methodological advisor for La Liga and serves on the Royal Spanish Football Federation’s Committee of Football Coaches.

At Bilbao, Fullaondo was responsible for overseeing the entirety of one of the most successful youth programs in the world, given Bilbao’s club philosophy that only lets them draw from players with Basque blood or who grew up in Basque Country.

“Gari comes from one of the top youth development clubs in the world because they only use Basque players — they cannot let any talent any hard-working player escape from their system,” said NorCal President Benjamin Ziemer. “Because of this they have to work with different constraints from clubs such as Barcelona, Real Madrid, and Bayern Munich, he had to be more organized and have a better eye for talent to nurture players and develop them into professionals.”

One of the more popular instructors during NorCal Premier Soccer’s December 2016 coaching education trip to Spain, Fullaondo is also a UEFA-PRO licensed coach and has a master’s degree in physical training.

“Having worked seven years as a director methodology along with four years of experience working in the United States, he is somebody that understands the American experience and has worked the highest level of Europe,” Ziemer said. “He has an academic background and a field-based background which from my experience is the best of both worlds — he studied it and he’s lived it.”

Fullaondo is just one of several top instructors lined up for the La Liga Course, with La Liga Sports Projects Coordinator Hugo Blanco, UEFA Pro coach Zunbeltz Fullaondo, and former Champions League winner Fernando Sanz also scheduled to teach at the event.

Topics to be covered at the course include:

  • Development of optimal training and performance processes and methods.
  • Mechanisms of control and development of the formative process and of individual performance of the players.
  • The ability to plan the training process in the initiation and performance stages, as well as developing and implementing the design and training of the game model.
  • Creating and managing individual optimization projects and PDP projects.
  • Deepening conceptual and procedural contents in training organization, planning, and management.

Registration is $150 for NorCal Premier Soccer members (anyone currently coaching in NorCal Premier) and $250 for non-members and can be completed with the link at the top of the page.

To learn more about the course, click here.