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NorCal’s Bonomo, Mork to Present at Coaching Symposium

While NorCal Premier Soccer is bringing many world class clinicians from out of town to our June 29 – July 2 Summer Coaching Symposium, some of the other headliners on site to present also come from within our own organization.

NorCal Player Development Program Director, Paolo Bonomo, and Director of Scouting, Ian Mork, will also be on hand to provide valuable lectures on various important aspects at the event.

Bonomo, the NorCal Premier Soccer Vice President, will be there to give a short presentation on a new coaching education pilot program that he is working on in conjunction along with others in NorCal.

In said program, NorCal will provide a long-term coaching development platform, which includes monthly meetings tied to PDP State Pool trainings, where coaches will be given assignments and required to demonstrate their understanding of the topics covered.

“The intent of NorCal is to assist and help the clubs to improve the content and the training environment,” Bonomo said. “Over the last eight or nine months, we’ve had several meetings with assignments in between as well as class discussions and field observations with PDP training. We had a pilot program to see as a test how everything is effected and how the coaches and clubs responded to that. So far it’s been pretty positive. We started back in March down in region 7/8. Currently 15 clubs have applied.”

Bonomo will be joined by fellow PDP staff member, Ian Mork, who has extensive coaching experience in the CONCACAF region.

A former Belize Men’s National Team coach, Mork led the team to their only CONCACAF Gold Cup appearance back in 2013, where he coached against the United States in the group stage.

Mork also coached Belize against Mexico in the 2010 FIFA World Cup qualifying, served as the US Soccer Technical Advisor for the Northwest Region, and was an assistant for both the U14 and the U16 US Boys National Teams.

His presentation will cover different methodologies of scouting and how they influence club soccer on a daily basis in the NorCal Premier landscape.

“Scouting happens constantly at every level, all the time.” Mork said. “My presentation will begin with a definition of scouting. Talent identification compared to analyzing a match for a future opponent. The talent identification piece will be our focus, which also happens in match analysis–when a coach must identify the top performers in a game. A coach generally has an internal guideline they follow to identify the technical, tactical (game understanding), physical and personality characteristics of a player. At the club level, the foundation of the scouting process is in the clubs’ Game Model and style of play. We will discuss different theories and how we can apply them to scouting in the NorCal Premier soccer environment.”

“When two people are watching a game (at any level) and discussing players — to some degree, they’re identifying talent in their own mind and making conclusions about the qualities of the players,” Mork added. “Ultimately, every coach is a scout.”

For more information or to sign up for the event, click here.