OUFC Philosophy

Oregon United Football Club will create an environment where our players develop a love of the game of soccer and continue to participate in the sport throughout their lifetime. To achieve this goal, we must develop an environment where we teach a creative, attacking, and possession-style soccer built on a foundation of strong technical skills.

This Dutch style of soccer or “Total Voetbal”, fosters an environment free from the “fear of failure”, where our players can explore and be creative without the fear of making mistakes. We believe that such an environment, with no limitations is where our players can grow the most and realize their potential both as players and people. The motivation to play attractive soccer must be greater than the fear of losing.
 

With this in mind, mistakes will be inevitable, and games may be won or lost through players ‘taking risks’ such as building up from the back. However, we never benchmark our players, teams, or coaches success purely on results, especially in U8 – U13 where players develop both physically and technically at much different rates (e.g., the most dominant player or team at U9 is seldom the most dominant player or team at U12).

 In addition to growing players with savvy technical skills and solid tactical smarts, we aspire to develop our players’ physical prowess and psychological resilience. In terms of physical development, psycho-motor skills such as coordination, dexterity, strength, and speed are important in soccer as well as many other areas of life. In terms of psychological development, teaching resilience and mental toughness is essential on the pitch and will help players be prepared for any number of other challenges they may face later in life. While we stress that ‘winning is not always important,’ we also emphasize that ‘wanting to win’ IS important.

OUFC Junior Academy and High School Academy programs maximize at two teams in any one age group and gender. We believe that it is impossible to develop and invest in players with more than two teams in one age group. There simply isn’t enough quality coaches in America to have that model. We also believe coaches should never coach more than two teams if you want to focus on true Long Term Player Development.

At heart, we are a competitive soccer club and we aim to develop champions, yet we will always coach and play in ways that are in keeping with our philosophy described above.