whereas maximum youngsters are identified for spending numerous hours on their telephones doing not anything helpful in this day and age, Jordan Haskell made up our minds to place his time to just right use. His pastime for concocting soccer coaching drills gave him a focal point and he by no means imagined the place it will take him.
“I used to sit there at night in my bedroom putting them all together on my iPhone and that’s when things really took off,” he says. “It started off as just a hobby where I could share what I had been working on but it has grown into a real business.”
Haskell – a former academy participant at Wigan, Morecambe and Southport who made up our minds to develop into a trainer when he used to be 18 after understanding that he “wasn’t really physical enough” to play non-league soccer – arrange his UltimateplayerHQ web page on Twitter in 2017 when he used to be about to finish his FA degree 2 training badge.
“I was looking online for drills to use but I found that so many were too static and had too much detail,” says Haskell.
“I’ll always remember when I came up with the idea: I was driving back from a coaching session at a school in Liverpool and decided to create my own platform where I could showcase some of my drills.”
Six years later and nonetheless most effective 25, he has his personal site and app, has produced 5 training manuals and counts Steven Gerrard, Ole Gunnar Solskjær, Míchel Salgado and Phil Neville amongst the ones to have used his periods.
Haskell’s trade were given off the bottom when his animated drills stuck the attention of the Brazilian app TacticalPad, which requested him to design periods for it and introduced to sponsor his new web page.
“There were a few sessions that I remembered from my days in the academy but every coach will tell you that they use drills and give them their own variation,” he says. “In my head I’ve got thousands of drills that can cater for all players from grassroots to pros.
“Ultimateplayer is similar to Netflix but for football coaches – it gives managers any topic they want in the drill library. If they have training they can say: ‘Right, what are we going to do tonight?’ and all the drills they’ll find with a little animation of the setup.”
Haskell set up the UltimateplayerHQ website in 2020 and an endorsement from the former Bolton striker Kevin Davies kickstarted its popularity among former professionals.
“They really like the platform because there is nothing out there like this,” says Haskell, who coaches Bolton’s under-10s and for Everton within the Community.
“When you are doing your badges as a coach it’s really hard to find good resources and a lot of them have said Ultimateplayer has been really helpful.”
Haskell was invited to Dubai to meet the former Real Madrid defender Salgado at his academy and to Barcelona to watch them train after connecting with a first-team coach in 2020, while he met Solskjær when the Norwegian was appointed by Manchester United. “He used some of my sessions when he was at Molde,” says Haskell. “Ole loved the website.”
About 15 professional clubs have signed up for paid memberships, which allow access to a resource library of drills for all ages, “drills from the professionals”, including the former Tranmere manager Ronnie Moore and West Ham’s Carlton Cole, and a whiteboard room that allows coaches to formulate tactical plans. There are a number of free drills every week, with names such as Ajax AFC Playing Out From the Back, Real Sociedad Quick Attack and Shot and Bayern Leverkusen Get Across Dribbling providing color and variety.
“It’s trying to be creative for coaches,” says Haskell, an Everton fan who admits it’s his dream to train on the very best degree in the future. “We have 1,000 different drills and it could be just the same: shooting, shooting; passing, passing.
“I had to think when I was launching Ultimateplayer how I could make it unique and that’s why I decided to use different clubs and their different styles of play as a way of characterizing the drills.
“It’s mainly quite random but I want every coach to enjoy what they are doing and hopefully this can really inspire them to open the sessions up and try new things.”