Guide
Hobbit Weekly
A free weekly magazine for youth coaches: what federations, research and other coaches published this week, every piece in full in your language, a new issue every Monday.
Hobbit Weekly is a free magazine for youth football coaches. Every hour Hobbit reads more than forty sources: federations such as The FA, the Japan Football Association and US Youth Soccer, research journals, coaching blogs, and the discussions coaches have with each other on Reddit. What matters to a coach is written up in your language and goes on the page as it comes in, so there is something new every day, and every Monday the week's stories are bound into an issue you can read online or download as a PDF.
Open it from "Hobbit Weekly" under "Learn" in the sidebar, or go to hobbit.football/news. You do not need an account.
How stories are picked
- Every item is scored twice, independently, on one question: how much does this matter to a coach? Only what clears the bar goes in.
- Being new is not the only way in: a piece that will still be useful in a year can get in too.
- Research gets in on what a coach can do with it on the pitch. A study that only describes or measures, with nothing to act on, is held back.
- Reports of the same event become one story.
- A coaching discussion on Reddit is written up as the question, details and all, and the consensus of the most upvoted replies, with no usernames.
Every piece in full
What you open is the whole piece, not a summary. When the original is in another language, Hobbit translates all of it into yours, keeps its headings and lists, and says which language it came from. When it is already in your language, the story page gives Hobbit's write-up with the original one click away, and the issue reprints the original in full.
Every story carries a line "For coaches": what it means for your next session. And every story links to its original; the copyright stays with the author and the publisher. The translations are made by AI, so for any detail that matters, the original is the authority.
The Monday issue
Every Monday the stories picked during the previous week become an issue: a cover, a contents page, an editor's note, then every story in full. Read it online, or press "Download PDF" for an A4 magazine in your language. The PDF is free, needs no sign-in, and is ready to forward to your coaches' group.
The library
Under the latest issue, the page keeps a library: the newest stories, each marked with the issue it ran in, and eight topics named for what a coach is trying to solve.
| Topic | What is in it |
|---|---|
| Session design | How a session is built: games, practices, warm-ups, constraints, how often players touch the ball |
| Teaching technique and tactics | Teaching one skill, tactic or position: one-on-one, defending, pressing, scanning, formations |
| Coaching and communication | How the coach coaches: questions, feedback, demonstrations, talking to players, playing time and substitutions on match day |
| Mindset and motivation | Motivation, enjoyment, confidence, fear and pressure, mental health, the child who wants to quit |
| Parents and the touchline | What parents do, how the touchline behaves, how coaches and families talk |
| Body and injuries | Injury prevention and return, concussion and heading, growth and maturation, strength and speed, load and sleep |
| Goalkeeping | Pieces mainly about goalkeepers |
| Youth systems and policy | Federation and league rules and formats, costs and participation, safeguarding and discipline, clubs and academies, selection, playing up or down |
On a topic page you can narrow the list by age: U8 and under, U9 to U12, U13 and over.
Languages
The page, every story and every PDF come in the seven languages of Hobbit, and follow the language you chose in Hobbit.
Follow it
The RSS feed at hobbit.football/news/feed.xml carries every story of the last three weeks, in English, each with its line for coaches.
From reading to your next session
An idea you read can be your next session. Tell Hobbit your team's age and what you want to work on this week, and it writes the whole session from one sentence, with a diagram for every drill. See Session design.
Allowance
Hobbit Weekly is free for everyone, signed in or not: the page, every story, every issue and every PDF.