The Boot Room


Issue 10 August 2014


Steve Holland is not one for short cuts. Chelsea’s assistant first-team coach spent 17 years learning the coaching trade at Crewe Alexandra, working in every role from U9s coach to first-team manager, before his elevation to Stamford Bridge as reserve team manager in 2009.


The 44 year-old wouldn’t wait too long to continue his rise, moving up to work with the first team two years later. A stellar list of coaching companions has followed. In his five years at the club Holland has shared the training pitch with Andre Villas Boas, Carlo Ancelotti, Roberto Di Matteo, Rafa Benitez and Jose Mourinho.


Holland stresses that the content and methodology of daily practice at Chelsea’s Cobham training ground is very much guided by the manager, with his own role to support and assist. Given he has assisted five managers in as many years it is unsurprising that he states that one of the most important skills for the modern elite first team coach is the ability to adapt.


“I’ve worked at Chelsea for five years now for different coaches who have worked in different ways. As an assistant you always have to adapt to the needs of the manager. That is your job, to support the Head Coach.


“You need to be able to adapt to their requirements. Also at this level you are working with a very cosmopolitan mindset not just English players. The ability to adapt to understand different cultures and communicate well is also important.”


With Chelsea’s foreign contingent boasting a number of new additions this summer , it is little surprise that Holland is currently taking three two hour Spanish Lessons a week , part of an unrelenting work schedule he describes as ‘the wheel’.


“At Chelsea you are playing more or less every three days all season long. There are a dozen European fixtures every season added to the additional fixtures that come with regularly visiting the business end of the domestic competitions.


Steve Holland sits next to manager, Jose Mourinho, on the bench at Stamford Bridge


But when asked the most important training ground lesson learned so far, it is his early career under the tutelage of Alex legend Dario Gradi, and a moment from one of the thousands of hours spent developing young players that Holland recalls.


“I would sometimes watch the Crewe academy boys train and see lots of tricks and skills then when I watched them play in a game on Sunday and saw nothing. There was no transfer of the training into the game.”


Although he has progressed a long way from his time with the U12s at Gresty Road, that crucial lesson has been underlined many times by the mentors he has worked with since.


“The key always with practice is the transfer into the game and all the coaches I have worked with have reiterated that point. It is important to try to maximise the possibility of a transfer by not steering too far from the reality of the game.”


“It’s a 60 plus game cycle that you are involved with. You finish one game and immediately you start your preparation for the next game two days later. It can be relentless but also exiting.”


When asked to define his own personal approach


to designing effective practice Holland underlines the importance of having a clear understanding of the objectives.


“If you are training an elite team your objectives are different to developing younger players -sometimes you are trying to do both.


“In development you build your sessions to the requirements of improving the individuals. That’s the job: develop the best players, focus on playing to strengths and improve weaknesses.”


“With an elite team it’s different, there are physical, tactical and technical objectives that you are trying to achieve. To transfer the physical objectives of intensity for example, the session has to flow with limited breaks.


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