Sharpen your briefings and present to Win
Coach-the-coach week program for football coaches.
- 7 KNVB license points for Dutch-licensed coaches.
- One week at your club.
- Fee on request.
- For UEFA Pro, UEFA A and UEFA A Youth license holders.
Anyone who wants to perform at the highest level is always searching for clarity
As a coach you hold many briefings every week, from pre-match, half-time and post-match briefings to conversations with a unit or an individual player and various staff meetings. Every time it comes down to one question: how do you exert influence effectively? How do you sharpen every briefing? How do you grab attention and hold it? When do you inspire, when do you challenge and when do you confront? And how do you get your players and your staff into a mindset where they work together and perform at their best?
My approach always comes down to creating clarity, connection and a topstate. For a week I observe your briefings, your training sessions and your matches. In the reflection moments I challenge you to examine what already works and where you can grow. In the theme blocks I hand you practical tools for your message, your performance language and your rhetorical power. That is how you sharpen your briefings and present to Win.
I am Ronnie Couwenberg, Scherpsteller and specialist in briefings: I help football coaches win every briefing. I completed my sports education at the CIOS in Sittard. I spent seventeen years as a football coach myself, including at the youth academies of PSV and Helmond Sport and as head coach in amateur football. I hold the UEFA A Youth license and I have been a member of Coaches Betaald Voetbal, the Dutch association of professional football coaches, since 2002.
I developed The 8 building blocks for effective briefings, a model for shaping the content of every briefing. In July 2025 the Dutch coaching journal De Voetbaltrainer published my article on the model. I worked with the staff of PSV Women and I run workshops in the KNVB's continuing education program for coaches. My style is energetic, pleasantly confrontational and results-driven.
The program
For one week I work intensively with you at the club. The structure of the program is fixed: a kick-off, observing your briefings, training sessions and matches, the reflection moments, three theme sessions and evaluation as the close. Your weekly rhythm leads the planning.
How the week works
Here is what each part involves.
We get acquainted, discuss your challenges, agree on how we'll work and sharpen your goals. That is how we create clarity about an effective collaboration. I also introduce The T-model for effective decision making (page in Dutch), which we come back to throughout the week.
During the week I observe your briefings with your players and your staff, and your training sessions and matches. I look at your verbal and non-verbal communication behavior: how you present, create clarity and stimulate interaction, and with what energy. We take what I observe into our reflection moments.
During the week we reflect on your questions, your goals, a situation you want to raise and what I observe. That can be shortly after a training session or briefing, over dinner or on the road. I challenge you to explain why you act the way you do. That brings confirmation, awareness or deeper insight.
You learn to work with The 8 building blocks for effective briefings and the Message Map (page in Dutch). With the building blocks you shape the content of every briefing: from pre-match, half-time and post-match briefings to the staff meeting and a conversation with an individual player or a unit. The Message Map is a visual mind map that helps you structure your message and remember it easily.
With performance language you convey information, activate behavior and create a climate in which your players can perform at their best. We analyze your own performance language: what works and what does not. I challenge you and we sharpen your language. A few examples:
- Through, around and over: three ways to attack.
- Arne Slot's Saka ball, from De Voetbaltrainer 300: one word that stands for agreed behavior.
- Mark van Bommel's Stay in the game, from my article in De Voetbaltrainer.
- +1 is the standard, the core of The +1 performance philosophy (page in Dutch) that I developed with Rick de Rooij at PSV Women.
- Peter van der Veen's Ubuntu with the Netherlands Under-19: we support each other, whether things go well or badly.
Start-Stop-Continue is a dialogue about three questions: what will you start, what will you stop and what will you continue? You choose whether we do this one on one or in a session with your staff.
One on one you take a critical look at your own performance and we examine how you work even more effectively. With your staff I facilitate the session and together you examine how you work together even more effectively. We close with concrete agreements.
On the last day we evaluate the goals you set and how the collaboration went for both of us. We discuss what was confirmed, what you have learned, what you will approach differently from now on and where you want to develop further.
A sample week
Click the image to enlarge.
Praatplaten
Praatplaten support my approach. A praatplaat is a visual model that guides a sharp conversation. It forces focus: you create shared context and get to the heart of the matter quickly. Below are examples of praatplaten you work with this week.
Click the image to enlarge.
Results
Communication
You analyze your communication behavior, get feedback and explore why you do what you do and whether it fits your goal and the situation.
Tools
You learn to work with The 8 building blocks for effective briefings, a model for shaping the content of every briefing, and the Message Map, which helps you structure your message.
Presenting
You present to Win: creating clarity, connection and a topstate.
Performance language
You examine your own performance language: what works well and what can be sharper.
Decision making
You analyze the choices you make with The T-model for effective decision making and identify where you can gain ground.
Questions and answers
For football coaches with the highest licenses: UEFA Pro, UEFA A or UEFA A Youth. You are eager to learn and want to keep developing your briefings.
The fee for the week program is on request, excluding travel and accommodation costs.
For this week program you receive 7 KNVB license points. After booking, I will send you a link to a short form asking for your first name, last name, date of birth, email address and KNVB relation code. After the week, I submit it to the KNVB.
All week, the focus is on you, including in your staff meetings. There I look at how you lead: how you delegate, communicate and create interaction. I also look at whether the meeting is structured and productive. For the Start-Stop-Continue theme session, you can choose to include your staff. I facilitate it, and together you examine how you work together even more effectively. I work with your staff in English, or in Dutch where that is possible.
Yes, one or two. They work on their own goals and have their own reflection moments. We do the theme sessions together. We agree how that fits into the week during the preparation call.
Go to the contact page and fill in the form. I will get back to you within 24 hours to schedule the preparation call: which week we plan and who takes part. Then you receive my proposal, and the order confirmation and general terms via Dropbox Sign. Once signed, the week is confirmed. You, your club or your federation can make the booking.