Major League Soccer is launching a free library with more than 450 training videos created by league players and coaches to help amateur players, their parents and even their coaches. The project, “Train with MLS,” launches this afternoon as a new portal with drills ranging from a 30-second demo to a 20-minute practice session to help players improve during the coronavirus-induced shutdown of sports.

“We recognized there was an opportunity to provide athletes of all ages with training content,” says MLS SVP for media, Chris Schlosser. “The league is very well positioned because we have ready access to a whole host of academy coaches, assistant coaches, first-team coaches, and so we were really well positioned to put together a new platform to bring high-quality training content to our fans and the kids across the U.S. and Canada.”

Train with MLS activities are categorized by skill level (fundamental, intermediate and advanced) and by focus (ball mastery, fitness and many others). A number of the videos have been aggregated from previous initiatives by clubs and their academies while a large number are brand new.

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“Many coaches at home went out and started filming content on iPhones and other basic cameras to bring new drills to their teams,” Schlosser says. “That was awesome to see. There's some really creative stuff out there: fitness drills with kids in the background, all sorts of drills in garages and backyards and living rooms and empty rooms and basements.

“But that's the world we live in. And the great thing is, no matter what your circumstance, no matter where you're holed up these days, if you have a ball and a little bit of space, there’s some great training drills that we can bring to you.”

In addition to videos targeting physical skill development, the Train with MLS catalog will include mental fitness programs and weekly coaching talks with career stories, practice plans, and tactical analysis. MLS has already been re-airing classic games during the sport’s hiatus, and Schlosser says one idea is to have the coaches for those teams explain why they chose their lineups, formations and strategies.

The majority of MLS clubs are represented in this initial batch of videos, and the inventory will continue to grow. “The goal is to then update it every week with new and fresh content,” Schlosser says. “So we're launching a really robust library of hundreds of videos, but you'll see that even go further as we go forward.”

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