Aggression?

[Eric SauzeParticipant]

I coach a U12G’s travel team. The core of the group was moved up from a rec team 18 months ago.

The team dynamics are good, but we would be considered “soft” to play against relative to other travel teams.

Getting first to the ball is improving, but when they lose the ball, their second effort isn’t at opposing teams’ levels.

We tell them they may think their working hard, but they aren’t.
We have adopted the “Offensive Pressure Choreography” drill to increase the work rate.
Does the group have any additional suggestions on coaching points, strategies, drills, etc. to increase work rate/aggression?

• This topic was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  Gary.

[DanaParticipant]

Just suggestions:

• Players (especially girls?) need to play 100% and hard against each other in practice. Explain there will be bumps and bruises. Don’t take things personal. If you knock someone down, be sure to help them up.  The more they challenge each other, and make practices realistic and game-like, the stronger the team will be.
• explain the Barca/Pep 6 second rule
• actually start counting when playing a keep away game or half field scrimmage.
• Everyone must press together. The one person not pressuring will allow the attackers to break down the defense.
• If you are the first defender and you get beat, work hard to get goalside and maintain defensive shape.
• It helps to have someone on the team with the work rate/aggression that they can look to as a model. A guy on my indoor team has a fantastic work rate/aggression. He always inspires me to play harder.

[Michael SpranoParticipant]

“If you knock someone down, be sure to help them up.  The more they challenge each other, and make practices realistic and game-like, the stronger the team will be.”

I agree with the 2nd sentence, but isn’t the 1st sentence a little inconsistent with that?

Here’s an exercise I used last year to help some of my players get a more accustomed to physical contact.  If you have 15 players, put them all in a small grid with 8 balls.  On the command “play” they compete to see who will still be in possession of a ball at the end of a minute.  They are not allowed to leave the grid.  When a ball goes out you or another assistant pass it back in.  At the end of a minute players who don’t have a ball have to do some sort of exercise (push-ups, plyometric jumps, etc…).  Have the players with balls pass to someone who doesn’t have one and then repeat, this time with one less balls (keep taking away balls until you get to a 3:1 player to ball ratio).    Keep on repeating, sometimes varying the time – so they never really know when it is going to end – to keep that sense of urgency.

The keys to this exercise are the size of the grid, and of course the coaching.  Normally you would do something like this to teach dribbling to keep possession so you would need a large enough grid for players to be able to find space – but that is not your intent.  The purpose is to encourage physical play.  So keep the space small so physical contact is unavoidable.  Don’t call fouls unless it is a deliberate kick or trip.  Let any kind of body contact whatsoever go.  In fact, encourage it.  When someone gets knocked down, encourage them to get up.  Praise them effusively if they get back up and lay a nasty body check on someone.

Huge caveat:  this is something I used sparingly, to address an identified weakness in my team.  They were too “soft” and getting intimidated and easily bodied off the ball by more physical teams, to an extent that was interfering with their ability to play our style of play.    There is a risk of injury, and it is very stressful for them, so I only used it in small doses.  Still, it helped some of them just kind of “get over it” when it came to dealing with physical play.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  Gary.
• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  Gary.

[DanaParticipant]

A little inconsistent? Maybe, I can see that — it never happens on game day. But if I knock someone down, then after the play is over, I help them up or check that they are OK, then that helps with the “don’t take things personal” aspect.

• This reply was modified 10 years, 9 months ago by  Gary.

[Paul GruberParticipant]

I run aggression drills.  Often the activities bring out a lot of cheers from the girls.  The first is a very simple activity I teach to 5 year olds and new to soccer players that requires no skills.  Ball sheilding. 

Start with a disk, two players per disk.  One player sheilds the other player from being able to step on it.  Go for about 10 seconds which would be an incredible amount of time in a game.  The “defender” is allows to try to get by the person on the disk  and get as many steps on the disk as possible.  You can control the amount of contact from within soccer acceptable to all star wrestling.  Then the players switch roles.  Progression, place a ball on the cone, defender tries to knock it off.  Final progression, use a ball, no cone, now the person with the ball, can move the ball in addition to sheild it. 

Another activity, players are shoulder to shoulder at the start.  They must maintain contact.  Coach roles a ball out in front them and the two players try to “charge” each other off the line toward the ball, so they are moving but in contact with their shoulders, no one is allowed to slip their opponent.

Final activity is a progression of a 1v1 activity to goal.  This is back with a U14 girls team that was weak technically and physically, kind of the odd girls out team that I took on.  I didn’t allow passing the season I coached them because I wanted significant improvement in their ability to handle the ball under pressure and win 1v1’s.  As the season went, we played a lot of 1v1 games, such as 1v1 line soccer, 1v1 to two lateral goals.  The final progression was to a full sized goal, but the field funneled toward the goal so the players couldn’t just “out flank” their defender.  I wanted them to start thinking what moves to use to create openings in the center of the field so their shots were more square.  As they got better, I asked the defenders to become “cheater defenders” which allowed them to grab a hold of the person with the ball if they got by them (all out wrist or jersey tug, no shoves).  This taught the girls that how to deal with the cheater defender and more importantly  that they would deal with it in an effort to try and score versus whining about the opponent cheating.  This pretty much nixed all complaints from my team of “Get off of me!” and as we became more aggressive, we were less likely to retaliate which often is what draws fouls from the officiating. 

These activites worked very well for me, even when we didn’t have the skill to complete a pass, we often won the 50/50’s and many times the 80/20’s.  If you’re doing this to calm your team down when they have the ball so that individually they are confidendent they can possess it, then it allows them to see the next play versus hit and hope.  However, some of what I’m seeing with the team running “choreorgrahped tactics” is it helps simplify what everyone needs to be doing and gets them into positions before they “have” to be in a position.  So I’m a bit torn on this, probably a mix of both and that is where coaching would come in. 

 

 

[Eric SauzeParticipant]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

We did Michael’s drill at last night’s practice.  Not bad for the first time.  We did have to adjust the size of the grid (smaller) to make it more effective.  First aid kit was at the ready. but not required.  That’s good, but their work rate should have been harder (only one girl knocked down).  Some players shying away from stronger physical contact.

We’ll try Paul’s suggestions at the next practice.

Cheers,

Eric

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