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A little background- I coach a Girls U11 soon to be U12 team (11v11), we have been practicing three times a week since the middle of March. We have had two previous scrimmages and have won 3-1 (a boys U10 team) and 3-0 (a girls team same age). I get scattered practice attendance due to players being in basketball or softball at this time of the year.I practice M/W/Th- Monday and Thursdays are my tactical practices. I do a Coerver style warm-up, Rondo (4v0 and 4v1), build out of the back, and Team Press, 2v1 to end the practice. Wednesdays I do a Coerver practice that I picked up at the Youth Diploma course.
I have a roster of 12 right now and I am in the process of looking to add 1-2 more girls before August. I can guest play in the mean time with other girls in the club- the other coaches do not do tactical work though and they don’t really understand what we are trying to do.
I had a scrimmage this past week and we had a real problem on team shape. Specifically the defensive unit. I had 10/12 girls present- the goalie was gone and my left back- so two were missing from my defensive unit. I slid my one of my center backs into goal (she volunteered- she is my best defender) and used a guest player in her spot and my reserve forward in the left back spot (she has done the build out of the back drill many times). We scrimmaged the boys U10 team again and got shelled 12-2. It wasn’t even close. I wonder how much this had to due with lack of cohesion in the back- there was really no building going on. Possibly putting my best defender in goal. Girls not regularly attending practices yet. A combination of all of the above? Probably. No surprise that the majority of the game was down around our goal.
To my girls credit- they tried to get a build up going and stick with the philosophy and we came back from being down 6-0 in the first half (it was 4-0 in 5 minutes, atrocious start) to fight back to a 6-2 decision in the second, lol. In hindsight, I should have probably backed out of the scrimmage against the boys- the speed of play was much too high for 3/6 girls in the back being new to their position at game time. The art of coaching.
What I was also seeing though is a couple of girls that have been practicing their spot now for 2 1/2 months in our system, the right back and defensive mid, play completely out of position for the majority of the game. I didn’t see this from them in the other scrimmages. When my team did get the ball out into the middle and final thirds of play, the right back would go up and support but fail to “get home” when possession was lost. My defensive mid was playing much too high for the majority of the game, and not really staying central when we were out of possession. I should also mention that my center backs had to be repeatedly told to move up with the team when the ball was in the middle and final third of the field- they wanted to hang out way too deep and leave acres of green open to the opposing team. I have to wonder if somehow having 2 new players back there and a center back in goal threw them off?! Like they were trying to overcompensate.
I was thinking of doing a simple drill to get the girls to understand the phases of the game. When we are in possession I can give them a basic team shape spaced out (Coaching Tiki-Taka pg. 138), the phase of pressing if appropriate, then falling back to a compact defensive shape (Coaching Tiki-Taka pg. 137), finally the phase of spacing out when winning the ball back. I could lay cones out much like in the building out of the back drill, except for all the the girls. It wouldn’t take long- say blue cones for in possession, orange for out of possession and have them move at a signal through the different phases. I’m not sure how helpful this will be- they will be seeing the spacing needed (compact for defense, spread out for offense) and give them a general idea of the what to do and where to be in a scrimmage/game situation.
I also feel I need to talk to my right back and defensive mid one on one about what their specific roles and responsibilities are.
What do you guys think? I am looking for help here! Am I on the right track?
I don’t have any answers for you but my team also had a hard time with team shape, marking and transition. I’ll try to be as brief as possible in my response.
1. we switched from 4-3-3 to 4-2-3-1 which is similar in many regards. This helped create a better overall shape in preventing large gaps between lines.
2. The 3 center midfielders (2 defensive center mids and the attacking center mid) were required to DROP and MARK someone in the center of the field.
3. The outside defenders had to drop and get into flat-back formation and be ready to compress/shift.
4. Playing 4-2-3-1 also helped prevent our defense from regaining possession and immediately passing the ball up the center where it would get picked off by an opponent.
I found that giving kids new to this style of soccer need “jobs” that they can picture and execute without too much thought.
I still do a lot of coaching from the sidelines but with the new RULES, the commands are shorter and easier to understand. Mostly… “MARK” on defense and “SUPPORT” and “TOUCHLINE” on offense.
Hey Caleb-
I’ll be super honest with you… my teams rarely trained defending. We learned some basic stuff, but never spent too much time on it. When we did- we would spend our time on recovering the ball as quickly as possible after losing it. Seriously though, we spent almost all of our time on what to do when WE have the ball. The little time we weren’t working on that, we were working on how quickly we could win it back. If you’d like advice on this stuff, I’d be glad to share. Maybe that could help you?
Thanks John. My intent is not to really practice defending rather just teach/point out that when our press doesn’t work after 5 seconds to fall back to a more “home” spot.
Like I said previously, I had my center mid and right back completely out of position for the majority of the game – if they did track back it definitely wasn’t to a helpful position. Holes were all over the place because of this.
Does this just come with time and cues (telling them in games and scrimmages to get “hone”). These are 10-11 year old girls 2 months into 11v11 and tactics.
One of terms I actually used with a team that age was “party spot” instead of “home” Sounds cheesy, but it worked. I was coaching 10/11 year old girls at the time.
The party spot was the PK spot. As we retreated defensively, everyone was instructed to shrink to the “party spot”. That was like… 4-5 years ago. I’m not sure I would teach it like that to that same group again.
Here is how I would try it now. I would try it as an expanding and shrinking type exercise.
1) Start somewhat condensed
2) Expand out into their attacking 4-2-3-1 or 4-3-3 shape
3) Have a ball and have them work it around from player to player
4) On your cue, have the person with the ball STOP and have everyone shrink and get into a defensive position relative to the ball, the person with the ball acting as the first defender.
5) From there, expand out again and continue to move the ball and repeat.
Here is a video of my team doing the expanding part… I don’t have footage of us doing the shrinking though.
John, thanks a lot. I did something very, very similar but I like your idea better.
I had my girls in their “build out the back” positions and I just told them where the ball was and had them shift (ex- “The right back has the ball!” and they would all shift appropriately). I then would walk around and the formation, stop in different areas, and call out that I had won the ball (I was the “other team”). The girls near my position were to immediately press- the others were to fall back to a defensive block position (I had a set of cones laid out to signify this new more compact shape). I would either say they won the ball- cue for the girls to expand again, or that I beat the defender meaning the pressers needed to fall back quickly.
I had them look around in their more compact shape to take mental snapshots of how close they were to each other, where the goal was, asking a lot “why this?” and “why that?” stuff to get them to really understand why they needed to get back home.
Your way is more natural way to” build off the build out of the back” exercise. Feels good to know that I was on the right track with other like-minded coaches. Thanks again.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by
Caleb.
I don’t want to add too much to their plate so early in the process- like Gary mentioned. This was just something I felt I had to address though, their positioning was so bad in the scrimmage.
This type of training serves a dual purpose. You can work on your ball circulation and pattern play, which in my opinion, is a top priority. You also get to work on recovery runs and defensive positioning. It’s one of my favorite exercises to do actually. I really wish I had the progressions on video.
John,
You mention that you focus on the attacking play and relatively little on the defending side. When you do an activity like stopping play and have the players movd the proper defensive position, what general principles do you provide for each position? Are they general points (e.g. get compact) or specific positions to be in certain areas of the field?
Update-
We scrimmaged a high level premier team (currently ranked 3rd in NorCal- GotSoccer for what it’s worth) this morning and lost 6-2. 35 minute halves, I had 12 players total to there 14. I was missing my starting goalie again, had a girl who was a teammate’s friend who came out to Thursday’s practice (1 1/2 years removed from rec soccer) and did an admirable job.
Our team shape was much better- it was 0-0 for the first 15 minutes, 1-2 at the 30 minute mark, then 1-3 at half. We had some chances and didn’t finish- but so did they. My attacking 5 were seeing the benefit of dropping back into a block to help the back 5, and also saw what happened when they didn’t. Second half was pretty similar. I tried to keep my 1 sub rotating in and out to give them breathers/water. Our effort and focus were light years beyond the 2-12 shellacking of a few weeks back. I gave a “Brian” speech and have been holding them accountable each practice. The intensity has definitely risen.
My last two scrimmages have been against high level opponents with good speed. I am slotting my team at Silver this year, and they both would be premier. My girls had a very hard time building out of the back in the last two scrimmages- I know this is because the speed of play has been too high. I really haven’t setup much of anything at our level or below yet. I feel that should be my focus for the rest of the season, really. I am taking them to a tournament at the end of June and slotted them Silver- I am going to make the remainder of my friendlies silver/bronze level. Any thoughts or suggestions on that?
I really, honestly, felt after the scrimmage that we weren’t “that” far away from the current 3rd ranked team in NorCal (GotSoccer- for what it’s worth, lol). I was very proud of my girls today. I don’t want a season full of moral victories though. I feel that in accordance to the “art of coaching”, I need to start setting up some winnable scrimmages to really put the tactics to full use and build confidence in actual victories.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 5 months ago by
Don’t put any stock in gotsoccer rankings. My team is ranked 3rd in our state but are closer to 30th in reality.
This season I played in a league where we were clearly outclassed physically and technically. Our tactics were the only thing that kept us anywhere close. We then played our end-of-season tourney against competition that historically has been on par with us and we just slaughtered them. Playing in the faster-paced league really pushed my boys to improve and the half that I graduate on to our high school program are now by far the most talented bunch I’ve ever passed on. There’s pros and cons to playing both up and down in skill level, which is why I’m a proponent of doing both via leagues and tourneys at different levels of play.
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This reply was modified 10 years, 6 months ago by
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