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I am pouring through the content preparing for the upcoming spring season. Studying the film, reading the boards, jotting notes down in my notebook. As I am visualizing how I want my practices to go a problem has popped up. I know the experience of this board can help.
U12 girls team, 14 on the roster- 7 for the attacking side (3 forwards, 2 mids, 2 subs), 7 for the defending side (1 def. mid, 4 backs, goalie, 1 sub).
A lot of the time I am the only coach there for practice.
When I am working on “Building out of the back” with my 7 defenders what are the offensive players doing? As a teacher I would have my students that I wasn’t directly working with do independent work- does the same apply? What would that independent work look like?
At U12 you certainly can have the offensive players learn to build from the back as well. The more they understand what the their teammates are doing to get the ball forward to them the better soccer awareness they will have.
That is what I would say as well. I would make two groups and switch back and forth. That’s what we do during our high school summer sessions. We get a mixed bag of kids showing up and it doesn’t matter if they are defense or offense, I usually have everyone do the same. Like Eric said, this way the attackers better understand what is going on in the back. Plus at that age I’m sure no one is really set in their position and an attacker could easily become a defender down the road.
Eventually what you can do is train them both at the same time as part of an exercise.
Something I’ve done in the past is to set the defense up and have them start knocking it around the back as they’re being taught to do. Once they’re warm and comfortable, you start adding attackers looking to try and win the ball through pressuring. However, the ball always restarts with the goalkeeper or the centerbacks. As long as the defense is still able to play out of the pressure well, then you keep adding attackers until you end up with a even set of numbers (of course, the back have an extra man to play through with the keeper). Then you tell the attackers that if they win the ball, they can go to goal while the defense goes to mini goals around midfield that would represent winger or attacking midfielder outlets. This allows the attackers to work on their high pressure as well as countering and also allows your defense to try and maintain possession in a more game like setting and develop decision making ability.
This is just one suggestion which I have found useful for situations like that, especially when I was the only coach at training that day.
Hello Caleb,
To me the Set Tactical Training (STT) of playing out of the back is complimentary to the Choreographed Pressure (ChP) activity for the attacking unit. For me, I would run the two activities at the same time, one coach with the STT and the other with the ChP.
You being the only coach, then maybe the solution is what is suggested above, definitely at first, where everyone goes through the activities. Teach everyone the STT and ChP so everyone has an understanding of how the activities work as you will likely have positional overlap of players playing different positions on your team. Once the principals of the STT and ChP are understood, meaning your players understand how to run the activity and the focus becomes more on the details such as technique, positioning relative to the ball, recognizing triggers for advanced positioning, then possibly you can run the two activities into one another as they are both forms of shadow play. Basically the defensive unit plays out from goal while the attacking unit plays into it.
You will need to have cone markers that are different for the two units. Allow the defensive unit to play through a few cycles, addressing speed of play and positioning adjustments as well as technical corrections. Then rest them while you go through a few cycles of ChP with the attacking unit.
From there, the next logical activity seems to be running the Pattern Plays using the entire team to goal. After that, if you don’ t have enough players for a full team scrimmage, then I would make it a “phase” type game of attacking unit against the defensive unit on 2/3rds of a field with targets for the defensive unit to play into and a goal for the attacking unit to attempt finishes on.
Using the rondos as the warm up before everything.
Thank you for the help. I do tend to focus in on “defensive and offensive” players- when really they are both. Combine them, everyone gets an understanding of what is going on. Progress into high levels of building out of the back/choreographed pressure where they are participating in their more specialized goals.
Paul, thank you for really going through the progression. It helps a ton!
Sometimes, as a warm-up, before all players arrive, I begin practices with a group of 5 cycling the ball with 1 or 2 pressure players trying to mess it up. I def. think offensive people should learn this as you’re also learning how to move, shift, lose your man, push up, backpedal, receive the ball across your body, etc. These are all beneficial for offense and defense type players.
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