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Started a new thread devoted to coaching this age.
A good number of coaches on this forum appear to be coaching this age (we have 2 on this forum – Kevin who coaches u10 and myself who coaches u9 located in Portland, OR) and this thread derives from another in the video section here). You can see some excellent commentary from Paul and Christian on their experiences there.
First intrasquad scrimmage today, with what should be a strong u9 girls group (2 of the top teams from last spring u8 combined, plus we will have an additional bronze team). However, transition from 4v4 to 7v7 is mammoth and a number of my girls from spring took the summer off (we played lots of futsal last winter, so recommended a decent sized break after almost 10-months of fairly structured year). Good news – plenty of technically proficient girls in the group. Happy with how they’ve grown to this point. Bad news – absolute jungle ball . . .creates some coaching choices (i.e. physically dominating players in the middle of the park, or true distributor – right now that choice will impact the results of games in a significant way). Queries for the group:
1. How much rotation of positions are you doing at this age?
2. Center Mid – how are you choosing players to play the position at this age? To drive what I would like to do at older ages, looking to put technically proficient players there, with a reasonable soccer IQ (for the age). . . however, in the short-term putting your physically dominating (with decent technical ability) gets some significant results.
3. Welcome comments on our draft team plan (here) that I’ve put together. It is a synthesis of US Soccer’s Curriculum, 3four3 concepts, and my own views. For our group of 27 girls, we will have 3 teams, I will coach one of the gold teams, the co-head coach will coach the other, and we will share responsibility on the bronze team with an assistant.
Hi Rene, I will share my thoughts on your questions. It seems like we coach similar age/gender/skill level and share similar views.
Some context: I am a young-ish coach (28, but only started coaching at 24) that coaches the U9G travel ‘A’ team at a club in southern New Jersey. I coached this group last year during their first year of travel at U8. I don’t know what the gold-silver-bronze levels mean out there as NJ does not seem to use this system to my knowledge. We compete in the third highest division in our league. There are 12 divisions in our league. League has a promotion-relegation system (sort of). Games are played 8v8. I do not have a child on the team. I try to maintain a professional culture for this team, but I have to find balance on certain issues as most of the parents are ignorant to the game with white/suburban/middle-class background (for the majority of families on this team, this is their first child involved in soccer, competitive sports, or both).
Now to share my opinions regarding your questions…
1. I rotate players to play in different positions. My coaching philosophy states I will continue to rotate player positions until ~U11 or so. My club stresses different positions for younger ages as well. We play 8v8 and play in a 2-3-2 formation. One caveat to this idea of different positions is that the talent gap between my best players and worst players is much larger than I’d like it to be. So with that in mind, I reserve the Center Midfielder duties (in my opinion, the most important position in this formation) for the stronger players on my team. I will give the weaker players a shot at the CM position if we are winning by a significant margin or are playing much weaker opposition. Every player has to play a couple halves in goal during the season.
One idea that I would attempt to implement (if I had a larger roster), would be to assign ‘blocks’ of positions during the season’s matches. What I mean by that is that I would assign the two defender positions to the same three girls for a few matches in a row. For example, if I had a 12 match season, I would play the same three players as Backs for the first 4 matches; then they would play the Midfielder positions in games 5 through 8; and finally Forwards in games 9 through 12. My thought is this would allow them to (hopefully) gain a better understanding of the positions through some repetition. Another benefit is that I would know which players to assign to different roles during training– particularly positional rondos and rondos involving jokers. But I only have a 10 player roster at this time, so I have not figured out a way to implement this idea with so few numbers. For now I basically need to substitute for whoever needs a rest or to make other adjustments.
2. I completely agree with your opinions on the CM position at this age. I have about 3 players on my team that play CM decently, about 3 that do it well enough, and none that excel at it; so they all get opportunities to play it. In general so far, I find you are correct… My more physical/athletically-gifted players (with decent to good technical ability) will produce better results at CM at this age. The spacing & positioning of my team and the opposing team range from okay to poor at this age/level, so an athletic player is able to break up a lot of plays and win a lot of loose balls (and their are a lot of loose balls during open play at this age). Unfortunately, their distribution is usually limited to neutral and forward passes, and their off-the-ball movement is insufficient at this time. With that said, I love playing my more technical & perceptive players in the CM spot and seeing what they can do. I give these players opportunities to play against all levels of competition, but these girls usually perform better as CMs against the average/weaker competition. I have one player in particular who really enjoys playing the #10 role because she has good vision and constantly looks to catch & pass, but she is just limited by her dribbling abilities, passing range, and speed of play at this time.
3. I am largely indifferent to the US Soccer Curriculum document, but I acknowledge it can be a useful backbone for philosophy & planning, particularly for newer coaches. It looks like you have given some thought on how to incorporate your philosophy & curriculum into it and I admire you for that. I particularly like the measurable goals you have established as they seem reasonable for this age/level. I would encourage you to think about adding successful 1v1 take-ons and # of times receiving on back/opposite foot (if you have the ability to video record or have parents or assistant coaches counting these stats during matches) as they seem like stats you may want to measure given your emphasis on receiving and Coerver skills/moves.
Hopefully my opinions give you some good things to think about. Overall, I love your detail-oriented mentality. Wish you the best of luck this season. Your young players are lucky to have you as a coach.
Thank you very much for your thoughts Ryan.
In Oregon, Gold is your top division, silver second, bronze third. Because of some politics in this state, there are actually 2 different governing bodies with their own leagues, so for u9 we actually will only have 2 divisions (our 2 gold teams will play in the higher one, our bronze team along with a u8 group that is playing up will play in the 2nd).
In terms of US Soccer Curriculum, I used as a base as we were combining 2 groups of girls and 2 coaches (myself and the other head coach) with some differences in backgrounds: I come from an uber-competitive background in a small soccer state + ex-college player + played at a pretty competitive amateur level; my co-coach comes from a more developmental oriented background . . . US Soccer Curriculum serves as a common reference. Having said that, some things I like and don’t like about it so far:
-I like the 12-week break down they use. As you can see, we are definitely modifying for our own purposes, but thought it gave a decent structure to the season.
-The 12-week should not run like a German train; needs adjustment based on what we are seeing every week.
-I think there are too many topics to cover even in a 12-week season. Identifying your “5s” and really driving those first; giving girls a survey of the other components is what I am leaning towards. We are pairing down as we go.
Thank you very much for your thoughts on metrics – on an individual level, it is the hardest one to continuously measure for a pool of 27.
I have played with rotation blocks at 4v4 and coaching futsal a bit and will try this weekend some variation of the following – grouping players in 3, 1 on the bench, 1 playing a defensive position (2 backs and our CM, who will ask to sit a bit), 1 playing an offensive position (Forward, and outside mids). Player rotates among the 3 spots in their little group, giving them a chance to play a more attacking position and more defensive position every game; however, not having them play more than 2 (possibly 3 including goalie) positions in a game.
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