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Little setup, I am the athletics director at a private school that goes from K4 all the way through 12th grade. This spring we are extending our intramural program to add the U8 and U6 age groups. I’m just curious if any of you have experience at that level and how much of the program I should introduce. Obviously they won’t get as much set tactical work as the older groups, but I want to make sure these players are getting the best possible development at their age.
Thanks!
For first timers its about touches on the ball. For example i broke the rondo down for my U5s and U6s and made it a simple pass to them thru a cone that they receive across the body and push it on towards a goal or target. Gets them comfortable with receiving across the body, works that first touch.
Now i worked our U8 girls this week and they took to the 4v0 and 4v1 rapidly. They are all extremely advanced. Top in NTX area hands down.
I like Marks comments. U6s are all about touches on the ball and EVERYTHING HAS TO BE A GAME. You’ll rip your hair out with a line past one player.
Hide Coerver skills with red light, green light games. Speed of play is huge and dribbling and receiving skills should be #1. They should be scoring tons of goals in every practice.
BTW- Ive coached basic tactics to this age and they can digest it. A coach I worked with called it “defending the Castle”. Basic defense in pairs idea with one pressing and the other player supporting by defending the castle (goal). Designate the 2 knights for each 5 minute period.
I have year 1 kids passing in triangles receiving with their back on foot, but most of the time it is ball at feet dribbling in small areas, keeping the ball on the safe side. Shielding the ball is introduced from day one, holding an arm out so they run with the ball on the safe side at all times. 1v1v1 0r 2v2 games are popular.
I just finished up 3 years as the director of a mod program for U6-U8 kids, and am currently working with u8/u9’s who were the first batch to go through the system.
We played 3v3 at u6/U7, and added keepers at U8.
For U6-U7 it was all about touches on the ball, dribbling, and having fun. If they want to pass, fine, and we suggest it of the players who are capable (or bored of scoring after their 5th goal of the game), but never demanded it.
Technically the emphasis was on using both feet, dribbling, and (most important) getting the head up before and after receiving the ball
The only tactical concepts we worried about at U6 were 1) “we’re going this way” 2) “Don’t take it from someone in the same color shirt”, and (most important) 3) the basics of team shape. On every restart we have the kids set up in the appropriate size/shape triangle. We had games for teaching them how to do this, and although we saw no payoff at U6, we did from U7 on. It kept the games at 3v3 instead of 1v5.
Philosophically the emphasis was always, always , always on dribbling and keeping the ball no matter where you were, and never “booting”, “clearing” or “getting rid of” the ball. These words were actually banned from coach’s and parent’s vocabulary.
By U8 we introduce passing and start doing Rondos as part of every practice, but players were always encouraged to dribble as much as they wanted.
To your exact question of how much of this material can be applied to the younger age groups, I’m not sure I would change too much of what I did then knowing what I know now. Could we do more, and do it earlier? possibly if if I could create the right culture. One of my challenges was that I was working entirely with parent coaches, so we had to keep it extremely simple for them as well as the kids. Ironically, it was much easier for me to work with sports-minded parents who had no previous soccer experience, vs”experienced” parents who wanted to propogate the same crappy philosophy they used to coach or play under (ie: man to man marking, kick and chase, emphasis on hustle over skill, one touch defending, etc)
But I can absolutely say that the steps we took above have made it very fast and very easy for me to have my U8/U9 kids adopt thes 3four3 methodology without any problems. We basically shifted the main emphasis from dribbling to passing and nobody batted an eye. Our kids have the confidence to keep the ball long enough to find the pass now, and they are eager to dribble when they are 1v1. We don’t look anything like Gary’s team yet, but we certainly pass and keep the ball much better than our opponents, even those with much better athletes (our team is very average physically in terms of size, speed and strength). The teams full of big strong fast kids still can outscore us for now, but my teams always overtook those types even when I used my own coaching methods. Now I feel we’ll be light years ahead of them by U14 if not sooner.
The biggest key for me with the u8 and above is to make sure they take the ball across the body. This was something I did with my older kids for years but didn’t worry too much about with the younger kids (don’t ask me why… it doesn’t make sense to me eaither now. Don’t think I realized HOW important it was). Now I have u8/u9 kids doing a 5v1 rondo and they will string passes together UNTIL they receive on the wrong foot if the passes are good.
We’ve also had our U8/U9 kids passing their goal kicks. It’s definitely an adventure, but since we are better organized it’s actually been statistically much safer than when we just belted them to the edge of the defensive third.
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