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With the team I coach I play all the kids that are at practice daily and train hard. We have a team rule that if you miss a practice it costs you 15 minutes of playing time per miss no matter who the player is (yep- even my #10) . If the player is not training hard Ill have a discussion with the player and the parents and if it continues then they too will get limited minutes. The latter has not been an issue. My number one rule is to not add players just to fill a team. Id rather have a limited supply of players than have similar ability than a few money kids that I have to “hide”.
<span style=”font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.5px; background-color: #ffffff;”>To put in perspective our team pays $30 per month after they have paid for their card, uniform and $15 club fee for the year. All told our kids pay less than $500 for the year for Nor Cal Premier division soccer. There are no coaching fees and coaches pay there own way on everything.</span>
Thats a super fee structure and I can tell you that is not the norm. In Orange County CA- Id say 2,000 after tournaments is average but at a top south county club your looking at crazy fees. I know several coaches that are making 60-80 thousand a year as club coaches and they are not the main directors.
<span style=”font-family: Lora, serif; font-size: 12px; line-height: 19.5px; background-color: #ffffff;”>I think that a better mindset for parents is we paid for the opportunity to play, not paid for playing time. One of my favorite coaching conference memories was the late grate Don Meyer from Northern University. He was talking about how bad parents can be and he said something very close to the following: When Joey’s parents come up and complain about playing time. You ask them who they think Joey should be starting over or getting more playing time than. When they state Joey should be playing more than Johnny, you instruct them to call Johnny’s parents and explain to his parents why Joey should play more than Johnny. If they can come to an agreement then problem resolved (yeah right). Then he said if you get lucky the two parents go at it and you don’t have to deal with either of them anymore. It definitely got a big laugh from the coaches in the building.</span>
Id argue that if the kid family pays he does deserve to play. I think thats the huge problem with our “development program”. Our system of pay to play is stupid. We need academies that kids play for free and take that argument away. I have a buddy at a top program who only will take full paying players for his teams as he wants his $10,000 pay check per team per year. Im a coach and a parent of a player. Im not taking my kid to a club -pay $3000 plus tournaments so he can sit on the bench. Now if an academy wants him and are going to foot the bill, then play him as little or as much as you want.
If my son is not assured 1/2 of the game he doesnt go to that club. As a consumer that my choice. I also tell the coach if he is not working hard in practice or misses then he can chat with me about limiting his playing time more, but if he is there every day competing and playing at the level of his peers he deserves to play. Im at every practice and game so I know what he is and is not doing. We coaches want our cake and eat it too.
As a coach I know insist on carrying a smaller squad to make sure all my kids play and yes, its cost me some games.
I have a different take on the licensing than what I have read on this board and I suspect that is because much has changed that past couple of years. If I went back to the time I received my E license Id totally agree with the comments- waste of time.
What I have found with the D license and what I am told of the C and beyond is that they have redone everything and I found it very powerful as it helped refine the craft of coaching. If your going for drills buy a book but your not going to grow very much as a coach. The D license was more about delivery and planning- the teaching of the game and the important little things that go into the craft of coaching- how to set a tone. Yes you need to know that technical and tactical stuff but again, it really about the craft. If your winging it as a coach from day to day and have not planned out the essential topic of the day and what your trying to accomplish then I think your doing a huge disservice to the kids.
Note- all of this is about the USSF. I no long subscribe to the NSCAA organization so I have no comment.
Hi DK-
I used 6 perimeter players but with 4 on the wide side of the rectangle and a single player on the shorter side to simulate looking for the target player (reminder we switched to a 4-2-3-1 due to the players we have) and a single mid. We then added the 2nd mid with the rule that only one can be in an area at a time. Our outside mids have to really run and rondo up
X X
X X X (added Player) X
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I think its silly to have a desired amount of touches without context. If my team counters I want as few touches on the ball than it takes to go to goal. If my team is playing out from the back I want a short-short long fluid movement with intent to unlock the defenses, make the movement of the ball easy and progress the ball forward.
Most youth players (mine included) want to constantly get the ball forward even if it means attempting to take on superior numbers. Its a work in progress.
Its important for me to have my kids know when they have a numerical advantage or disadvantage, a safe split pass vs forcing a risky touch in our back 2/3rd. Its a very challenging thing for youth players to understand the spatiality of the area behind them and understand that that area is often the best, safest touch to get the ball out and forward. Of course this takes more passes, but its understanding the reasoning for the buildup that is important.
Ive had times when we have a counter of 3 v 2 in our favor and the player stalls and plays it back to a supporting player. My player didnt recognize the advantage they had on the opponent.
Id argue that one touch is the exception to the rule at collecting across the body is a two touch or more move.
As state earlier the angle is the key to what foot you play the one touch
We too have based our formation on what we have but know you have to recruit some players based on what you want to do. We were stuck in the middle this year.
Example- I have a team with exceptional quickness on the outside attacking areas but they are small and avoid contact. In the 4-3-3 set up it would work for us BUT we have some technically weak players playing one of my outside back spots ( struggled with touch and couldnt play to the second level of the opponent went to a high pressure. We were also very slow in the defensive middle compared to the teams we are playing.
Early in the 4-3-3 we were killed as they would attack us with speed and realize real quick that they could attack us on our right side, if they lost the ball create high pressure and we couldnt get the ball out of our end. We had out team and couldnt find a better options (Right back hustles and is a disrupter but on the big field was exposed).
We thought we were doomed playing the top flight but were able to get some win equity by formation that hurt our goal scoring, also it didnt put a couple of smaller, technically gifted kids in the best position to have a ton of success.
We shifted to a 4-2-3-1 with the outside mids really tucking way in and countering with a plan. We looked to hit the target point player (huge strong kid with decent touch) he played it back to the attacking mids and then comboed off of that.
In this system the outside mids need to hold the ball a bit more to give the attacking players time to break out from a tight defensive set. This didnt fit the playing style of our quicker,technical players that needed to combo off each other to break defenders that were often much larger and more physical. They would get knocked off the ball pretty easily. Compounding the problem was the fact that they are 11 years old playing on a full sized field so the outside mids were running 80 yards both ways so their quicks went away quickly. If those kids can play higher we could be much more deadly.
I do focus the drill on specific players and positions. My target players like the point spend more time at those spots, but they do rotate.
Ive seen this executed as early as U11. There is a team in south county OC that has done a very good job of a jab step and then a flat run even with the deepest defender and getting a jump on the penetrating pass when the attacking mid has a clean turn toward goal. Its all in the progressions you choose to teach and where youre at technically.
Update- Won our last friendly 5-1 vs. mid to lower level flight I team
Playing out from the back- The first 20 minutes of the game we look pretty good in this area. Good ball movement, speed of play is improving and were making the opponent run. Im not sure if its fatigue or the pressure of a missed touch or two but it gets poorer as the game progresses and becomes much more direct. One player in particular is passing without looking so we need to work on his decision making not just to move the ball around based on the patterns we practice.
Organized pressure- Its has some life. We are beginning to take better angles and players are trusting their teammates. We made things difficult on our opponent to play our from the back (not sure if they work on that much anyhow) and made them play in the air long. Only trouble was late movement from our outside backs to the opponents outsides mids and they occasionally had time to turn and create.
Combinations- Also is starting to show some life. When things dont go as planned we slow down a bit on our decision making. Our target forward turns too much and should be working combos with the outside mids/forwards and that needs to be addressed as the outsides are making quality runs but not getting rewarded for their efforts.
On a good note- ZERO fast breaks on penetrating passes as we were not losing the ball in the wrong parts of the field and our defense was getting compact.
We need to work on defenders tracking back when beaten as we are way too slow in the arena.
Excellent points Ryan-
Update on the move to 11 v 11-
Were at the tail end of the multi sports season so were having frequent misses of practice(especially with the back 4 players) so we have spent much of our time on the following tasks-
A) combination play patterns- faster decision making on where to go with the ball- several need players in the mix
B) Mid field decision making- Our mids were making the following mistakes that really hurt us
a- holding onto the ball too long
b- not taking the easy pass but looking to thread the needle
c- poor collectionAs Ryan pointed out that decision making and the lack of fast pressure on the ball has led to our through ball goals. We’re addressing mid field decision making, but need to do a better job of bringing back our aggressive identity in transition to defense. We have not worked on that enough and it shows. We have only mildly touched on the coordinated pressure piece and while I felt we were solid at that aspect at the end of our 8 v 8 season the move to 11 has created some paralysis through analysis.
Food booths at tournaments and friendly games have been very good to us
At 10 years old we want to make our opponents play as predictable as possible so we use the outside in angle. Important to note we teach it as an outside shoulder not a wide arch. also, most backs are placed on preferred foot. Rt back is usually rt footed and a left back (less often but still statistically more often on the left) so pressuring outside in creates the ball being played with the weak foot and reduces the in game decision making. To be honest the footedness of the player is not the key but forcing the ball centrally in front of their own goal with predictability is.
I think the video that is in this education series is a solid foundation piece for organized pressure, but I think you need to add live players to the mix and stop and explain very specifically where they need to be in relation to the player they are marking/ pressuring.
After we run the pressure exercise vs cones we add a defense and have them work playing out from the back / The players can then see the movement of the holding mids and why they need to take a specific angle to pressure.
My kids can pressure cones real well but it didnt translate to field in a live game until I added live elements.
NOTE- im not saying dont run the activity. We do regularly. But, I think you need to see it vs live players.
KEY COACHING POINTS- ball starting at the outside back vs center back are two very different things. Ball starting with the center back is much more difficult for my kids to do.
1) if pressuring the outside backs (with the ball) the player MUST pressure using an outside in angle and force the player to play the ball to the middle
2) if pressuring a center (with the ball) back make him play the ball back toward where the ball came from (another good strategy is to pressure the ball to the players weak foot) I like the first strategy as at age 10/11 the kid away from the pressure sometimes arrives to his mark late. The player “ON” initial pressure still has the light switch on.
3) the mids must step to their mark quickly and allow zero space for the mark.
with the switch to 11 v 11 we didnt look too good the first two games doing this but looked real solid the last two with my more experienced players. Some of the new adds are behind the curve a bit.
Goal kick progress- Were getting there!
2 weeks ago- Friendly- state cup semi finalist- GOT SHELLED!!!!! BUT, we were getting the ball out better on goal kicks and had some beautiful combos using the first scenario shown in the video. Center back to the outside back to the holding mid back to the outside back. Issues we dealt with outside of the goal kicks will be on another post.
This weekend- Round Robin- vs 2 flight I teams-
Game one-
Looked real good out from the back as we are getting the ball off quickly and making solid decisions. Won easily 5-2
Game two-
Coach pushed his points up to take away the easy touch to the center backs and forced us to play directly to option 3 the holding mid (second half after we frustrated them with out play in the first half and took a 2-0 lead) . We had not worked on the combos out from this area and it showed, but I was glad the keeper realized that the first two options were taken away. One thing I realize is that the keeper doesnt have the leg to play long when forced too and that will present us with some issues. Won 2-1
Another issue Im dealing with is that our left center back is right footed (recently added) and is uncomfortable with his left foot. Makes for some slow and or poor touches when played his way. Will get him some extra training
Keep up the fight !
