Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Nice job Chris. Variations are endless once they have the basics mastered… do you add any constraints to them?
like this:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL0xa2zZaEU5CQCvXp1Qt1Ge9BtUKRid4f
go to your youtube video and click on ‘share’ then copy that link
Aman, one of the reason I switched all my teams to a 3-4-3 was to protect my smaller backline and slow up the other team in their own half by us controlling more of the midfield. It has worked extremely well and we don’t allow many shots on goals. I have a Rondo I call the ‘defenders under pressure’ Rondo and it involves the defensive units (GK, FBs and holding mids) playing keep away at first and then stringing passes together up the chain against 3 pressing Attackers, I eventually add another attacker once they consistently beat their opponents.
Aman, I’m the same situation as you. I have a team and I have to develop them, we are also very small u11/u12 playing up.
We played a deluxe jungle ball team last weekend. They had 9 kids of at least 6′ in height, they were faster, stronger and rougher than us by far, very clear that coach has a plan on how he wants to succeed. After the 1st half I had to shuffle my players around and moved all my MFs to backline so we could play out of the back and control their punting, their coach only had one directive throughout the game “kick it up!”. We turned the game around in the second half and pretty much owned the ball, we still lost but stayed as close to our philosophy as possible. We won’t face many teams like these. Going forward I am rotating my MFs to help out in the backline until the FBs can improve, its only our 3rd game and there is room for improvement.
talent is genetic, skill is learned and refined. Another oddity is that Ericsson (of 10k hrs fame) doesn’t believe that genetics has anything to do with mastery! sometimes people are too smart for their own good.
Hans, apologies for missing this post. here is a video representative of what we experienced:
btw, El Loco was one of our academy coaches and he was the one that explained to me about the way “playmakers” think and operate.
I explained my experience in another forum within the context of Guided Discovery and the responses were overwhelming what I would consider very American… meaning not based on reality but on wishful thinking…. below is my post from that site:
“<span id=”post_message_1287954107”> How we were trained: We spent about 45 hrs a week playing. We had 3-4 training sessions per week, usually about 90 mins long, its what we would call tactical training as well as team routines. So we spent about 40 hrs playing Small-sided games, they nearly always had constraints….
The training sessions with the trainers and coaches were under heavy instruction and supervision. The pressure put on us was intense. there was no cuddling or false “great job!”. We were not allowed to talk back or ask questions. The few times they dignified to respond to our questions we got the same pat answer: “we will explain when you are older”. Everything was automated and orchestrated, technique had to be flawless. We as players did spent a lot of time talking amongst ourselves and helping each other out. We also communicated constantly on the pitch during a match, in fact, we rarely ever heard what the coach was telling us as we focused on our teammates. This dispels the myth that kids coached this way are automatons, we also elected our own captains.
The competition for spots on the academy was ferocious. When their scout found me, they had me play against their 3 best players, I was bare-foot and they had everything a poor kid could only dream of. The club would bring kids from northern towns every weekend to try out, we all knew what that meant, there was always a possibility we would lose a buddy we have been bunking with for years. last time I cried I was 16 when I lost my last remaining friend, we had been roommates since 9 years old.
During school year we attended school between 8am-3pm. We played soccer 6am-8am, then 4pm-9pm. We had 9pm-11pm for goofing off with our teammates then lights out. Weekends was even more soccer including games and scrimmages.
As we got into the U15s they begun to explain concepts to us, they also answered our questions. I wondered why they chose the 3 smallest players to play the role of playmaker (enganche) on the team. That was just coincidence; they explained to me that not everyone has the “intelligence” for the role, some kids have an aptitude for it and their job was to develop it and refine it.Until Americans understand the path to achieve quality they will never produce quality players. The hours must be there, the relentless competition must be there. Right now the people in charge of youth soccer have a rec mentality, yes there is a place for rec, but it shouldn’t control the way the pro track is managed and taught. Americans play down to the weakest player on the team, as opposed to strongest players on the team. I separate my teams in training into 3 groups of skill-level, which some parents and kids question… again, the mentality that “I paid for my kid, therefore he deserves to be treated like a star”. That “every kid is special and must be indulged” mentality. The painful truth is that not all kids have the physical or mental talents to make it to pro level, even a level as low as the standard set in the USA.
Getting back to what Biology and evolution tells us: there is only so much limited information a mind can process (working memory), so the more a player can automate (meaning long-term memory) which is memorize and remember, aka ‘instinct’, the better off he is. He doesn’t have to ‘think’ on the pitch, he doesn’t have <span style=”text-decoration: underline;”>time</span> to think! So the reason the world’s most successful academies automate so much is that they want kids to memorize and internalize (store in long-term memory) so they can recall it and apply it successfully in a split second during a match. Bottom line: the more correct information a player can internalize (store in long-term memory and recall) the better he will be.
This obsession of applying academic wishful thinking and fads (Guided Discovery, discovery learning, etc) such as kids must be engaged, having fun, leads to chaos and wasted valuable time. All constructs which scientific studies (quantifiable data) have shown again and again to be baseless. They constantly misunderstand ‘creativity’ and think it only comes from spontaneous thought (like a gift from the gods), creativity is nothing more than applying the correct solution to an problem encountered before using the correct technique. Those problems and solutions are developed in training, not out of thin air…Whats is the number one problem of youth coaches? they spent their entire sessions doing block training, which should be relegated to soccer homework and and dedicate very little on SSGs with constraints as well as automation and orchestrating of team play.
A coach is not there to entertain kids (‘let them play’), he’s there to make them better players and teammates. How many clubs honestly devote time to creating winter or summer soccer programs to encourage free play and individual skill, without charging an arm and a leg?I love this country dearly but watching the USSF and the various youth orgs apply groundless fads to ‘better soccer’ in this country is painful. As I’m fond of saying “When it comes to football, America never misses an opportunity to miss an opportunity”.
The proof is in the faulty product they have been putting out for decades: Teams that can barely string 3 passes together, that are obsessed with size and speed, that make news when 1 or 2 players are exported to another country’s div1 league. Yet countries like Brazil and Argentina have led in exported players to the world’s top leagues for decades now”</span>Then there are the heartburn games: dominate time of possession, 51mins to 9min and finished tied 2-2
This is closer to what we went thru in Newell’s academy. Always in small units. 2-3 coaches overseeing us… constant feedback, until we could do it in our sleep
Hans, if Messi had started at Barca at age 9 he would not be the player he is now… They couldn’t get him to pass the damn ball until he was 13-14 or so.
Having gone thru a professional academy I can tell you that all coaches in our academy gave instructions freely during games and during training, yes often there was cursing (disclaimer: Argentinians curse a lot!) . I honestly rarely heard them since I was good at concentrating and tuning all noise out except the voice of my nearest teammates, that went for all my teammates as well. A Player at any age level must be able to handle any noise, that’s what often separates a pro player from those that didn’t make the cut, being able to handle the “pressure”. Should Rec players be treated the same as Academy players? that’s debatable and having coached both, I do not lean on my rec kids as hard as I do my better players. But I do have a standard that everyone must adhere to.
This crazy business of “guided discovery” and “players must be self-guided” has no firm basis anywhere. No Academy that wants to produce quality talent destined for 1st team has proven that they can do it using these types of moonbeam hippie crap methods. That’s a fact
I’m working on the details, not sure yet what the total cost would be. not easy being a single dad of two!
The most confusing topic is playing time and its correlation to development. How parents often don’t understand what that means.
A few more things I’ve noticed in Clubs: the limited amount of actual training vs games ratio. Most of the “elite” academies in my area train twice a week and play 2-3 games each weekend. Yet individually I don’t see great development, either tactically or technically. I see that coaches here confuse positions on field for actual tactical training, so they play as an organized mob. Watching the USA’s U17 and U18, U19 play tells you that this collective mob doesn’t produce quality players on the international stage. One thing that was explained to me as a youngster has stuck with me, the rough English translation is this: “If you’re a winger or forward, you must be able to beat your opponent 1v1 if all other options are not available.”
I have two travel teams, one is a u9/10 and we play in a u11 league, the other is u10/11 and we play up in a U12 league. We have been overrun, rugby style in some games, but we are playing very well and getting better.
The worst part is the sense of entitlement from kids and parents here, “we paid therefore we deserve…” mentality.
Great point Michael. No matter the endeavor, humans process and learn using a universal mechanism…. It’s how we evolved….
I was fortunate to go thru a 1st division academy while growing up in Argentina… We played SSGs with constraints in order to stimulate our decision-making process (game intelligence)… but always under the supervision of our trainers. They prioritized repetition and more importantly, the explanation of how and why we did everything. They believed in information. We didn’t bother to learn higher tactics until we got to 15 or so, everything up to that point was formalized and structured training. We had 5 formal training sessions every week and the rest of the time we spent it playing these small-sided games, which were designed to improve our individual techniques as well… The hours varied as we got older but it was on the order of 30-40 hrs a week of playing… The process was brutal and rarely was there a weekend when we didn’t have another kid(s) come in for a try-out and that meant the possible loss of a roommate and/or buddy. Survival of the fittest for sure; not only did you have to be physically strong but emotionally and psychologically strong.
this link doesn’t work for me either
