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Love seeing the JV team playing their goal kicks out! We are working on the same thing with our JV and Varsity teams now. We’ll see how well we’ve trained them on opening day this Monday. I’ve got my u9 1st and 2nd teams doing it and while it’s sometimes and adventure, it’s been working really well. The only goal we’ve given up on goal kicks this year was when the gk forgot and just hammered it down the field to the other team’s superstar, who hammered it back over the gk’s head from 25 yards.
I think one main key to being able to do this is to make sure all the kids are comfortable on the ball so that they can keep it under pressure if they have to. The can’t be afraid to have the ball, which unfortunately a lot of American players are. The other part is the decision making. If the CB is marked, then there should be a lane to find the outside back. If those wide players are marked, there should be lots of room in the middle. Another important decison that can be employed is the decison to abort. If a gk plays to the CB and it’s a bad ball or they are going to be closed down, our CB simply steps into the box and touches the ball. Do over!
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.
For me, Patterns are meant to provide a framework for the players to aid in decision making and organization. They should help players recognize, create and exploit typical situations that commonly occur during soccer games. Some coaches have taken this to incredibly rigid lengths to create some magnificent robots (most successfully Lobanovski @ Dinamo Kiev). This is a bit of a dead end imo, and ultimately most of the Kiev players other than Zavarov and Shevchenko struggled when they moved west to clubs that expected them to use their imaginations and be creative. You could be really effective with rigid patterns but it would not be much fun for the players. Patterns should have options to them, because of course you can’t just always play the same ball to the same players the same way and expect the other team not to counter it. So you start playing your goal kicks wide to the CB’s level with the six yard box. The other team sees this and marks those players. But by doing this they have left a direct path to the wingers, so you play them. So they close off the wingers and now you play the DCM. Now they mark him so the CB’s are open again. …. They can’t take away all your space, so you train your players to position themselves correctly so they can methodically exploit that space. If you are good you take advantage of whatever the opponent gives you. If you are great, you can take what you want by luring them where you want them.
With all my age groups I am doing more and more shadow/pattern play as part of my technical warm up, and I use patterns for fitness work too by regulating the reps and the tempo. Instead of passing back and forth in free space or in a grid, I prefer to have them Making the same passes they would make it he game, over the same distances, at game pace, on the same part of the field if space allows (my HS team gets the whole field, so we use it all). As they get better technically I add options and let the players decide where to go, then add pressure (the patterns become a kind of point-a to point-z rondo.)The three main options my teams have historically used to break good organized pressing are (from least to most risk) playing longer, switching the ball along the back, and individual action (dribbling). All three demand a lot of technical ability and composure (I don’t consider panicked hoofing of the ball as “playing long”) so like most soccer problems the remedy starts with being good on the ball. To deliver an accurate long pass under pressure takes a lot of skill, and even as an advocate of the short passing game I see nothing wrong with taking the opportunity to eliminate 5-6 opponents with one pass if they will let you, especially if those opponents are all high up the pitch. I’ve also found that if you prove you can find your players with long passes and you hit the opponent on the break a few times, their back line is forced to start backing up, leaving gaps for you to play short through. in other words, you can often play long in order to win your short game back.
In my experience, good tactical understanding not only buys time and space as Gary is saying, it also reduces the time you need on the ball. A quick glance up confirms the team mates are where they are supposed to be, as opposed to time spent searching high and low for team mates doing their own thing.
Never mind. Saw the other section and someone already addressed this topic
Why not expand it to a NW chapter?
Scott Nelson
Tacoma WA
My name is Scott Nelson and I have been coaching in the South Puget Sound area of Washington State for the past 19 years. I’ve done the whole spectrum at the club level: recreational, district, select, premier, some regional Super-Y league with the old USL Sounders… you name it. I’ve always tried to play a possession based game regardless of the talent level at my disposal, usually with good to very good results (relative to the level of competition), but nothing close to the level we are all now hoping to achieve. For the past 4-5 years I have been focusing less on traditional club coaching and have been exploring ways to try and influence the existing local soccer culture by 1) working in a club setting with really young kids (and their parents/coaches) and 2) working with low income and immigrant populations who are almost completely disconnected from the organized youth soccer scene. I am the technical director for a mod program at a small local club, have a U9 “premier ” team made up mostly of the first graduates of that program, and I organize and run intramural programs in Federal Way Wa public schools for low income kids. The most rewarding thing I am doing right now is coaching the boys at Mt Tahoma High School, an inner city school in Tacoma WA. This school was the doormat of the league when I took over but we missed out on the league title by one point last season (year 3 of my first 5-year plan) and we are making a lot of headway towards our goal of totally transforming the culture there both on and off the field.
Now I’m looking to reconstruct my own coaching culture. Whether it’s a refinement or a revolution remains to be seen.
