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Sounds like 90% of the teams I play. I posted this exact topic a long time ago, you may want to go back and look for it.
Some of the things that have worked for me…..if either your 7 or 11 check down to receive from your OBs, have your 9 make a diagonal run towards the flag on that same line and the Sweeper is forced to go with him pulling the Sweeper out of the middle. This allows space for your opposite side Winger/Forward to cut inside or your 8 and 10 can make a run into the vacated space as well. The key is to get that Sweeper out of the middle and to get him occupied.
The other option is to do what you said and basically have your 9 play just in front of the Sweeper and play balls directly to him. The key is, your 9 better be strong to be able to hold the ball up. Generally speaking, they put a pretty strong player as the Sweeper, so your 9 better be able to win the battle up top against him.
Hope that helps!
Sounds like 90% of youth soccer in America. Just add in the parents yelling, “Great kick!” as their child aimlessly belts a ball as far as he/she can and you have it nailed!
Nice work Alfredo! I agree with Ryan, your Center Mid’s through balls were great. Good luck and keep up the good work!
Great podcast John! Lots of good stuff in there about the Rondos and Pattern Play. The biggest takeawy is….”Train like you play”. I think this is THE biggest mistake that most coaches make. They might have great looking drills, but do they prepare your team to play the style and formation that you are looking for on the weekends?
Is this session posted somewhere here?
Scott, so true on how misleading the possession stat was for that match. When they showed 51% to 49% I was thinking, “Are we watching the same match?!?!”
The US midfield put soooooo much pressure on the defense and Howard because they could not hold onto the ball for any extended amount of time. I don’t expect the US to dominate a game through possession or dictate a game against an opponent like Belgium or Germany, but you HAVE to be able to keep the ball for a little bit just to let the defense and GK come up for air and breath for a bit.
When I run my attacking patterns I have my Wingers REALLY wide so that when we play a through ball between the CB and OB, the Wingers are making diagonal runs and are headed more towards the back post instead straight towards the byline…..it makes for a much shorter “cross”. From there they can pick out a player and play a ball along the ground towards the near post, the 6 or PK spot.
It makes for much easier finishing, especially if you coach younger girls, because most girls do not finish balls coming in through the air very well.
John,
I HATE losing to a team that plays with a Sweeper! It feels like such garbage soccer….that’s why I want to figure out a better way to handle it. I feel like I want to just put my Center Striker on the Sweeper just to take her out of the game. So in doing that, if I play our normal 4-3-3, that pretty much leaves their stopper to roam free. That’s why I thought of trying out a 4-4-1-1. That way the Sweeper and Stopper aren’t able to just run around freely, they always have someone to mark.
As you said, our philosophy of dominating possession would not change, just the formation.
So John, what you are saying is our MNT trains like 99% of the youth teams in America…… 🙁 .
Thanks for the advice guys!
What I’m planning on doing is setting up a scrimmage against another team in our club and have the other team in the first half run a Sweeper/Stopper system so we can try a few of these ideas out. And then in the 2nd half my team will run a system that the other team struggles against so they can try things out.
I’m going to try to stick with the 4-3-3 and implement some of the ideas you guys suggested and then maybe try out the 4-4-1-1 just to see what happens. I’m not a big fan of changing formations because it’s hard enough trying to get the girls to know their roles/responsibilities in ONE formation, but I thought it couldn’t hurt to try it out in a scrimmage setting.
Thanks again!
Eric, thanks for your input.
This is what we ran into this past weekend(GU13 Flight 2)…..the opposing team had 2 extremely aggressive outside backs that were all over my Wingers backs. We did play into the Winger’s feet many times, but there was really nowhere to go but back to an Attacking Mid. If they tried to do a quick 1-2(Winger laying ball off to Attacking Mid and then making run forward for return pass from Attacking Mid, the Sweeper would slide over and get to the ball before my Winger could get to it).
Also, my Center Forward was being marked by their Stopper. She was an animal and just mauled my Center Forward and made her pretty useless. Any balls played into her, the Stopper just manhandled her and won the ball. On the rare occassion she did actually win a ball the Sweeper was right there to take over.
So I was kinda of stuck in that if we went to our Wingers we still had to go backwards because of the tight marking of their Outside Backs and if we went to our Center Striker we couldn’t get anything going there either.
That’s why I thought about changing up the system(4-4-1-1) to essentially mark their Sweeper to keep her occupied and not just roaming free. That way we could maybe bypass their super agressive Stopper and Outside Backs……just thinking of a way to get some production up top because we weren’t having much success doing what we were doing.
Training went well tonight! I sat them down before we started our warmup and told them the deal….”If you screw around, get a case of the giggles, or disrupt taining in general….I will remove you and you can watch the rest of the session from the sideline. It’s not fair for a few of you to ruin it for the rest that are here to get better”.
They responded really well and we had a good session. Hopefully they can continue this way and focus on becoming better players and I don’t have to deal with their giggles.
Thanks for the advice David!
I’ve trained a bunch of teams at the U11-13 age group and have never run into a group of girls like these ones. It’s like they think training is “comedy hour”…..everything is funny to them. I don’t do boring drills with long lines or anything, but getting these 4-5 girls to take things seriously is becoming quite a chore.
Our next session is on Fri night so I plan on telling them at the start of training “It’s time to be dialed in on soccer now…..no screwing around for the next 1:30. If any of you decide to go into your giggling routine, you will be taken off the field and you can watch the rest of the training session from the sideline”.
Hopefully that does the trick.
I have a little story on the topic of “sitting and watching” or “overcoaching” during a match. My GU11 team had been preparing for a big tournament and had a great 2 weeks of training prior to the tournament. In our first match we were matched up against a really strong opponent but I just had a great feeling about my team…..I could feel they were prepared and ready to play really well.
As the game started I sat down on the bench and just “let them go”…..I didn’t say a word and they were on their own. They played the best match I had ever seen them play!! They were playing out of the back, combining all over the place and just thrashed the other team 5-0! I couldn’t believe it….they played SOOO well! I “let them go” all tournament long and we ended up losing in the semis to the eventual winner 2-1. Overall, it was their best tournament ever. I thought, “I’ve got this figured out. They just need to be “let go” during the matches and were golden!”
Fast forward 2 weeks later and we are in another tournament. First match is against an opponent we should beat fairly easily. Well, the whistle blows and I “let them go” and didn’t say a word. Well, after falling behind 4-0 at HALFTIME, and eventually losing 5-0, I realized that me talking or not talking was not the key to their success. In hindsight, we had had a poor week of preperation leading up to this tournament and it didn’t matter what I said, we were not going to play well in this tournament.
So my theory now….I kinda go by the feel of the game. Does it look like they need more instruction or less instruction? Are they doing the things we worked on in training? Do they need reminders? I like to sit and watch for a little bit and get a feel for what I think they need. If they are doing a bunch of good things, I “let them go” and watch them do their thing. But if they aren’t performing the way I think they should, I’m up and coaching them along.
I definitely learned that the coaching leading up to the match is much more important than the coaching during the match. Not that coaching during a match isn’t important, but I believe the coaching during training is WAY more important.
I think that’s why Attacking Patterns are so important. The players need to know when it’s time to “play to feet”, when it’s time to play a through ball, when it’s time to cross it and when is it time to look for the finish. When they rehearse the patterns over and over again they will start to see when each action is appropriate.
I remember when I first started coaching and my teams would look good moving the ball around and possessing the ball but would struggle with finishing and scoring goals like you are describing. It was so frustrating watching them pass the ball around and then not get anything out of it in the final third. It wasn’t until I gave them some Attacking patterns that they began to score a lot of goals.
The Attacking patterns give them concrete ways to break down a defense. Get them to master a few of them, then add another one. When they’ve nailed that one, add another, but only add more patterns once they have mastered the previous ones and are executing them in matches.
I remember my GU11 team a few years back…..we used to rehearse in the attacking third switching the field from one Attacking Mid to the other Attacking Mid and then playing a through ball between the Center Back and the Outside Back with the Winger making a diagonal run in behind the defense. The Winger would then dribble towards the near post and get the GK to commit and then play the ball across the 6 and then the Center Forward and opposite Winger were making their runs in
for the easy tap ins. We scored a ton of goals that way and we ran that pattern at just about every training session. We rehearsed it so many times they could do it in their sleep!That was an important season for our team, and me personally as a coach, because it was when I started doing Attacking patterns and it REALLY improved our goal scoring. That would be my advice for you…..get your team doing some attacking patterns and they will start to see when they should look for the through ball and also when they should be looking to finish. Hope that helps!
