The Game Within the Child

U12 is a great age to play soccer. The game speed is much higher than in U12 and players are starting to think ahead. There is a marked improvement in skills and players can show a wider variety of skills. Long passing enters the equation for both crossing the ball and playing it forward early to break pressure. Players are finally allowed to head the ball and they start to settle into more clearly defined positions. With our implementation of the new US Youth Soccer Association (USYSA) recommendations, the U12 grows from 7 v 7 to 9 v 9. More players on the field makes the game more complex, so the challenge for you is how do you prepare the players to first survive and then excel at the game. The most obvious strategy is to focus on the three core skills: dribbling, shield/turn and controlling the ball for your least experienced/ skilled players. Each of these can be developed using the  model training session  I have posted elsewhere on this blog. It mixes the core skil...

U10 is a great age, the players have longer attention spans and some of the higher order thinking required of a good soccer player begins to show at this age. They become capable of a greater range of skills and their physical development make the game much faster. With our implementation of the new US Youth Soccer Association (USYSA) recommendations, the U10 grows from a six a side game to a 7 v 7. More players on the field makes the game more complex, so the challenge for you is how do you prepare the players to first survive and then excel at the game. The most obvious strategy is to focus on the three core skills: dribbling, shield/turn and controlling the ball for your least experienced/ skilled players. Each of these can be developed using the model training session I have posted elsewhere on this blog. It mixes the core skills along with some physical training, building up to a game to finish off the practice. I have also searched youtube and found some good exercises to...

Working with 6-7 year old players means that you will be asked to engage, entertain and entreat them. While it is a chore to keep their attention sometimes, there are other times where they will act like a sponge and pick up everything you ask them to do. As a high school teacher during the day, I constantly encounter peers who say that they couldn't deal with a group of 6 and 7 year olds. With a spouse who is an elementary school teacher, I hear comments from her peers about how they couldn't handle older children. For some reason, that has never been an issue for me. I don't know why, but I can coach any age and not be intimidated or uncomfortable. For over 20 years, I have taught parent coaches how to work with the U8 player. The past seven years, I have been able to watch these coaches then go out and try to coach. This is not to say that a 4 hour training session or a season's worth of experience will make someone a master coach, but I should expect to see some i...