The Game Within the Child

  4/12/23 Key Takeaways from ATLUTD coaches clinic We had a good turnout of coaches for the clinic, but I know all of you couldn’t make it, so here are some key takeaways for you to think about.  Look like you are having fun and your players will too…. All of our coaches are parent volunteers. We have tried in the past to get help from HS and College students who were knowledgeable about soccer, but it rarely works out because they are either not good with the kids or don’t communicate well with the parents. I’d rather have parents who know how they would want to be treated even if their soccer experience isn’t great.  One of the issues that crops up is that our parent volunteers have difficulty getting out of “parent mode” even when they are the coach of the team. What we saw from Leigh and Casey, the coach instructors last night, was an ability to get a little silly with the players. Their enthusiasm for the activities they were doing was infectious and the kids felt it...

  Your tone sets the tone.  I like to think that I am the face of the recreational program here at Impact, but the reality is that besides for a few emails, some practices if you attend the group sessions and the occasional drop by at your games, the real face of the program is you. When our membership thinks about the program, the first thing they will recall is you and how you helped their child grow and develop as a person.  While most of your interactions with the players happen during practice, there is one time when your interactions are apparent to others as well and that is during the game. Not only is the other team there, but also some collection of parents, grandparents, siblings and friends may also be in attendance. While your parents may be accustomed to your behaviors and what you say, others may not be, especially if they are only visiting our club.  As a long-time teacher I am very aware that even though we are ostensibly there to watch the children ...

  Back in 2017, Atlanta United played their first season and there was great concern that like past professional teams in hockey and soccer it would burn brightly, taper out and then go away. Growing up in S. Florida, I was a Dolphins and Heat fan and thanks to Ted Turner’s Superstation, I was an Atlanta Braves fan. When I moved to Georgia, I never changed allegiances on any of those. Having said that, I also never owned a jersey, t-shirt or other merch from any of my favorite teams in adulthood. Atlanta United was different. I bought merch before the first season and made it a point to attend games. Once I did attend games, I was hooked and even my daughter and wife are fans as well. The experience is simply fundamentally different than at other events and it’s something that we all enjoy.  Having a background in soccer definitely helped me, but where did all of the other fans come from? It turns out that video games like FIFA were a big source of fans not only for AUFC, but ...

 Picture a beautiful spring evening, sunny and not too warm. A great game is being played between two evenly matched U12 teams. While this is a game between two recreational teams, many of the players from both teams would be comfortably playing at the academy level. The game is close throughout and late in the second half one team breaks through and scores the only goal. As the director of this program, this is really the best that I can ask for in terms of player development and having an environment where players are challenged to do their best and grow from the experience.  Unfortunately, because of scheduling issues brought on by spring weather and a chronic lack of referees in youth soccer, I am also refereeing this game. In my job description, this falls under "other duties."  Each season, I end up refereeing a few games and usually it is not a problem. My coaches and parents generally understand how they are supposed to behave and even if they don't normally act t...

American Soccer has long been derided as little more than "kickball." We have a large number of players, but produce relatively few truly outstanding players compared to a country like the Netherlands which has a much higher success rate at developing young talent. There are tons of reasons why we lag behind other countries including the lack of infrastructure and the lack of a "soccer culture" where people had grown up with the sport and therefore have parents with prior experience. Our parent coaches are often transplants from other sports that are primarily coach directed like football and baseball. Employing the same coaching strategies in soccer is not very effective due to the player-centered nature of the sport. The problem As the director of coaching for a recreational program, my most persistent problem was finding coaches for U5 and u6 teams. When I did find these coaches, they had little idea of what to do with the kids during a training session o...

We are wrapping up the season and I wanted to record some of the action so that I could see how players have grown. I have observed a great deal of growth in the players in terms of their skill and attention to the game. Many parents have commented about how their child is starting to "get it" when it comes to game play and how to use the skills we focused on in training. When I started the group training for the U5/6 in the fall of 2017, I did it because I was dissatisfied with the quality of coaching at practices and game play. I thought it would be easy to train a large group of 4/5 year olds and improve the quality of their development. As you can probably expect, it wasn't easy. Activities that are easy to do with 6-10 players on your team are almost impossible to carry out with 40-50 players. Getting 8-10 teams of players to the correct field and have the right color was crazy some weeks. Despite the challenges, I was able to modify the sessions to focus on my p...

I had the chance to observe two U12 games this past weekend. Both games featured some quality play by both teams. One game was close, the other was not close. Even in the game that was not close, the losing team was creating chances to score so it felt more even than the score would indicate. What really differentiated these two games was the behavior of the parents and the coaches. In one game, the majority of the talking was coming from adults on the sidelines in the other game it came from the players in the game. If you have read some of my other articles (the cheer don't steer program, "helping" your players during the game), you probably already know that I prefer the game where the players are talking. I thought it might be helpful for us to consider why parents and coaches feel compelled to speak during the game. You already know that soccer is a player-directed sport where the coach can have little impact on the game because it is moving so fast, there are fe...

Bottom Line? Cheer like crazy, don't tell them what to do. For years, I have observed this interesting phenomenon with our youngest players, when a goal was scored, everyone cheered except the kids playing the game. They would look around at all the adults shouting and have little idea why they were all shouting. Because they hadn't grown up watching soccer and many have never even touched a ball before their parents took them to the first practice or game, they had no idea what to do. Through my practices and coaching education courses and coaches meetings, I tried to emphasize teaching the kids how to celebrate after they scored a goal so that they would begin to understand why all the parents were cheering. Finally, one season, there was a U6 player who had watched soccer on TV and played with his family. He knew exactly what to do and was able to emulate multiple soccer stars goal celebrations. He was so good that he even helped his teammates celebrate their goals as we...

I offer group training sessions once a week during the season for U6-U14 age groups in my club. The sessions are open to all players in each of those age groups. Because these are my target age groups and comprise the bulk of the club, it offers me a chance to implement my philosophy more consistently than other approaches I have used in the past. This is the fourth season I have had the pleasure to work with these age groups in this format. I have learned a lot about how to manage a training session for a diverse group of players and keep it fresh for those who have been in attendance for each of the four seasons worth of sessions. For me, it has been a tremendous growth experience and I have had the chance to see players grow in confidence and love of the sport. A couple of weeks ago, I got this hand drawn picture from one of the U6 players and a hug. That experience reinforced my subjective opinion of the program and complemented the objective improvement in skills that I have been ...

So you have decided to enroll your child in our soccer program. If you have no experience with soccer, then this article is for you. First, I wanted to talk to you about the nature of the game. Unlike baseball or football or organized basketball, the game does not have any plays. As a result, the role of the coach during practices and games is different. Instead of the coach controlling the action and the players working hard to run the play the exact same way every time, players get control of the game. If you can imagine, every time the player gets the ball, the situation is different and the player has to come up with a way to solve the problem. The solution to every problem requires ball skills like dribbling, controlling the ball and shielding/turning with the ball. As a result, our practices should include lots of time on the ball. The exercises that the players do should require them to make decisions and use their skills to carry out their decisions. They should also focu...

When I first earned my A license back a really long time ago, I got the pleasure of having the last session and the topic of high pressure defending. The players (and coaches who were playing) were dog tired and it was going to be hard to run a session and play a game that required a high-intensity effort. I gave the team a few visual cues and sent them out to play. They had had a couple of opportunities to go into high pressure mode, but I was following the advice of my instructors and letting the players see if they could identify the opportunity. Then one of my evaluators came up and told me that if my team didn't score in 4 minutes, I was fired. Knowing my success or failure in this course was on the line, I stopped the action at the next opportunity using the freeze technique . Since this was a corrective point, I had a chance to give the players a short breather while we reviewed what I wanted them to do. The breather re-energized the players and they used the cues on the nex...

If there is one issue that crops up in youth soccer more than any other, it is when games are not competitive. As a young coach, I experienced it first-hand with my U12 boys team when we played the team where the coach was the president of the league. Even though it was AYSO and the teams were supposed to be balanced so that there shouldn't have been any major mismatches, this team dominated every other team including mine. That wasn't such a big problem for me except that every time this team scored, the team mom would hit the play button on the boom box and Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger" would blast out of the speakers. It really symbolized to me that this coach didn't have any idea how it looked when you played a celebration song for the last goal in a 9-0 win. I have also been on the other side of that scoreline a few times at the HS level. The last time, my team was up 8-0 and I was encouraging my team to pass the ball around and possess it, but we ended...

I once had a parent/coach in my program who was an accomplished coach who had a talented child. The child played multiple sports and excelled at each of them. For this reason, he only played in my program every other season. His father was his coach initially, but wasn't able to work coaching into his schedule after the first season, so he had to relinquish coaching to others. I would see him on the parent's side of the field, pacing, fists clenched. He would yell instructions to his son (sometimes other players) and always looked unhappy. Sometimes other parents would report his behavior to me when I wasn't around. When I did talk to him, he was always reasonable, but he was never happy either with his son's play or the coaching that he was receiving. Do you get the picture? I was reminded of this recently when I came across this excellent article from Go Play Better, a website dedicated to improving youth sports by focusing on player development and teamwork. Thei...