The Game Within the Child

When you watch a first-time soccer player, regardless of age, she tends to move slowly and react to the ball instead of controlling it. The touch is too hard or too soft, not like Goldilocks, just right. When the ball is coming at him, he struggles to decide how to get it under control. If you have spent any time around novice players, these images should be familiar to you. With the start of a new season, our program always gets a lot of players new to the game in every age group. Since I never played the game until I was a junior in high school, I am the prime example of an older player just starting out. A recreational coach can never depend on all of his or her players having had prior experience. In fact, the most common comment I receive from coaches is that there is such a wide range of abilities on their teams that they have difficulty making the practice appropriate for everyone. While I have always been skills focused in my approach to player development (at the expense o...

A few weeks ago, I published an article on some common phrases I use in training. One of those phrases is "show your teammates your hips and the defender your backside." After publishing that article, I headed out to a training session where I was working on one of our core skills which is shielding/turning with the ball. I worked with both a 8U group and a 12U group that night and all but a few players had the same problem: turning into the defender. It is a frustration that both the coach and the player share. If you turn into the defender, there is a high probability that you will lose the ball and have to work hard to get it back. Unfortunately, it is also a behavior we do innately. It is the fastest way to change directions and if no one is on you, then you don't have to worry about how you turn. So when you are coaching this skill, it takes a lot of patience and focus to create the right conditions for skill development. Below, I have the text from my previous a...