In the single-digit years, kids have two reasons for playing soccer:

1. Getting good at it, competing and challenging themselves.

2. Being on a team with their buddies.

Some kids play for both reasons; some for just one. But at some point, they have to be split up. The kids who are playing for recreation keep playing recreationally, perhaps making a breakthrough in aptitude and interest at a later age. The other kids are herded into national training camps at age 7 to practice eight hours a day, living on a special regimen of protein-boosted smoothies … oh, no, I guess we’re not to that point. Yet.

What we actually do is this: We take the top players in each age group into “travel” soccer. In my area, that starts at U9.

But it’s creeping downward. Back in the first installment of this series, I mentioned a program that took U8 players into an Academy program in which they would practice more and play less. Here’s another club’s program: When a lot of rising U9s (and U8s looking to play up) turned out for travel tryouts, they created a program straddling the House and Travel programs. This middle “Club Academy” tier is like House league except that teams practice twice a week, and Travel players make guest appearances in their games.

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My first exposure to youth sports was at the Athens (Ga.) YMCA. We played football in the fall (flag in first grade, tackle from second grade on), basketball in the winter, soccer in the early Georgia spring and a brief softball season.

In football, we learned positions right away. I still remember mine — end in one season, guard in another. And I remember the numbering system. The backs were numbered 1 (QB), 2 (left RB), 3 (middle RB), 4 (right RB). Then we numbered holes — even numbers on the right, starting with 2 (between center and right guard), 4 (guard and tackle), 6 (tackle and end), 8 (sweep). Odd numbers on the left. So if the coach called 23 in the huddle, the QB would hand off to the left running back, who would run between the left guard and left tackle. Everyone knew which way to block.

Reminder: We’re talking about second-graders here. And though we moved tentatively and sometimes dropped the ball, we could run all the plays. They even taught us a tricky blocking scheme in which we “pulled” the guard (me) out to block the defensive end. The offensive tackle and end shifted inside to block, leaving a confused defensive end wondering why no one was blocking him. He stood there until I ran into him at full speed. Oh, how the poor kid cried. Not sure we tried that again.

The staff at the Y were all former football players, and in that day, it’s fair to say they didn’t know much about soccer. My guess is they hadn’t gone through an F license workshop or read up on the latest U.S. Soccer training guidelines. So when they put us on the field for soccer, we all got positions. Left back, right mid, goalkeeper. Off you go.

I can’t remember whether the games devolved into “mob-ball” or “magnet-ball” as you see in single-digit soccer today. I mostly remember playing goalkeeper and blaming myself when an easy shot got by. As far as I remember, my defense held its shape pretty well — probably better than it did in the adult league game I played Friday night. (“Geez, why am I running back from right mid again?! Why is our right back drifting all over the place?! My leg hurts!”)

I mention all of this because, according to what we’re taught as single-digit soccer coaches, this is impossible. Kids can’t learn positions or tactics. Don’t worry about “magnet-ball.” It’s OK for now.

Yet we learned them at the Y. The English family on my team says they learned positions at age 5 and have had to adjust to mob-ball in the USA. What’s different about modern U.S. youth soccer?

I’ve read through the new U.S. Soccer curriculum again, and I can’t quite tell whether that mindset has changed. The curriculum says players are supposed to be able to “occupy the original position in a game once an action is finished,” which I’d guess means that we’re supposed to be assigning positions. But the “tactics” space is left blank in the U5-U8 plans.

My hunch is that if we really worked on positions, we’d get them to work. But we get one hour a week of divided attention in which to teach them, and we’re supposed to be working on dribbling drills (without calling them drills) and maybe passing and shooting games.

The Y was different. We were there for two practices a week. And the same coaches who taught us to be a right tackle were there to teach us to be a center midfielder. We got the message. Perhaps with some disciplinary measures that modern parents and psychologists would frown on.

This season, I’ve tried to get my team to spread out at the very least. I took a cartoon approach. I’m telling them we don’t want this:

Let’s have two people back, but not like this:

(The two defenders are sitting back and waving at their teammates at the other end of the field, who are outnumbered 5-to-3.)

The ideal is this:

I’ve certainly seen coaches try to instill positional sense at U6 and U7. Some of them are just good-hearted and trying to do their best. Maybe they got through at some level, though it never showed in the games.

Then there’s the guy I’ve mentioned before who would stop games to tell his team how they could’ve done better on that last goal from a tactical perspective. He’s the same guy who made occasional snide comments at other coaches about their sideline instructions, and he scheduled his team for the first game each Saturday but never assigned himself to set up. While the opposing coach grunted with the portable goals, his team was running actual drills, having been driven to the game 20 minutes early by a gaggle of frightened parents. Then he would get mad at us because our players were running late. (See, parents? See what happens to your poor coach when you don’t show up on time?)

Results don’t matter at this age, but running over that team felt pretty good.