Tag: single-digit soccer

soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Parental habits develop early

Posted on by Beau Dure

This weekend, I coached a U8 All-Star team in a tournament here in suburban Northern Virginia. The kids were rambunctious but fun, and I saw a few glimpses of good soccer emerging.

They say this is a vital age for developing good habits rather than poor habits that will be hard to break. I think that’s true. But perhaps moreso for parents (and coaches) than for players.

The parents on my team were terrific. They got their kids everywhere they needed to be, on time. They put together a wonderful photo album and brought plenty of snacks for everyone. No one had any ridiculous demands. I surely didn’t hear everything they yelled in the course of the game, but I didn’t hear anything silly.

So let’s talk about some of the other teams, from what I witnessed and what I heard from other coaches:

– A U10 girl had the ball in her own half under no pressure whatsoever. A parent was maybe 10 feet away, yelling “Kick it hard!” She did, and it went about 15 yards to midfield before rolling out of play. “Good job!” the parent yelled.

– Some parents and coaches ran the length of the sideline during games to offer their high-volume input. One team’s coaches ran directly in front of my clubmates on their half of the sideline and blew vuvuzelas when their team scored. Somehow, this game didn’t end up in a massive viral-video brawl, for which I credit my clubmates. (The same club had another All-Star team with out-of-control parents, but they apparently forgot their horns.)

– U10 boys game: Player was offside by 10 yards, not called. Our club’s keeper tried to make the save and broke his wrist in the ensuing collision. Ref let play continue until the other team scored. Our club’s team also had four guys come off the field with injuries after uncalled fouls. (The opposing club, incidentally, is a D.C. United affiliate. But this is house league, so I don’t think you’ll see these kids injuring opponents in a Developmental Academy game down the road.)

– Similarly, a U8 coach was stunned to learn from the ref, a coach and parents that his players were totally out of control.

– U8 players and their coach practicing headers. (On a really, really good team — they have no house league, so this is basically a “pre-travel” team that does nothing but practice 2-3 times a week and play “pre-travel” events. But they’re nice people, and my goodness, some of their players have fantastic skills. You can tell they play more pickup soccer in a week than most suburbanites play in a year.)

It’s a strange tournament in the sense that I can’t imagine U.S. Soccer being thrilled with the game setup — five-a-side, no goalkeepers and big goals. So one of our club’s parents was lamenting the soccer on display — kids just slamming the ball toward that big goal while a coach yelled to kick it hard.

But it was fun. It’s different from our usual house-league soccer (five-a-side, smaller goals) and the pre-travel/academy/crossover league (six-a-side, goalkeepers). And I’m not sure that’s a bad thing.

A lot of U8 players lean toward magnetball — everyone gathered around the ball. This tournament may have taught them the value of keeping heads up and spreading out. (Those were the only two lessons I tried to get across in two weeks of practice: “Head up” and “Spread out.” I was tempted to add “Can’t lose,” but first of all, I don’t think they’ve seen Friday Night Lights. Second of all, you actually can lose. Third, it’s not that funny.)

From a coaching perspective, I walked into a dilemma with one player. A common complaint in youth-soccer circles is that parents and coaches try to discourage dribbling and make kids pass it. I had someone with the best one-on-one dribbling skills I’ve seen. And sometimes one-on-two. When it got to be one-on-three or one-on-four, it was hard not to notice the teammate standing wide open in front of the goal, and it was hard not to be a little frustrated when he finally lost the ball without attempting that pass.

But I think the kids are learning. We saw some beautiful goals — a couple on clever passes, a couple on terrific individual efforts, a couple on loose balls, and a couple of pure accidents. We didn’t magically turn players into technically and tactically sound soccer players, but they made progress.

So what do we do about the adults?

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: An Easter Lilly for coaches and players

Posted on by Beau Dure

I envy soccer coaches of the 2020s. They will be able to call up apps that keep the attention of their easily distracted players to show them drills. (Yes, my first practices of the season included a few reminders that the most important part of the body in soccer isn’t the foot or the head — it’s the ears.)

We’re starting to see a few steps in that direction. The latest is an intriguing ebook from Kristine Lilly and Coerver Coaching. (HT: Equalizer Soccer)

The one issue I see: Like a lot of “youth soccer” publications and videos, the audience isn’t defined. Is it geared toward girls who want role models, like so many Mia Hamm publications? Is it geared toward soccer coaches who need drills and a good way to demonstrate them without running all over the field and losing their players’ attention? (Please?) Or is it geared toward parents who want to show their kids a few good moves they can try on their own? It’s all three, and that’s going to make this ebook difficult to market.

But for patient consumers, the good news is that the ebook seems to satisfy a couple of those audiences. If you’ve read the stories of the 99ers and North Carolina’s dynasty a million times over, you can skip all that and check out Lilly’s nifty moves on the field. (To nit-pick: “The Lilly” seems like a slower version of “The Cruyff.” But I can’t do the Cruyff effectively, so maybe I can try the Lilly sometime when my teammates won’t scream at me.)

Ebooks and apps are only going to get better and better. I’d love to get involved with them, honestly. We need electronic media to teach kids the game so it’s not left to a coach trying to hold the attention of 14 players who see a dog walking by the woods. We need coaching guides that don’t look like Civil War battle re-enactment plans.

(And it wouldn’t hurt to market them for boys AND girls, whether it’s Kristine Lilly or Brian McBride doing the demonstrations.)

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Who cares about the stakes?

Posted on by Beau Dure

Earlier this month, I did an interview with CBC radio about Ontario’s proposal to get rid of official scores and standings for soccer players under age 12. I made a passing reference to my over-30 coed indoor team and our overly competitive games with nothing at stake but a T-shirt for a division champion.

The CBC wasn’t there to capture it, but a couple of days later, we had a perfect illustration of the point.

The problems started before the game. I had never seen a roster eligibility challenge in an over-30 coed rec league before, but lo and behold, we had one. The result: We had only two female players, which meant they would have to play the whole way.

Our opponents were rather smug about it, too. They might have been a little less conceited if we had challenged a couple of their players, but we weren’t going to go there. We’ve paid money to play soccer. We just want to play.

They spent the first 10 minutes of the game establishing a “physical” presence on the field. I was tempted to toss off my gloves and walk off. This wasn’t fun.

Thankfully, the ref took control. He started blowing his whistle, which clearly startled some of our opponents. They were used to whacking people in the back with impunity.

At the end of the game, I went up to thank the ref for minimizing our bruises. I had to wait, though, because someone from the other team was yelling at him. I don’t speak much Spanish, but I’m pretty sure it wasn’t, “GREAT GAME! HEY, DID YOU SEE THAT MESSI GOAL LAST WEEK? THAT WAS SICK!”

Oh, by the way, they won.

So even after winning both the game and an unprecedented (as far as I know) pregame roster challenge, this guy needed to voice his complaints about the ref having the temerity to whistle maybe five of the 50 fouls they committed during the game.

We know we lost the game, and we know our record this season. We don’t know theirs. They don’t know ours.

And that’s why I’m a little skeptical of the idea that players and coaches will start focusing on the right way to play when there’s little at stake and no standings to peruse. Overly aggressive people need other means of restraint. Like a good ref. Or maybe having a few beers before the game. (That won’t work at youth level, of course. Especially not for the parents.)

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: “Messi would never have made it in the USA”

Posted on by Beau Dure

The U.S. youth soccer system is often criticized as too Anglo. Too athletic. Too focused on big brawny suburbanites, too resistant to Hispanic players and their magical ball skills.

And so the argument goes that if Lionel Messi had been raised in the USA, he wouldn’t have made it.

To which I say: B&*$%@!

As evidence, allow to present a quick peek at the most hyped U.S. player in history:

If you saw Freddy Adu play over the years, you know he was never a dominant physical specimen. He could be explosive with the ball, but he’s not the fastest guy in the world. And he’s not a big guy.

If anything, Messi is more physically imposing than Adu. Messi can score goals with defenders draped on him. Adu is more likely to be muscled off the ball.

Maybe the Ghanaian pickup games in which Adu learned his trade were better for development than American U8 games. Fine. But it’s a fallacy to think a 10-year-old Messi would be overlooked by U.S. teams.

Then we would ruin his career.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: The score is always 0-0

Posted on by Beau Dure

Perhaps Caddyshack was ahead of its time. Chevy Chase’s character just went out and played golf — very well. Score? Nah. Didn’t keep it.

A lot of youth soccer leagues don’t keep score in the early ages — in our case, we don’t keep track until U9. And the travel leagues don’t keep standings until U11. (Oddly enough, our U9 house league had standings on the Web for all the world to see.)

In Canada, they’re going a step farther. Under age 12, no scores, no standings. (UPDATE: Here’s some info about the plan as a whole, which addresses far more than scores and standings.)

In a country in that loves its hockey fights, such a plan is going to draw some flak. Fighting back against those critics is player-turned-commentator Jason deVos, who issued a strongly worded defense of the plan against what he calls ignorance and misinformation.

Jason is a sharp guy who does his research, and I’m sure a lot of the critics (Don Cherry? Really?) don’t fit that description. He’s got some backup from a thoughtful Toronto Star column on competition vs. cooperation, A couple of other columnists, including Duane Rollins, think the plan’s backers are losing the PR war. There’s no question that some of the concerns raised in this plan are valid.

But to give a sneak peek at the book I’m writing now, I’m a little skeptical about turning off the scoreboard. And that’s based not on Don Cherry’s macho notions of sports but on my experience coaching a wide range of kids — some exceptional, some decidedly average.

One point from the deVos column:

This pressure-filled environment has nasty repercussions for children. Rather than fostering their natural creativity and curiosity about the game, it stunts their development. In such an environment, children are not free to make the mistakes that are necessary for learning to occur. They play the game with a sense of dread, fearful that a mistake will lead to a goal against or a lost game.

Valid concern. But does that pressure go away when the parents aren’t writing down a score? Jason and others concede, correctly, that the kids know what’s going on. I’ve seen kids in U8 games get upset when things aren’t going their way, even though I shut off all discussion of score-keeping. “When we kick off again, the score’s 0-0.”

So the pressure of mistakes is still there. What we lose in the Canadian plan is the accomplishment of winning.

Last season, the first season my U9 team had scores, we had a rough regular season. Then we played a season-ending tournament in which everything suddenly came together. We beat two teams that had beaten us in the regular season to reach a final against a third that was unbeaten through nine games. We won that one, too.

The scoreboard critics say such things mean more to parents and coaches than they do to kids. I’m not so sure. My kids were experiencing the thrill of victory. One parent told me, “He’ll remember this for the rest of his life.”

Another consideration deVos raises:

They have taken an adult competition format, involving promotion and relegation, and imposed it on children.

My impression of promotion and relegation in youth soccer is that it’s there to keep teams of similar ability grouped together. You won’t have any 10-0 blowouts, regardless of whether anyone’s officially counting the 10 goals. And elite U10-U11 players will be challenged rather than relying on a handful of tricks and athletic ability to overwhelm a bunch of kids who haven’t developed yet.

One way to do this without putting too much pressure on kids is to keep the division structure opaque. I played for a U14 team that was “promoted.” To this day, I don’t know what we were promoted from or to. Division 1? Of what? Was there a Premier League above that? Was this all of Georgia or just Atlanta-through-Athens? Good thing the Web didn’t exist in those days.)

(One possible irony, though I can’t find enough detail on the Canadian plan to confirm this: Will they still have tryouts for elite teams? If so, are we just substituting individual accomplishment — making an elite team — for team accomplishment such as winning?)

And is the best course of action for elite players the best course for everyone? Steven Sandor isn’t so sure:

Not keeping score will, if done in an elitist manner (which, unfortunately, our insular Canadian soccer tends to do pretty well) drive the average kids away. But, there’s no doubt that the no-score system helps the elite kids.

In other words — the vast majority of kids playing soccer at age 11 aren’t going to be professionals. Many of them won’t even play at age 14. That scares a lot of soccer people to death, but really, it’s OK. A lot of 11-year-olds play several sports and then choose one on which to focus at age 14. (For me, it was running, which was a really stupid idea in retrospect.) When I talked with MLS draftees last month in Indy, most of them had done exactly that, laying down their basketballs and baseball gloves in their teens.

So for these kids, all they’ll remember of soccer is a bunch of scoreless games, all designed to prepare them for a future that they weren’t going to pursue?

The best axiom I’ve heard for youth sports is simple: “Let kids be kids.” The soccer community tends to forget that youth sports are supposed to be a kid’s activity, not just a breeding ground for future World Cup players. A lot of these kids want to play games and tournaments with trophies on the line. Why rob them of that experience? “Because the rest of the world does it,” frankly, isn’t a good argument. And you’re still going to have good coaches helping players improve while bad coaches just try to win, even unofficially, by any means necessary.

I think there’s a creative way to address the valid concerns deVos and others are raising. We’re already doing a lot. We delay scorekeeping and standings for a few years already. Even when we start traditional league play, we rotate kids through different positions and spread out the playing time, giving everyone a complete soccer experience.

Maybe it’s as simple as having a lot of “exhibition” or scrimmage games that don’t count toward standings, then a tournament at the end of each season. Maybe it’s something more clever than that.

The important part is to continue the discussion, not to end it with a concrete plan handed down from Canada’s Olympus. Daniel Squizzato puts it well: “Don’t confuse legitimate criticism of the (Canadian) plan with an outright aversion to change.” Change is good. Realistic change is better.

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Pelada and the love of the game

Posted on by Beau Dure

A couple of seasons ago, when I gathered one of my youth teams for our first practice, I told them I had the best toy ever invented. Around the world, you could find people who have no concept of a Wii or an Xbox, but if you handed them this particular thing, they would be happy to play for hours.

Then I held up a soccer ball.

This exchange is one of many reasons my players consider me an eccentric. They don’t realize that the rest of the world sees soccer not as something to be played in a designated hour when their parents get them to a practice field, but something to be played anytime and anywhere.

I thought about that contrast when I did something I’ve wanted to do for two years but somehow hadn’t found the time. I watched the film Pelada, in which former Notre Dame player Luke Boughen and fellow Duke alum Gwendolyn Oxenham travel the world and hop into as many pickup soccer games as they can.

They do their best to keep the film unpredictable. No one’s going to be surprised that a trip to South America will turn up some passionate soccer games. Boughen and Oxenham find a few twists. In Brazil, they find a group of grumpy old men who fuss at each other on the field in their Sunday games but bury it all to have a beer or two afterwards. In Bolivia, they bribe their way into the site of some epic pickup games — a local prison.

They don’t do much in Europe other than helping the police locate the people who sold them counterfeit Euro 2008 tickets. But the African and Asian legs are fascinating. In Kenya, they find a man who reclaimed a trash dump as a soccer field and has put in so much work on the project that people assume he’s being paid to do it. In China, where the national team is a quadrennial disappointment, they find some freestylists whose moves blow away the trick-loving Boughen. In Tokyo, where space is scarce, they find rooftop soccer.

Their idealism is challenged in Israel and Iran, in scenes that nearly made me want to rip the COEXIST sticker off my car. In Israel, Arabs and Jews share a soccer field, but it’s an uneasy coexistence. When Boughen scores for a Jewish pickup side, the Arab team refuses to believe it — even after consulting the documentary crew’s camera. In Iran, the filmmakers are summoned before a government body when word gets around that Oxenham, dutifully covering her hair in a headscarf, has played a pickup game with men.

But on the whole, it’s a happy film. It shows how deeply this game is entrenched in the world and how much joy it brings. (I’ll confess that I was hoping, for sake of diversity or perhaps for my own ego, that they would find some players who play as badly as I do.)

If that doesn’t convince you to watch the film, let Ray Hudson persuade you:

So as a fan, I found the film a lot of fun. As a player, it made me wish I had kept up my foot skills or at least my cardio.

How about as a coach of young players? What can I learn from this film on that front?

It’s tempting to ask what I can do to get my teams to love the game as much as Oxenham and Boughen love it. But *I* don’t even love the game quite that much. I was a promising U14 sweeper who quit playing because I wanted to run track, play chess and act in plays instead of dealing with the guys on the high school soccer team. Now I show my love for the game by coaching a couple of youth teams and hoping my adult indoor team can use me in goal rather than in the field, where I’m winded after a few minutes.

The accusation against most youth coaches is that we’re “joystick coaches,” always yelling at kids to spread out and pass. (Or worse, “boot it.”) The prevailing thought is that if we ease up a bit and “let the kids play,” they’ll love the game a bit more and play it a bit better.

Here’s the problem: Young kids in the USA gravitate toward magnetball, with a mob of kids chasing the ball. By the time we grow up and play small-sided games as adults, we spread out and play a style more akin to Pelada, though we still have the occasional showboating jerk who steps up at forward and never thinks about helping out on defense. But you’re not going to roll a ball out to a group of 7-year-old Americans and see what you can see in Pelada.

I’m not sure whether 7-year-olds in other countries have better instincts. We don’t see a lot of kids in Pelada. But we know we don’t have as many neighborhood pickup fields here as they do in the other countries in Pelada. Nor do our kids watch quite as much soccer.

It’d be an interesting contrast for the Pelada crew come to one of my practices. The kids are easily distracted. They usually prefer punting the ball as far as they can to trying any of the fancy moves most players have in Pelada. I spend a lot of dealing with players whose parents want them to try a team sport. Or some players who are indifferent.

Some will become travel soccer stars. Most won’t. But I hope they’ll all enjoy the game well enough to appreciate it, watch it, maybe play it a little.

Because, frankly, my 30-and-over team needs some help.

 

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Single-Digit Soccer: Flunk the 2-3-1?

Posted on by Beau Dure

After a long day on the field, I came home and found this video on possible 7v7 or 8v8 formations:

So basically, anything other than a 2-3-1.

In the U.S. Soccer curriculum handed down a couple of years ago, the recommended 7v7 formation (see p. 31 of the PDF) is … a 2-3-1.

Uh oh.

When I started with U9s this season, I went with the curriculum. Even showed my team a little photo gallery explaining how to make it work.

The curriculum, on the other hand, does not explain how to make it work.

And that raises the question of whether I can make it work. Or whether I should try to shift gears midseason.

I get Mr. Video’s complaints about the 2-3-1. The defenders and wing midfielders have a lot of space to cover. The center midfielder has a complex role.

On my team, though, coverage isn’t a problem. The center mid is everywhere. I take the players with uncontainable energy and play them there.

The other issue, less specific to my team’s idiosyncrasies: Do we really want to take four players (three defenders and a goalkeeper) and tell them they’re not playing offense?

Yeah, yeah, I know — the outside backs can move up the field. Some kids will get that, some won’t.

So what would you do?

2015 update: This post remains popular to this day. If you enjoyed it, please check out my book, Single-Digit Soccer, which you can get for roughly the price of a latte and a tip. (You DO tip your baristas, right?)

 

 

 

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soccer

Single-Digit Soccer: Go your own way

Posted on by Beau Dure
Yeah, they might be friendly, but do you want to risk it?

A new season has started, and we’re noticing that we’re not on the same page.

And those are the adults. The kids? Yeah, they’re all over the place.

I’ve started coaching U9, where we have enough players on the field to talk about actual “formations.” This is a new concept for those who have been playing 5v5 ball in which the overriding tactical comment is, “Oh, please, in the name of all that’s holy, would you SPREAD OUT?!”

So I used the illustration here to show how playing in a formation doesn’t mean that our defenders should be 40 yards behind our midfielders (our field is 50, maybe a little more). A pro coach would point to all the tactical reasons to play closer to midfield. In my case, I’m telling them a flying saucer will land if they leave too much space.

That’s how I’m getting the kids on the same page. The adults? Not my place to do so, and probably impossible.

Two things that have come up this month to show that all the U.S. Soccer curricula and local club guidelines in the world aren’t getting all the coaches to get with the program.

1. Practice? It’s quite clear in our local club that the single-digit House teams are supposed to practice once a week. You can’t get a practice-field slot for more than one session a week.

One of our U7 teams, though, has come up with a second (optional) practice during the week somehow. Not sure where it is.

Now here’s the funny part. Our club offers a “crossover” program in which U7 players can work with professional coaches once a week and play a couple of extra games, like a mini-travel team. There’s also a cheaper skills-training session with pro coaches once a week. So players can actually get a second practice — even a third, if they do both sessions — with professional coaches each week. (Granted, those sessions aren’t free.)

I’m not sure whether I should object to this team practicing twice a week. We in the USA fret that our kids don’t go out and play more soccer on their own, so if they want to play somewhere with their teammates without a formal pro-coaching session, that should be OK, right?

Maybe I’m just scratching my head and wondering why certain coaches always get players and families who are so serious about the game, while I’ve spent a lot of my past seasons cat-herding and pleading with parents to get to games on time. I’ve seen parents on several teams in our club who were quite clearly looking at soccer practice as an hour of day care. (This is not directed at my current teams, who are awesome!)

And maybe I’m a little worried that my young team with solid enthusiasm and talent has opened against a U7 team that looked like a teenage Brazilian futsal team, and then we have to play this twice-a-week team pretty soon.

The only solution I see here is some sort of draconian talent-dispersion tool, like the Little League I knew growing up that held a player draft to make the teams equal. Surely that solution is worse than the problem.

The second issue might spur more conversation …

2. Speed! I saw a U8 team practicing with remarkable speed and precision. Turned out I knew a couple of the players and coaches involved, so I had a chance to chat.

From these enthusiastic folks, I learned that they’ve had a lot of success — including a summer tournament win (reminder: rising U8, where we don’t keep scores in the leagues). And the secret?

They do a lot of speed workouts. They may not be the most skilled team, but they can beat people because they’re used to going fast.

If you’ve bought into the notion that player development is more important than winning, as every youth organization wants us to believe, your head is spinning. If you’re worried that U.S. youth coaches prize athleticism over skills, your head is spinning faster.

So here’s your challenge: How do you convince this team they’re doing the wrong thing? The kids are having fun. The coaches are having fun. They’re getting good exercise.

How do you convince them that some general long-term goal is more important than what they’re doing right now? Or should you?

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Single-Digit Soccer: What age for travel? Tryouts?

Posted on by Beau Dure

We’re in the midst of travel tryouts, in between massive thunderstorms. That means a bunch of second-graders are out showing their stuff, hoping to make the cut for U9.

Of course, we’re not supposed to be doing that, according to … well, everyone. No one seems to be making the case for starting travel soccer at the U9 level, and yet everyone’s doing it.

Consider the U.S. Soccer “Best Practices” guide (PDF). They recommend “a few organized matches per season” and “little or no travel” through U10. (I’m not saying I agree with everything here. They say 9-year-olds should NOT be organized and hold their positions. The reality: Competitive 8-year-olds with a real interest in soccer want to play real games. They’re sick of “magnetball” — particularly if they’re little guys who don’t fare well in a scrum.)

SoccerIndiana.org did a neat state-by-state survey (PDF) asking when “competitive play” begins. Most states started around 10 or 11. Most directors surveyed said they’d rather start a little later.

Then there’s this essay based partly on the book Game On by Tom Farrey, which suggests that we Americans are the only ones pushing our kids to play such organized sports so early in life. (The English parent on my team would disagree.) It points to a real issue with having travel tryouts so early — the “early bloomers” could end up getting all the coaching attention. I think my club is trying to address this problem by having programs geared toward House players as well as Travel players, which is one reason I like my club!

I can see a couple of advantages to having tryouts and travel soccer early. Some kids really want that level of competition. And serious players can get serious coaching without being bogged down by the daisy-pickers who drive us U8 parent coaches to distraction.

But can we do that without putting 8-year-old kids through a meat-grinder tryout at an age in which it’s really difficult to spot the best players?

I think so, and the answer may be what some local clubs are doing at the U8 level. Offer additional programs to your House league. And don’t have tryouts for them. The most serious players — who, not coincidentally, will usually be the best players as well — will sign up.

Give everyone the “free play” so treasured by the youth soccer cognoscenti these days. Then give the most soccer-savvy players a chance to do a little more.

At least, that’s the hypothesis I’m sticking with for now. That might change tomorrow. These aren’t easy questions with easy answers. But the good news is that no one’s listening to me.

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