I can tell the season is fast approaching when questions about formations and fitness start peppering the message boards I frequent.

On Tuesday nights I go play pickup soccer. I got there early tonight and several youth practices were under way. The teams present were any where from U7 rec to a decent U12 youth club team. I feel what I saw was indicative of a majority of training sessions in the United States and it clued me in as to why there are so many questions about how to get young players fitter.

What I saw could be summed up as: lines and low-intensity. Most of the practices had lines that represented decent work to rest ratios (1 active, 3 resting for 1v1s) but the games were of such low-intensity that they needed less rest or increase the work rate to get them into a cardiovascular training zone.

Increase the intensity and the fitness will follow. Increasing intensity also doesn't mean simply yelling at them to run faster. Give the players a reason to run fast, give them a reason to go harder. Design activities/drills/games that will bring this out in a natural way.

Below is an example of an activity that I modified from a recent Coerver course I attended. It's just your traditional 1v1 with a twist. Red starts off with the ball and dribbles toward blue and initiates a leave/takeover. As soon as red leaves she takes off around the third cone and blue tries to attack the goal. This is a fun one that my kids enjoy, it gets very competitive and they are running at full sprint for most of it. Adjust the distances of the cones if it's too easy/hard for attackers or defenders. Adjust orientation so it forces the use of the left foot if desired.

The diagram below is set up so the attacker can score one of two ways. Either through the gate (orange cones in penalty area) to  teach crossing or by scoring on the big goal. But you can set it up central or wide and just attack the big goal.

In the grand scheme of things, how we set up sessions matters as well. Is there a lot of down time in your session? That's okay if it's designed down time, where in certain parts of the season you allow more time for recovery, but too often I see downtime by default. Prepare ahead of time and structure your field set-up to reduce change over times—this just keeps your players motors running and helps keep their mental focus for sustained periods.

Rest is important during practice, but it goes hand in hand with working with the appropriate intensity for the appropriate amount of time. If the design of practice as a whole and individual activities is flawed then kids won't achieve match fitness. Instead of looking toward conditioning programs that older teens or even pros do to get young (read: sub U14s) players fit, lets look first at the activities we are doing.

Finally, when I go to coaching courses, even though the activities done seem simple, I make sure I jump in. I walk in the players' shoes, so to speak, so I get a feel for the flow and intensity of the. This more than anything convinced me that non-soccer conditioning for pre U16s is a dead end in most regards.

Ideas that amuse me

Attendance has sucked recently. I'm getting about half my team to practices the past two weeks due in various parts to school commitments, other activities (ugh), injuries, and vacations. I guess it can't be helped?

In other areas of life incentives are used to get people to behave a certain way. Next season, I'm going to harness this idea for improving soccer attendance.

Each season we have about 20 training sessions and 8 games. 28 opportunities for us to gather and learn. I'm mandating that each family give me $280 at the beginning of the season as a deposit ($10 per practice or match). For each practice or game they miss, they forfeit $10. So they can miss practices, but it'll cost 'em.

The second idea is to have game-jerseys with "my sayings" on the front and back. Each player will have a different message on the front and back (in addition to their number). I find myself constantly reminding them about the same things so may be visual reminders during the game will end the need to say anything at all.

Shirts would say:
"First touch away from pressure."
"Body shape."
"Check over your shoulder."
"Disguise your intent."
"Follow your pass."
"2-arms length."
"5-second rule."
"Don't give away possession." (although I don't like giving instructions in the negative)
"Both feet off ground when receiving."
"Foot on a line."

Coaching in Absentia

Unless coaching is your actual job, life comes before the game.

This past weekend I had to fly to Arizona for a long ago scheduled family vacation, unfortunately, it coincided with the start of the current season and I had to miss my team's first match. Fortunately they won 3-2.

I was worried about how they would play this game, since we moved up to the most competitive division and they had not spent the whole winter training as some of their competition. I spoke with my assistant after and he debriefed me on the match. He said it was a physical match. Immediately, my brain processed this to mean that we need to circulate the ball from player to player faster  to negate the physical play.

Another point my assistant made was that the middle was too clogged. Again, brain thinks that we'll work on build up play to the width. On the plane ride back, I kept thinking about how I'm going to really emphasize that our outside midfielders (in a 3-3-2) MUST have their heels on the touchline when we are in possession to really spread the field.

To train for this situation, I think we'll play 1 big goal to two small goals (6+GK v 3, to start). The objective will be for the team defending the big goal to play through one of the two small goals (maybe I'll place a target player beyond the small goals that they must play to) simulating how we build from the back into the middle third through width. In this situation, I'll only coach the team defending the big goal.

He also noted that the two goals we gave up were from loose balls in the box that we did not get to. First one our keeper made a diving save but gave up a rebound which their striker pounced on. The second was off a corner that wasn't cleared and sat unclaimed in front of goal until their player fired it in. Bad thing is that we gave up goals that could be fixed with just a little initiative. Good thing is that they are goals that can be resolved with a little behavior modification, as opposed to having to build a complete lesson around it.

To me, this is a technical thing. Strikers and midfielders should know to follow their shot and defenders should know that they should follow the shot in as well. All this in case of a rebound. Remember Ronaldo (the fat one) pouncing on Oliver Kahn's spilled save in the World Cup final? If there was any bigger waste of time than following in on Oliver Kahn, I don't know what is. But even the best do it. And for all of Ronaldo's brilliance, he most important national team goal was probably from one of the most basic responsibilities of a striker. Follow your shot.

Overall, physical play in our opponents disappoints me but it's not surprising. It's easy to teach. "Run harder.", "Be more aggressive.", "Knock them off the ball." Constant things I hear from opposing coaches. If I knew nothing about soccer, then I'd probably resort to this too but there's so much more to the game than basic thuggery. If you're this type of coach, stop it. Challenge yourself to grow in the game—for the kids' sake.

I apologize for the long delay between posts. Soccer season is upon us, so there is a lot less free time to write. My "free" hours are spent with coming up with training plans or administrative stuff for the team.

Our first game is this coming Sunday. In preparation, our tactical phase has been focused on when our team is in possession in the attacking third. My approach this season is to expose the young players to the context in which their technical skills will be applied in a real match. I have the luxury of having a full field to ourselves for training, so every activity is oriented on the pitch as they would see it in the game. I further reinforce this point by explaining to them why we do this drill, why it is set up how it is and where it is, and the objective.

For example, I've ran a 5v2+GK+TP (target player).

5 players try to score on a normal goal against 2 defenders. The 2 defenders try to win the ball back and play it to the target player to score points. I believe this latter part makes it more game realistic as now they work on the transition from defense to attack. All restarts come from me to either the center mid or or wide midfielders.

As a side note, we play 2-3-2, so I deploy the 5 attackers in this activity into a 2 forwards and a LM, CM, RM deployment. Again, echoing as much of actual play as possible.

At the outset, the 2 defenders could handle the attackers very well, outscoring them 4-1. But the next group did considerably much better that I had to add a third defender to increase the resistance. We cycled in players ever 3-5 minutes, with the players not participating in the 5v2 were off to the side with my assistant playing keepaway.

The following training session I wanted to work on our attacking/build up play in the middle third. After the warm up, we play what I call the end to end game. Two teams, in a 30 yard long x 40 yard wide grid. On the short edges you have a player from each team, to score a point the ball must be passed from touchline to touchline without losing possession. This works on good stuff like possession, short and long passing, receiving, and the concept of switching play.

After that, we played the End Zone game to get more work on our attacking/build up play in the middle third of the field. This was a very spirited game against the two groups and I felt they grasp the concept of penetration or playing balls behind the defense very well. They're really starting to get these concepts, but it's still a little rough.

My main concern is that their play in real matches is too vertical, too rushed. I don't want to be heavy handed and force them to possess more so their overall play isn't as crisp as I would want. For the most part, they can handle the technical demands of the game. As a group, the top third are advanced for their age technically, the rest are a little ahead of their peers but their technical game have various holes—each one different for each player.

Some coaches may think I'm forsaking their technical training for organization and tactics. Maybe on the surface, but I'm still very much invested in their technical development as ever. I'm coming to believe that it's hard to develop the all important Soccer IQ if they are not presented with the soccer situations they will face in a match. In fact, putting them in these contextual games really highlights what technical deficiencies they are lacking.

The proof will be in the pudding this weekend at their first match of the season. Can they play nice soccer together and display their individual technical qualities?

Forays into Tactical Periodization and managing Work to Rest ratios

Tactical Periodization, or "TP" from here on out, is a method in which we train the team within the four phases of a match (defending, transition from defense to attack, attack, and transition from attack to defense). The types of activities you choose bring along the technical, physical, and psychological development for the ride. I'm combining this with the basic forms of the game outlined in Bert Van Lingen's book Coaching Soccer: The Official Coaching Book of the Dutch Soccer Association.  Additionally, I've started monitoring the youngsters work to rest ratio using a stop watch. I find that I actually need a stop watch to monitor the time they are working/resting and a wrist watch to keep track of time in general so I can fit everything in my lesson plan. 

The tactical topic on Saturday was Opponents in Possession. Needless to say it was an ambitious day at training, but I think it went very very well. More than in seasons past I think the small group I had understood the idea of pressure-cover. I used the following basic forms throughout the 90-minute session: 1v1 (to goals), 2v1 (to goals), 3v2 (to goals) and 5v2 (to 3 goals). I threw in a 4v2 keepaway ("Dutch game" format) to fill about 10 minutes of time.


When the opponents are in possession our objective, obviously, is to regain possession. But so much goes into this simple act. In 1v1 I had to temper our approach: "Not too aggressive.", "Curve your run.", "Time your tackle.", "Don't get too close." It's always much easier to focus your coaching on one side of the ball than trying to fix everything. When we went to two defenders, we worked on our communication and sorting out who is the first defender, letting the first defender know they have a covering defender, and when the first defender should try to win the ball. We went over how once an attacker tries to push the ball past to pivot and step in between them and the ball. We covered spacing and angles between the two defenders. 


The other thing I dipped my toe into was managing their work to rest ratios. I'll be honest and say that I was muddling through it with my new, bright yellow stop watch. Hey, at least the parents think I'm doing some high end training even though I'm not 100% sure what I'm doing. But it's a start. Like my players, I need to challenge myself to grow for their benefit. Although I may not be entirely accurate with what I was doing, the simple act of observing how long they'd be playing allowed me to ensure that they were always playing at a high level. The rest periods felt abnormally long at times, but it gave me a good segue into teaching moments. 


Next training session, we begin our next tactical phase: Transitioning from defense to attack.

Initial post: Bringing Order to Chaos

I'm just going to start. Not much of an intro as I've been doing this for several years and establishing the back story would just take too long. . .

My U12 girls travel soccer team is playing indoor soccer these days and when time permits I head to the arena early to watch the preceding match. Usually it's not the same age group as mine, so I get a little bit different perspective on the game in general and where my team stands. I watch the game, I watch the parents watching the game and I listen to the things they say. I'm trying to glean something about their experience in order to coach better.

The game that preceded mine looked to be the same age and level but all I can say is that it was just pure chaos. Which to me immediately meant that as coaches, we're trying to bring order into an otherwise chaotic situation. Goals and chances, in this game, weren't created from some thought process—it was from a single moment of order out of minutes of chaos preceding it. Unfortunately, this seems to be indicative of much of youth soccer.

Being that not much soccer was being played, I started to count ideas—a play where a purposeful thought was evident in the actions. Sad to say in the ten minutes I was counting, I got up to three ideas from both teams combined. Most of the action was just a slapdash attempt to get foot to ball.

It may seem like bragging, but it made me happy to watch my team play. For a change, I let my assistants manage the game (lineup, substitutions) and I just watched. The match ended 4-4 but we were unlucky not to net a winner at some point. But what I was most pleased about was that we were playing soccer. Ideas were abundant and my players combined nicely in many sequences throughout the game.  

When I started coaching, the talk in coaching circles was that American players lacked good technique (which they do) and now the talk has evolved to Soccer IQ and a lack thereof. As a player, I remember the days when (and there are still those days depending on the competition) I couldn't think straight. The game was exerting so much pressure on me that I couldn't think straight (Coach V in the Soccer U DVD series appropriately calls this phenomenon "lights out"). Every action was just an act of survival, just slightly better than laying down and curling into a ball until I was subbed out. Good technique slows the game down enough so players can think. But when they can think about the game (as skill and age allow), do we teach them what to think about?

Well this is the first post of many in my attempt bring order to the chaos.