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.
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