The 4 v 4 game

BYJohn Murnan

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U8 Coaches Training Manual

Table of Contents............................................................................................................................Preface to the third edition 4

...................................................................................................................................................Introduction 6

....................................................................................................CHARACTERISTICS OF U8 PLAYERS 7

............................................................................................They go at 1 speed (fast) and in two directions 7.....................................................................................Their bodies do not benefit from the training effect 7

...........................................................................................They need training for agility and coordination 7...........................................................................They are willing to give the ball to somebody they know. 8

.............................................................................................................They are still very concrete thinkers 8..................................Just because he knows how to pass, doesn’t mean he knows when or where to pass 8

.................................................................................................Players will criticize others without a filter. 8..............................................................................................Players are sensitive to any kind of criticism. 8

........................................................................................................Players can work successfully in pairs. 9

..............................................THINGS TO THINK ABOUT BEFORE DEVELOPING A PRACTICE 10

........................................................................................................................................Avoiding the 3L's 10..................................................................................................................What does a practice look like? 13

...................................................................................................Activities build from simple to complex. 13..................................................................................................................................Variations on a theme 14...................................................................................................................................Watching an activity 17

.........................................................................................................................................Making the point 19...............................................................................................................................Sequence of Activities: 20

........................................................................................................................What do I teach at practice? 21..............................................................................................................What games do I play at practice? 22

................................................................................................................................4X4 PLAYING RULES 23

...............................................................................................................ACTIVITIES FOR PRACTICES 26

......................................................................................................................MOVEMENT EDUCATION 26.............................................................................................................................................TAG GAMES 30

.................................................................................................................................................RETRIEVE 33....................................................................................................................................GRID ACTIVITIES 34

....................................................................................................................................................The Game 40

.........................................................................................................OTHER ASPECTS OF COACHING 41

..............................................................................................................................................Helpful Links 53.......................................................................................................................................About the Author: 53

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Preface to the Fourth edition

I have finally gotten around to updating this publication after seven years and there area lot of new things that I have learned in that time. Most of what I have written in pasteditions is still pretty good and I haven’t had to edit out much. I have however havelearned a great deal this past fall that I think can help you be a better coach.

Be enthusiastic

One of the most important aspects of coaching is selling yourself to your audience. Asparents, we have learned how to be, well, parents. We always want our kids to bebehaved and we want them to try hard and we want them to be consistent. We arequick with our advice and loud with our delivery of said advice. While being a coach hasa lot of similarity to being a parent, there is one major difference between the two,ENTHUSIASM.

Now lots of parents are enthusiastic about the game or about their child’s performance,but when the same parent takes on the role of coach, that enthusiasm can disappear.The kind of enthusiasm I am referring to is the same one a great salesperson shows forhis or her work. That salesperson might be stuck selling refrigerators to Eskimos, but heor she is happy and enthusiastic about the prospect. When you are working withchildren, the success or failure of an activity can often be predicted by the way you sellthe activity to the kids. If you sound genuinely excited about the activity, so will the kids.If you look like you are enjoying yourself, so will your kids.

Bottom line? Loosen up a bit and excite the imagination of the children. It will make thepractice go faster, you will get more accomplished and you will have fewer disciplineissues. What can be better than that.

Shield and turn

The more I watch younger players the more I notice how difficult it is for them to runtowards their own goal and turn with the ball. Regardless of age, most will simply turnand kick the ball away. While it is unrealistic to expect U8 players to be able to turn andtake on a defender, we can start to help them solve the problem. I have somesuggestions in the model training exercises that may help. Try them out and see.

The BounceWe already know that players have difficulty dealing with bouncing balls. We have exercises that deal with a bouncing ball, but one idea might help your kids more than any other. Ask the kids to make a throw in that goes to the feet of a teammate. This simple act will increase the chances that a player can control the ball and do something positive with it.

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Preface to the third edition

It has been two years since I updated the U8 book and I wanted to spend a minute to point out some new features.

Flexibility Although U6 players typically don’t have to worry about flexibility exercises, I incorporated the flexibility section into this book because so many coaches do not do appropriate flexibility exercises at any age. During my years as an athletic trainer, exercise physiologist and having taken the odd dance class, I learned this sequence of stretches. I do them with every team I work with and I hope that you will incorporate them into your team as well.

Finding your voiceThis section has to do with you finding yourself as a coach. Most coaches in the U6 age group are parents with little soccer experience; this section might not really help you much in the first year or two. However if you are going to be coaching for a while, then this section can help you become a more effective coach. I loved to coach soccer, but I can’t say that I was a very good coach until just a few years ago. Since I have never been a quick study that is not a really surprising statement. However, once I became aware that I was getting much better, I began to notice characteristics of less experienced coaches. In particular, I could see which coaches were capable of being very good even if they weren’t that great currently. Hopefully, some of what I have learned will help you become a better coach.

Variations on a themeI teach this idea in every coaching education course and it was just recently that I realized why this method of teaching is more effective than what is typically presented in soccer coaching books. We want our coaches to have a progression from simple to complex during their practice. We also want them to focus on a specific theme, such as dribbling. But most coaching books show practice sessions that require the coach to teach different games to the players when they move to more complex activities. Each game requires a new set up for the field and new rules explained to players before they can play. This reduces playing time and can increase chances for the players to misbehave. I suggest that coaches keep the same basic field layout for all activities during a practice and that the activities build on each other by simply adding more conditions to each activity. This reduces the management headaches that a coach will encounter and ensures that playing time is maximized for players.

Watching an activity

Anybody can look at a player passing a ball while standing still and find ways for the player to improve his or her technique. However, most coaches cannot spot the same technical errors during a game if their career depended on it. The

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reason is that inexperienced coaches tend to look at the whole game and not at individual players or small groups of players within the game. This is most clearly evident when coaches get into games. They get involved in the ebb and flow of the game and forget that they were supposed to be looking for something specific. The section on watching an activity shows you how to set clear goals for your practices and then see if the players are achieving the goals you set out.

Making the pointAs a teacher, I once heard my principal say that the medium of exchange in education was the teacher unit. Her budget was the number of teaching units that she could earn based on the formulas given by the state and the school district. In soccer coaching, the medium of exchange is the coaching point. It is that point in an exercise when you see one of your players doing exactly what you wanted him or her to do. Keeping an eye out for that moment and then seizing it to maximize your instruction is the key for any successful coach. Most coaches will stop exercises to complain about what the players are doing incorrectly, but will not stop it when they are doing it well. So every time the coach stops an activity, the players know that something bad is going to happen. The coach who can “catch the players doing well,” can have them looking forward to stoppages instead of looking for the nearest rock to hide under.

I still haven’t updated the graphics in the activities sections, but that will have to wait until the next edition.

Also in the next edition, I will be including some practice sessions that I have actually done so that you can see some of the topics that I cover and how I approach the game with the U6 players.

As always, comments are appreciated.

John

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Introduction

I would like to begin this manual by giving you a vision of what I should see when I visit your practices. Your children should be playing games as much as possible. Most of the time, the games will be soccer- related, that is they develop some specific type of soccer skill or ability. Even if they do not develop a soccer skill, they should be competitive and fun. An activity is competitive when the children are challenged to try and get better at something. The activity is fun if the children are engaged and excited and want to continue participating.

If you look at the activities in the manual, you will notice that the emphasis is on games and not drills. Not only is the word drill to be avoided, the idea of a drill is to be avoided as well. Most drills are designed to work on a specific skill in isolation. For example, lining up children to dribble through a line of cones one at a time is a drill. It is isolated from the game and has very little relationship to the game. Take those same cones, distribute them randomly in a grid and have your players try to dribble around and avoid the cones, avoid each other and keep the ball in bounds. Now you have changed a drill into a game.

There are two big reasons for playing games instead of working drills. Games provide a more realistic environment for players to participate in. They will be challenged in unique ways that will keep them interested and striving to get better. They will develop a love for the game as they notice their improvement in skill and development of talent.

Games will also reduce the amount of behavior management that you have to use. The number one complaint among coaches is that they have trouble managing the children. Children only go to practice because they know at some point that you are going to let them play. They will put up with a lot of boring activities if they know that eventually they will play the game. Now lets imagine that you are playing games the whole time and a child misbehaves. The worst thing you can do to that child is to give them a time-out and not let them play. Most of your behavior management problems are solved because the children want to play and you are letting them.

6 and 7 year olds are a great group of players to work with, because they begin to exhibit the teamwork that was non-existent with the younger players. Even though they may still steal the ball from each other, they are also more likely to work in small groups to try and score goals.

The 4 v 4 format allows every player the chance to score goals and get a lot of touches on the ball. It is a wide-open game with plenty of action. As the players begin to gain better control of the ball and their bodies, they can create some very good soccer.

However, most of the time they will make mistakes and struggle to master the skills demanded by the game. It still takes a great deal of time to learn the game and there are many things that you are going to be teaching them.

Prior to talking about soccer, lets look at the physical, social and mental abilities of 6 and 7 year olds. So remember who you are dealing with and what their abilities are BEFORE you decide what activities to run at practice. Finally, don’t forget that you will be playing games as much as possible so that your children learn to LOVE the game.

John Murnan

Copyright © 2000, 2001, 2002, 2010 John Murnan

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Characteristics of U8 Players

They go at 1 speed (fast) and in two directions 6,7 year olds are not happy when they are not active. Soccer is a dynamic sport that requires constant movement and players may have little idea of positions. Players are free to run anywhere on the field that they want to.

Players are less concrete in their thoughts than they are with 4,5 year olds, but they are still very direct in their understanding of the game. For example, if you tell a 4 year old that the cone in the corner of the field is a scary green monster, then that is what the cone is until you tell her something different. A 7-year-old understands that the cone is just a cone and that you are trying to get her to pretend that it is a monster. Like a 5 year old, the older child will still try to solve problems by the most direct method possible.

Soccer should be the perfect match for these active young children. If a practice is done correctly, children will have the opportunity to run around a lot, play some soccer and learn something about themselves. Your primary goal is to make sure that they PLAY.

Their bodies do not benefit from the training effectSimilar to 4,5 year olds, they don't benefit from the training effect, so fitness activities will have little impact on them. Adults can improve physical fitness through exercise. You can lower your heart rate and increase your strength and muscle tone. This is NOT the case for children. The primary benefit of exercise to them is improving their balance, coordination and agility.

You will not improve their lung capacity by making them run. You will not lower their resting heart rate by continuous, graded exercise. It is a waste of time to make them run laps. Every race to them is a sprint and they will give you 100% effort all the time. Because of this, running as warm-up, running as punishment, and running as fitness are all poor uses of time. Use your precious practice time for soccer-related activities.

Although flexibility exercises are also of limited usefulness for young children, incorporating flexibility exercises into the structure of practice builds good habits for when they will really need it.

They need training for agility and coordinationFor a 6-year-old, it takes most of his mental energy to control the ball and his body. You can test this principle by watching a child try to dribble a ball for the first time. Although kicking a ball is natural, dribbling is not and the child will struggle with every aspect of coordination you can think of. What you need to be doing is giving them chances to train their bodies so that dribbling comes more naturally.

Especially if a child has not started playing soccer, then they will have trouble simply controlling the ball with no pressure placed on them. Some of your players may have already played soccer for 2 or 3 years prior to this season. Others will be experiencing it for the first time. One of your goals is to create a practice which makes it challenging to players of all levels of experience and skill.

Although their balance is better than younger children, they still may have trouble balancing on one leg while the other leg touches the ball. For some players this is not a problem, but you may find that many of your players need to be exposed to activities that will improve their balance so that they will have a chance at striking the ball correctly.

Movement education is strongly encouraged to help players develop their agility and coordination. It should be a large component of your practice activities. Even if you do not know how to dribble very well, rest assured that you can do it better than most young children. You can also change direction, hop, skip and catch a ball better than most children. If you put a child in front of a ball, they will naturally want to pick it up or kick it away. One of your primary goals is to help the players improve their control of their body and the ball.

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They are willing to give the ball to somebody they know. Unlike younger children, 6 and 7 year olds have a better understanding of object permanence and their relationship to others. Passing can be introduced to children of this age because they know that there is a chance that they will get the ball back.

There is a caveat to that statement, they are not willing to pass to someone they don't know or someone that they think cannot give it back to them. Trust is important and the children have learned that there are people that they can trust with their ball. A close friend is much more likely receive a pass than a stranger. In order for children to learn the skill of passing, they have to first learn about their teammates so that they can begin to trust them.

They are still very concrete thinkersPlayers will pass the ball to a person, but not to the space in front of a person. They are still concrete thinkers. If a person is there, they will pass the ball to that spot. It does not make sense to them to pass the ball to where the person is going to be. Now it is very likely that the pass will not be accurate and will go into the space, but this is not a premeditated action. Avoid asking your players to do something that they cannot understand. Passing the ball into open space is one of those skills reserved for older players.

Just because he knows how to pass, doesn’t mean he knows when or where to passAlthough players will now pass the ball, they will often pass it to someone who is not in a good position to receive it. During game situations, nearly all attempted passes will be intercepted or turned over to the other team because the player has made a bad decision. At this point, you should avoid criticizing those kinds of mistakes. Focus on the technique that the player used and not on the decision that he made. Again, tactical decision making should be reserved for older players.

Players will criticize others without a filter. If a child makes a bad pass or loses the ball another child may criticize that person even if they have made the same mistake. They children have not learned to think about how their words may affect another person. One of your greatest challenges is to reduce this kind of behavior.

Every player will make mistakes during the course of a game. This is what you need to keep emphasizing with your players. That is why you need to highlight the times when players do something well. “Catch them doing good” and you will reduce criticism that may hinder a player’s development.

Players are sensitive to any kind of criticism. Children don't discriminate between types of criticism. If you say “Johnny, you should have passed the ball harder,” then Johnny will take it as a comment about how good a soccer player he is even though you meant it as a corrective comment. When I play, I am constantly talking to the players around me, telling them what I think that they should do. The men that I play with know that it is not a reflection of how good a player or person they are, but children do not understand that.

A good coach will instead offer what is called the criticism sandwich: Positive comment, constructive comment, and encouragement to try again. This sandwich supports the child's effort, corrects an error and encourages the child's continuing work. In the example above you could say “Johnny, you did a good job controlling that ball and your pass went straight to Bobby, next time you get a chance, try to pass it a little harder so that it gets to Bobby faster, you are doing a great job out there, keep it up.” Instead of worrying about what he might have done wrong, you gave Johnny a prompt on how to do better. Instead of Johnny putting his head down and worrying about a mistake, you instead encouraged Johnny to work harder and maybe a little smarter.

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Hard work equals success in the mind of a child. If a child is trying as hard as she can, then in her mind she is successful. It is only when an adult tells a child that hard work isn't enough does she begin to understand the difference between quality of work and quantity of work. Children at this age cannot understand the difference between those two ideas. When talking to your players, you must recognize effort when you give out praise.

Players can work successfully in pairs. The concept of teamwork is more apparent now. Players can successfully solve problems by working in pairs. In the Retrieve activity, you can start out with individuals solving problems and work up to groups of two. Make sure that you mix up the groups in all your activities so that players can begin to know each other as well as they know their friends. Not only does this contribute to the development of each player, it also contributes to the development of your team.

Unlike U6 players, children can be expected to be able to see members of their own team, not as competitors for the ball but as companions. This does not mean that they won’t steal the ball from each other, but it does mean that they are less likely to do so.

You will have little success having these players work in any groups larger than pairs and it is not recommended that you expend the effort. There are plenty of things to learn in pairs before they progress.

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Things to think about before developing a practiceNow let’s look at how your practice should be run. When I watch your practice, almost all the time you should be playing games, the games should be dynamic and the players should be engaged both physically and mentally

Avoiding the 3L's

Sam Snow, Director of Coaching for the US Youth Soccer Association, introduced me to this term and it clarifies so many things for me that I feel compelled to share it with you. The three L’s are Lines, Laps and Lectures. I will deal with each of these separately, but the basic idea is that the 3L’s will eventually cause your players to look at practice as work and not play.

Lines reduce the number of touches a player will get on the ball and will reduce the reality of the game. There is no element of the game where the players line up for anything except a handshake at the end. I once counted the number of touches a player got during a 5 minute period while participating in a shooting activity. There were 12 players on the team and no goalkeeper. During that 5 minutes he got 6 shots at the goal and the touch count was 8. The rest of the time was spent holding his ball so that other players wouldn’t knock it away or chasing his errant shot, retrieving it and running back to the end of the line.

Many of the difficulties of coaching are directly related to behavior management. When a player is disruptive, you have to take time to get him under control. If a player is engaged in the game or activity, they are much LESS likely to be disruptive. However, when they have plenty of time to stand around, it gives them MORE chances to misbehave. So the structure of an activity can lead directly to the coach having to employ behavior management techniques that may be unpleasant for him and the player.

If activities are game like or have elements of competition in them where the player is constantly engaged, they are much less likely to behave inappropriately. How can you eliminate a line activity and replace it with a more dynamic activity? In a shooting activity that we used as an example, the simplest way is to increase the number of goals to shoot at. If 12 players are shooting at 3 goals, you reduce the wait time by 67% compared to shooting at one goal. If parents are shagging errant balls, then players can get more chances to shoot in a given time period.

How many times have you got to practice and had no clue what you were going to do? Laps are meant as a warm up activity, but serve no other purpose than to waste time while the coach thinks about what to do during practice. If you are really having trouble, then you tell the players to run a second lap because they didn’t do the first one very well.

If you need a good warm up activity, then get the kids dribbling in an area defined by cones or parents. Give them different conditions under which to dribble (only with left foot, only with side of foot, etc…) this is much more game like and is a more appropriate activity for a warm up. Remember that players do not benefit from a training effect until they reach puberty. Although running laps does warm up the body, it does nothing to improve their relationship with the ball and the game. Some coaches may say “Yes, but I make them dribble while they run the lap.” Once again this lap running fails the “game-like” test which is important for a good activity. Also, try running with the ball around a field a few times, you will be bored to tears.

Lectures are for college professors who never learned how to teach. Children have a limited attention span. You need to be very aware of the attention span and not exceed it under any circumstances. One of your greatest challenges will be to make your point quickly and effectively before the player's minds wander. Change your tone of voice, the speed at which you talk and your body language to keep the kids attention. Many short breaks are better than one long one and these are an excellent time to make a point and keep it fresh in the minds of the players. Get the attention of the players, make your point and move on.

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Warming up the right way

I have seen players go through some exotic stretching routines over the years and one thing I can tell you is that most of the flexibility exercises are not achieving their intended purpose. It is one of those areas that we overlook as coaches. Most coaches mindlessly copy what they see other coaches doing without ever asking if the stretches are effective. It is as if we saw someone doing the absolute worst shooting exercises and we copied them and then everyone else copied us. As a result, our kids are terrible shooters and we have no idea why because the exercises look good.

Take for example the bend over and touch your toes "stretch." While it is true that you do feel tightness in your hamstrings at the back of your leg as you bend over, what you are actually feeling is an eccentric contraction of the muscles. In an eccentric contraction, the muscle is trying to contract while it is lengthening. The reason for that is simple, the hamstrings are contracting to keep you from falling over. You can test this yourself. Bend over and try to touch your toes, but consciously try to relax your hamstrings. You will fall over almost instantly unless the palms of your hands are on the ground.

Eccentric contractions do not yield greater flexibility; in fact, they can lead to more muscle soreness and a greater likelihood of injury. Yet every time I see a session and coaches get to the stretching part, they always include the bend over and touch your toes stretch. A simple rule of thumb for stretching is "don't bear weight on a muscle group when you are trying to stretch it." This rules definitely applies for the three major muscle groups of the upper leg: hamstrings (back); quadriceps (front) and adductors or groin (inside).

There are two other points about stretching that most coaches do know, so I will not spend much time, but just to make sure we are all on the same page here they are:

All stretches should be static, not dynamic. Stretches should be held for a minimum of 20-30 seconds and there should be no bouncing the limb while stretching.

Stretching should be done AFTER a light warm up. Muscles are like rubber bands in some ways, they become more elastic when they are heated up. Although you can do stretching before players run around for a few minutes, you won't get much benefit from the stretching.

So what are some good flexibility exercises? I took many of these routines from dancers and gymnasts back when I worked with physical therapists. I keep the exercises simple and consistent and we do them precisely each time.

Butterfly Stretch:

Player sits down and puts the soles of the feet together. Hands on the ankles, NOT on the toes. Back is straight. From this position, the player tries to get the outside of each knee onto the ground. Most players will not be able to do this, but they should be able to feel a pull on the adductor muscles (groin) of the upper leg. Hold for 30 seconds.

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Hamstring stretch: the goal of this exercise is to put your chest on your knee. One arm is pushing from the back and one arm is pulling in the front. The foot should be straight up and the knee should not be bent. Hold this position for 20-30 seconds and then do the other leg. The third sequence is to place both legs out wide and try to touch your chest to the ground. Most players will have to put one arm in back to push and use the other arm to pull. Some players are more flexible and can get both arms in front and pull with both.

Quadriceps stretch:Players lie on their side and stretch the leg on top. Note that the player is holding the ankle and not the toe. Players should keep both legs together to get a straight line of pull for the muscle. If this does not feel like it is stretching the muscle, the player should move the knee back slowly until they do feel a stretch. Flip over and stretch the other quad.

Calf Stretch:This stretch can be done bearing weight. The key elements for the stretch are that the toe, ankle and knee must line up otherwise the muscle will not be stretched maximally. Also, the heel must be touching the ground. If the heel is up, then the player will not be getting much stretching done. You can also do this with a partner where both players lean in and push against each other’s shoulders while stretching one leg at a time.

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What does a practice look like? When looking at a practice you should see these elements: ♦ The practice area is safe. ♦ The surface area should be free of debris and trash. ♦ There should be no ants or other biting insects in the area. ♦ Sprinklers, ant piles and holes should be avoided or marked with cones. ♦ The practice area is appropriately sized.

♦ Most of the time, coaches have a limited area in which to practice. For U6 players this is not a problem, their world is very small and a small field is perfect for them.

♦ Using an appropriately sized space for your activities is one of the most important details. ♦ Children should be provided the opportunity to experience success during an activity.

♦ If the field size is too small and the child cannot keep the ball within the space, they may get frustrated or become over-cautious and not participate fully in the activity.

♦ If the field size is too large and the child can easily be successful, they will become bored and lose interest.

♦ Coach starts practice promptly and the players are moving around. ♦ Instructions should be short and specific.

♦ Children need just a little orientation before getting started. ♦ Too many rules or instructions and they will not understand. ♦ The worst thing that can happen is that the children stop paying attention. ♦ Once that happens, the coach will have lost control of the children.

♦ Activities should be dynamic, not static. ♦ A group of children standing in line waiting to take a shot on goal will lead to many behavior

problems. Not because the children don't want to be good, but because they want to be active. They want to be the ones touching the ball. The activity should emphasize that aspect.

Activities build from simple to complex. The model of simple to complex is very obvious. Let the players experience success with activities that are easy to master. Once they do that, make the activity more difficult. Most coaches make the mistake of running only through a group of simple activities. Although the first activity may be OK, the repetition of activities at the same level of complexity will quickly bore the player and make them less receptive to your instruction.

Players put up with the activities as long as they know they will be allowed to play at some point. That is the primary reason they came to practice, so that they could play.

Players want to play games. Games can take many different forms and all have elements of competition in them. Your activities should be game-like and/or have elements of soccer in them. The same activity can be made progressively more complex or a group of activities organized from simple to complex will help maintain players interest.

The simplest activity is one in which only on aspect of the game is included. For example, dribbling inside a grid with no defenders. That activity can be made more complex by adding defenders, then adding goals. In each case, more elements of the game are added in making the game more complex until we reach a point where the players are actually playing the game.

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Variations on a theme

When I teach coaching education courses, the idea of progression is a key element for coaches to understand. When a coach can take players through a progression it means that he has satisfied the minimum requirements for a coaching license. US Soccer defines progression as taking activities from simple to more complex. There are three or four stages to the progression:

Fundamental- player with ball without the pressure of an opponent trying to take it away or very little pressure.

Match Related- some element(s) of the game are included such as adding pressure from a defender(s) or goals.

Match Condition- playing a game of soccer, but with conditions added such as players must complete 3 passes before the team can score a goal.

Match- this is always the final progression. Players play the game without conditions and the coach looks to see if they have learned anything from the practice.

I have said previously that coaches should choose a particular theme to their practice and stick to that theme throughout the practice. This approach will help keep the players focused on a specific skill or ability. In order to do that the coach has to have not just one activity for a skill, but a series of activities.

Most coaching books will have sample practices laid out for the coach that reflect the author’s view of how players can best learn the game. All of them have a progression, but most of them do not use the idea of variations on a theme very well at all. Instead of staying with the same basic structure throughout the practice, they have different activities that require the coach to set up new fields or lay out cones in different places between activities. For an inexperienced coach, this will lead to lengthy transition times between activities and a loss of momentum during the practices. Every time the coach ends one activity, he sends his players to get a water break and then hustles to get the next activity set up. If he has planned five or six different activities during a practice, then he has to review the setup of each activity and make sure that he has the right materials in place. Then he has to get his players organized before giving any directions about the activity.

It is a daunting task to ask inexperienced coaches to do this consistently throughout the season. I prefer a structure to practices that has a progression, but one that requires minimal changes between activities. I call it variations on a theme and the idea is pretty simple. Each activity has the same basic structure and the field space can be laid out prior to practice. Once players have learned the basic rules of the activity, we can add new rules without much explanation.

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Dribbling progression for U8In a 15 x 20 grid

1. Players run around and touch all the cones in the grid and return to the center as fast as possible.

2. Players without balls move around the space by running, jumping, skipping, hopping, rolling, etc… for 30 seconds. They try to cover as much area as possible and do as many different movements as possible

3. With balls, try to dribble around the space as fast as possible without going out of bounds or running into other players or balls.

4. Without balls, try to tag as many other players as possible on the shoulder using only your right arm.

5. With balls, the same game while dribbling. Try to count how many times you touch someone else on the shoulder.

6. Same game, but a different challenge: try to avoid being tagged on the shoulder. Count only the times you are tagged on the shoulder (the best score is zero).

7. Line up the players on one end of the grid and play red light, green light. Their goal is to get to the other end first. Initially you don’t send them back to the starting line when they don’t stop in time.

8. Same game, add a goal and stand behind the goal. Players dribble towards the goal. Players try to score after dribbling in closer while green light is on.

9. Now add a second goal at the other end of the grid and split the team up into 2 groups. Teams start at opposite ends facing each other. On your call, players try to be the first to shoot their balls into the goal. First team to get all their balls into the goal wins.

10.Now play the game, keep plenty of balls handy and whenever a ball goes out of play, throw another one in. Play for only a few minutes before taking a break. Then repeat.

This progression takes the players from some simple movement education activities into dribbling activities. Since dribbling emphasizes attacking skills, goals are added and players are encouraged to shoot at goal after dribbling. The players are not directed to dribble any specific way, but instead are given cues such as

Try to keep your ball away from other players Don’t let your ball run into other player’s balls Keep your ball inside the grid Try to dribble as fast as possible.

These cues are your coaching points (see “making the point”) for the U8 age group and will allow you to let the game become the teacher. Because you use

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the same field for the entire practice with the exception of the game, transition times between activities is minimized and playing time is maximized.

The first two activities are movement education and allow the players to work on agility and coordination while they get familiar with the space that will be used for the practice. The size of the grid may be too small for the number of players or their ability level, but it can easily be made larger in a few seconds with the help of your parents.

Tag games are great activities to teach agility and balance. Players trying to tag other players will have to use some change of direction and acceleration. These are skills necessary for successfully dribbling the ball. Adding the ball to the activity adds a level of complexity that will allow you to challenge all of your players.

Red light, green light is a fun game that most children already know how to play. The starting and stopping required by the game teaches players ball control, vision and acceleration. I like to add a goal to the game to make it more fun. All players love to shoot on goal and having the goal in the game allows them to dribble and shoot. Since there doesn’t have to be a winner (encourage all players to play until they score), all the players can get the excitement of shooting during this activity.

When children know the structure of the activity, it relieves the coach of the responsibility of explaining the rules to the players prior to the start of the activity. Since one activity builds upon the next, I call it variations on a theme. In this case, the theme was dribbling and the space used was a 15 x 20 yard grid. All of the activities took place within the grid and each activity added another element of the game for the player to experience.

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Watching an activity

Most coaches set up an exercise with a specific purpose in mind, but don't actually see if the players are achieving the goal that he set. Instead, he gets involved in the action. He can't see individual players he can see movement. He may be able to see if players are giving a good effort (working hard), but not if they are doing the activity correctly.

If a coach is standing in front of a player and focusing only on that player, he can usually identify something that the player can correct. Most of the corrections focus on the symptom and not the cause. For example, if a player is passing the ball to a partner and the ball flies in the air instead of rolling on the ground, the coach can say, "hit the ball on the ground next time." Now the ball in the air is a symptom of poor technique (if the player wanted to pass it on the ground), but the cause of the problem is that the player struck the ball under the center of the ball and lifted it. If the coach were offering more appropriate feedback, he would say something like, "raise your foot just a little higher as you strike the ball and try to strike it above the center-line of the ball." This treats the cause of the problem and not the symptom.

If you put the same player and coach into a more complex activity with other players and more action, that coach is less likely to make any attempt at correction. Instead of following the player or looking for the skill, he ends up looking at all the players or not focusing exclusively on the skill.

Take that same player and put him or her into a game and the coach gets so involved in the action that he doesn't make any corrections at all. The game overwhelms him.

Every time I do a coaching education course, I emphasize the importance of the "coachable moment." If you have never coached sports before, then the coachable moment is the point where the player does something so perfectly that you want to show what he or she did to the entire team. No matter how well you paint the picture for the players, they have to try it to see whether or not they can do it. When they do try it, most players will not do it at all, some will do elements of it and maybe one or two will do it well enough to show the rest of the team. The players, who are doing what you showed them, can then show the rest of the team how to do it. It makes for a nice reinforcement and it gives you a chance to give some praise to the players for doing something well.

Other coachable moments include when you may see a player who knows how to do something well, doing it poorly. This is one that we use less often unless it is going to help other players as well, because it draws negative attention to a player.

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In either case, finding that moment and seizing upon it must represent a learned skill. In coaching courses, that skill is often the primary factor in determining the level of the coach. I think that by telling the coaches about using the coachable moment and then giving them specific examples of it during the exercises that I run, most of them will pick it up and do it during their practice sessions. I rarely see it. Even coaches who show great promise still fail on this key point.

I remember during my "A" license course, I was given the topic of high pressure defending. I ran them through some activities designed to work on forcing the ball to the outside defender and then double-teaming him when he got the ball. Once the scrimmage got going, I saw two or three instances where the players didn't do it, but I let it pass. The instructors had told us that it was OK to let the players play and try to sort out what you were doing, but one came up to me and told me that my team was trailing by a goal and that if we didn't score in the next four minutes, we would lose the game and I would be fired. Since I knew exactly what I was looking for, I was able to see when it was about to happen and I froze the action. After making my coaching point, I resumed play and the next time the players had the opportunity, they did it, stole the ball and scored.

Now I don't know if that was the point that got me to pass the course, but the fact is I knew what I was looking for and I could see when it should happen. So as the play developed, I could look around and identify which players I needed to talk to and what I needed to say to them. Less experienced coaches don't do that.

How do you actually “watch” an activity? It isn’t as easy as it looks, but with practice, you can become a very effective coach.

• Your practice should have one primary theme. This limits the number of points that you can make and allows you to be more focused on just a few points.

• Each exercise should have a few very specific goals. If you are organized enough to write them down prior to the practice, it will help you when you are looking for them during the practice.

• The goals should be causes of technical errors, not symptoms. If you refer back to the section on the skills of soccer, it will help you to look for the cause of errors. Correct only the causes.

• Focus on one specific player at a time. Watch that player for as long as necessary to see whether or not he or she is doing it correctly. Don't worry about not seeing all the players, as you move through a season, you should get a chance to see each player many times.

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• If the player is doing something correctly or better than the other players, don't hesitate to identify him or her to the rest of the team. See the section "making the point" below for how to do this to achieve maximum impact.

• Do the same thing during each level of activity. No matter whether or not players are practicing individually, in small groups or playing a full-sided game, focus on individual players looking for something specific.

Making the point

There are three times during a practice when you want to draw attention to yourself.

• At the beginning of the practice, you tell the players the theme of the practice, review what happened before (game or previous practice) and describe what you want them to do at practice.

• As you set up each activity so that players understand what you want them to do and what is expected of them.

• At the end of practice, review what was learned and reinforce the importance of what was taught. Emphasize what you want your players to work on in the future either at practice or on their own.

Most coaches know these three times very well. Even if they don't do it, they know that they should do it.

Some coaches also draw attention to themselves when they make a coaching point. These coaching points are the result of a coach identifying a "coachable moment." (Read the section on "watching an activity")

It is during these coaching points that a coach can make maximum use of his time. When the players are doing what you wanted them to do, then you can move on to the next topic or raise the level of the current activity by adding or changing some element. If the players are not doing what you want them to do, then the coach has to keep returning to the same skill with different exercises and hope that something is learned.

The steps in making a coaching point are listed below. As with any skill, practice using this technique as often as possible to make it a part of your coaching.

• Identify a player doing something better than other players.• Freezes everybody by calling out "freeze" or "stop."• Tells the other players what the one player did well.

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• Have that player demonstrate it as well as he or she can, it may take a couple of attempts for him or her to do it, but make sure that the player does it well.

• Then challenge the other players to do as well.• Finally, step out and restarts the action and looks for others to do it.

This technique shows the players good examples of what you want to achieve. Hopefully, it will decrease the time it takes to learn. This makes it possible for you to teach more topics during a season and develop your players more quickly.

You can always stop the action to correct if you don’t see any good models, but you will have to model it yourself. The more you do this, the more your players will grow to dread these stoppages.

As with any teaching situation, praise has more impact than criticism. It doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t criticize, but you want to mix it in with generous amounts of praise. The younger and less skilled the players are, the more important praise becomes.

Finally, remember that you want to give specific praise. Many coaches fall into the habit of making general comments like “good job, great work,” that have no particular value to what the player is doing. The player quickly forgets these comments and doesn’t associate the comment with any particular action. Specific praise has a much larger impact. “I liked the way you locked your ankle when you made that last pass,” associates the praise with a specific action. The player likes the praise and wants to receive it as often as possible. He or she will then repeat the desired action in hopes of receiving more positive attention.

Sequence of Activities:The general sequence and how much time you should spend in each phase can vary at each practice, but the only element which must remain constant is that you play the game (3 v 3) for at least 1/3 of a practice. That means in an hour practice you will play for at least 20 minutes. If you look at the conditions for games, you will notice that I encourage you to keep the play continuous. The reason for this is that it reduces the stoppage time that eats away at players getting the chance to touch the ball. If you are constantly stopping the play to set up for corner kicks or throw-ins and kick-offs, the actual time that the children play will be greatly reduced.

I know that you must teach some basic elements to a game like how to take a throw-in, but these things are not that important compared to the players getting a chance to touch the ball in a game situation. It has never been said of a great player “he takes great throw-ins, his technique is perfect.” A great player is one who can dribble around anybody at any time, spend your valuable practice time teaching the most important elements of the game.

The general sequence of activities in a practice usually goes like this:♦ Warm up♦ Small-group activity♦ Large-group activity♦ Game

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With young players, remember that their attention span is short and that they tire easily. You should make sure that you have a large number of short activities planned. Children love repetition, and activities can be repeated at more than one practice, so don’t feel that you must have a huge grab bag of new activities at your disposal for every practice.

For a typical 1-hour practice, plan on 3-5 activities and the game:

Warm up: 5 minutesBreak: 1 minute

Activity 1: 3-5 minutesActivity 2: 3-5 minutesBreak: 2 minutes

Activity 3: 3-7 minutesActivity 4: 3-5 minutesBreak: 1 minute

Activity 5: 3-5 minutesBreak: 1 minute

Game: 20-30minutes

You will notice that there are several breaks included in every practice, this is the transition time between activities so that you can organize players and the field for the next activity. The more organized you are, the less transition time you will use I can guarantee that you will almost always exceed this break time, so encourage your parents and assistants to help you out by organizing with you, or pre-organizing the next activity.

What do I teach at practice?

U8 players have 4 types of skills to cover, next to the description of the skills, I have included the approximate amount of time you should spend in each area:

• Controlling the ball (25%)♦This is how the player gets control of a moving ball.♦There are 3 body surfaces used to control the ball: Foot, Thigh and Chest. Most of the time

you will be focusing on the player controlling the ball with their feet.♦In the activities list below, look at the receiving square under grid activities for a fun way to

teach these skills. ♦ Dribbling (40%)

♦This is what happens after the player controls the ball.♦After shooting, this is the most effective technique for creating scoring chances.♦It is the MOST important element in any player’s game.

♦ Shooting (15%)♦This is how goals are scored.♦Most coaches think that shooting hard is the most important part, but it is really the

placement of the ball that is most important.♦ There are two surfaces of your foot to shoot with: the instep and the laces (top of the

foot). ♦ Shooting with the instep of the foot is like passing except that you do not pass to a

teammate, but into the goal. It is less powerful, but more accurate than shooting with the laces of the foot

♦ Passing (20%)♦ Passing is how the ball moves between players of the same team.♦ It is usually done with the instep of the foot.

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♦ It requires that the player have balance and coordination.♦ Placement of the plant foot, body position and ankle strength all contribute to the

execution of a pass.

What games do I play at practice?

At every practice I do a tag game and at most every practice I play some retrieve activity. Retrieve is great because you can start it out as a dribbling activity and move it into a passing activity (How many passes will you need to get the ball back to me?) and then conclude with a game (2 v 1, how long does it take the 2 players to beat the 1 player and get the ball back to me).

Sharks and minnows type activities are excellent because they are VERY competitive. In each of these types of activities, the variations are almost endless. As you become more skilled, you think up new variations for games. This is one of the things that I enjoy most about coaching is the challenge of taking the same skills and coming up with new ways to teach them.

I usually do the receiving square activity when I feel like the kids can handle learning a new skill like one touch passing. I don’t do it often because it is not very game-like and I have to expend lots of enthusiasm in order for the kids to really learn from the activity.

Shooting is usually associated with the game and I do very few shooting exercises with this age group because they do not really separate it from the game. To emphasize shooting, I add more goals to a game and allow the children to shoot on more than one goal. Parents behind the goal are excellent for shagging the ball and keeping the game continuous. Also, putting more than one ball in play can help give the players more shooting opportunities.

Whatever activity I do, the most important element is enthusiasm. Let the kids know how much fun you are having. That may be the best ingredient in a successful practice.

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4x4 Playing RulesLaw I-The Field:

A. Dimensions: The field of play shall be rectangular, its length being not more than 50 yards nor less than 40 yards and its width more than 30 yards nor less than 20 yards. The length in all cases shall exceed the width.U S Youth Soccer Recommendation: Length 50 Yards Width: 30 Yards

B. Markings: • Distinctive lines not more than (5) inches wide. • A halfway line shall be marked out across the field. • A center circle with a five (5) yard radius. • Four corner arcs each with a two (2) foot radius. • Goal area: Three (3) yards from each goal post and three (3) yards

into the field of play joined by a line drawn parallel with the goal line.

C. Goals: The size of hockey goals or 6 x 12 feet.

Figure 2: 4 V 4 field schematic. Total field size according to recommendations: 62 yards wide X 50 yards long. Note that this field does include a goal area unlike the 3 v 3 field. Total number of goals needed = 4. Recommended goal size: 6’ X 12’. Total team size recommendations: 11-13 players. Law II-The Ball: Size four (4)

Law III-Number of Players:A. Maximum number of players on the field at any one time is four (4). B. Maximum number of players on the roster should not exceed thirteen (13). C. Substitutions:

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• Injuries • See Law VII

D. Playing time: Each player SHALL play a minimum of 50% of the total playing time

E. Teams and games may be coed.

Law IV-Players Equipment: Conform to FIFA with the following exceptions:

A. Footwear: Tennis shoes or soft-cleated soccer shoes Law V-The Referee:

A. Registered or associate referee. B. Parent/Coach or assistant C. All rule infractions shall be briefly explained to the offending player.

Law VI-Linesman: Use club linesman.

Law VII-Duration of the Game:

A. The game shall be divided into four (4) equal, twelve (12) minute quarters. B. There shall be two (2) minute break between quarters one and two and

another two (2) minute break between quarters three and four. C. There shall be a half-time brake of five (5) minutes.

Law VIII-The Start of Play:

Conform to FIFA, with the following exception: A. Opponent must be five(5) yards from the center mark while kick-off is in

progress.

Law IX-Ball in and Out of Play: Conform to FIFA

Law X-Method of Scoring: Conform to FIFA

Law XI-Off-Side: Conform to FIFA

Law XII-Fouls and Misconduct:

Conform to FIFA with the following exception: A. All fouls shall result in an indirect free kick with opponent five (5) yards

away. B. The referee/coach/parent must explain ALL infractions to offending player.

Law XIII-Free Kicks:

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Conform to FIFA with the following exception: A. Shall be classified under one heading: INDIRECT B. No kicks shall be taken by the attacking team within the defending team’s

goal box.

Law XIV-Penalty Kicks: No Penalty kicks are to be taken during these games.

Law XV-Throw-In/Kick-In:

A. Kick-in is considered as an indirect free kick with the opponent five (5) yards away from the ball.

B. If throw-in is used a second throw must be allowed if the player commits a foul on the initial attempt. The referee shall explain the proper method before allowing player to rethrow.

Law XVI-Goal Kick:

Conform to FIFA with the following exception: A. Goal kick may be taken any where within the goal box. B. Opponents must be five (5) yards away from the ball.

Law XVII-Corner Kick:

Conform to FIFA with the following exception: A. Opponents must be five (5) yards away from the ball.

US Youth Soccer Recommendations• Opposing parents/coaches and players should shake hands after each

game. • Participation awards for ALL- No trophies or awards just for best team. • Parent/coaches, non-playing players and spectators should be there to

enjoy and encourage the activity of the youngsters • No alcoholic beverages will be consumed or allowed near the playing

area.

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Activities for practices This requirement is universal for all activities: ♦ It is important that you know that all activities should be inclusive. NO GAMES OF

ELIMINATION.♦Games of elimination will make the weakest kids lose earliest and not get the needed touches on the

ball or participation in order to have a chance to get better. ♦Games should be designed to be challenging to all players, not just the weakest or the strongest. ♦Being a good coach is really the art of identifying what players need and then choosing or

manipulating activities to make sure that they get it.

There are several different classes of activities that you will be doing, within each one there is great flexibility in application. I usually find myself tweaking activities as I go along so that I can try and make them fit my players and the goals that I have set.

MOVEMENT EDUCATION♦In these activities you will be teaching players about how to control and coordinate their bodies. ♦These activities are usually minimally competitive but lots of fun because parents can easily

participate as well.

Simon Says:♦ In the variation of this classic game, no children are eliminated from the competition, but

instead, players try to keep count of the number of times they mess up. ♦ The players who fail least often are the winners. ♦ Simon says can be done both with and without a ball.♦ Simon says improves a players speed of thought.

Cooperative/Competitive♦ These activities require that the players work together or against each other in pairs. ♦ They help develop balance, coordination and teamwork.

♦ Push me/ Pull you♦ This classic game is done with partners facing each other, feet flat on the ground and

palms of both hands touching. The goal of the activity is to unbalance your partner so that she moves her feet or falls over. The players can lean in and push with one or both hands or they can lay back, but neither player can every move their feet. Have players switch partners after 30 seconds or so.

♦ Steal the ball♦ Now with partners in the same position, put a ball between them. Both players hold

on to the ball to begin with and then when you say “GO”, they try to steal the ball from each other. One partner wins when she gets the ball or the other partner loses her balance.

♦ Back to Back♦ Immediately after finishing with steal the ball, have the partners go back to back

with the ball between them (it must stay between the player’s backs). Now they try and tag the other partner groups with these conditions: only one player of the pair may tag, that player who tags can only use her right arm to tag with, the ball cannot touch the ground or the players have to stop and get it before continuing.

♦ This game is lots of fun and really difficult for young players. They are not used to solving problems with other people and they are definitely not used to taking orders. It is a great way to build trust between teammates.

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I can do this, can you?♦ Young children love to show off. In this activity, the coach challenges the players with various

tasks and asks them to replicate them. ♦ This can be used with a particular dribbling move or controlling the ball with a body part.

♦ For example, I would toss a ball in the air and try to catch it with my foot and bring it to the ground. From this I can emphasize the technique of controlling the ball with my foot and the body position necessary to be successful.

♦ Coaching points on the above exercise: knee bent, ankle locked, toe pointing out (away) from the body. Reach up and meet the ball. Usually I refer to the Karate Kid, but I have to find something better, because most children have not seen this movie. Controlling the ball with this method is like a “negative kick”, we are bringing the ball back in instead of kicking it away.

♦ One of my favorites is to throw the ball up in the air and clap as many times as possible before catching the ball. I let the kids progress from 1 to 3 and then I thrill them by clapping 10 times before catching the ball (sometimes it even works)

knee, butt, back, stomach

♦This is a fun, transitional activity. If you have been working up a sweat with the players, this is a good way to cool them down and transition to the next activity.

♦Have the players stand around you with their hands crossed against their chest. They have 4 commands, knee, butt, back and stomach. As you call out the body part, the players will try to move that body part to touch the ground. “On your knees, on your back, on your stomach.” The only condition is that they cannot use their arms or hands to help them move.

♦As you move through the body parts, you gradually call out faster and faster until every one is rolling on the ground laughing.

Grid play♦ In grid play, you define a space using cones or parents and instruct the players to stay inside

the grid.♦ Then they have to try and touch every grass blade inside the grid within 30 seconds.♦ Or you tell them to walk, run, hop, skip, jump, roll or make up their own method of

movement and try to do as many different types of movement within 30 seconds. Give recognition to the most creative players.

♦ Then have them do the same things with a ball, trying to keep control of the ball while running and changing directions. You can also direct them to make sure their ball touches every blade of grass.

Grid dribbling♦ This is a little more challenging for young players and a good introduction activity if your

players tend to arrive late to practice. ♦ Instead of organizing something really complex at the beginning of practice that you will

have to explain to every late arriving player, you can have the team touching the ball and moving within the grid as more players join the practice.

♦ All you want to do to get started is make a rectangular grid big enough to fit all of your players. Then you give the players challenges or conditions. I have listed below some of the common conditions I use in this activity.

♦ Every step touch ball

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♦ Players try to touch the ball with every step they take, it requires remarkable concentration and most players cannot do it for more than 15 – 30 seconds, but it helps teach them the rhythm of dribbling and keeping the ball close to the body.

♦ numbers games ♦ This is a good transition activity and it works very simply. Let’s say that the next

activity you are doing requires groups of 3. Instruct the players to dribble and arrange in groups of the size you call out. They have to figure out how to make it happen, you just call out the number. They are not a group until their balls are touching each other. To end this activity with the right numbers for the next game, just call out that group size last and then end the activity and tell the players to stay in their (already formed) groups.

♦ Change ball on call ♦ This condition teaches players to play with their heads up and is the dawning of

tactical soccer. On a signal from you, players must leave their ball and go find another ball as quickly as possible. Players have to be thinking ahead and react quickly in order to be successful.

♦ Two caveats for this activity: ♦ Players may not steal a ball from a player who already has one. ♦ At the end of the activity, make sure everyone knows where his or her ball is so

that it doesn’t get lost. ♦ Dribble move and change pace

♦ This is a great way to introduce dribbling skills that the players may not have thought of on their own. Demonstrate a move and have the players practice it for a few minutes while dribbling freely inside the grid.

♦ One of the most important elements in a dribbling moves is what happens after you make the move. You should accelerate very quickly to take advantage of beating the defender. So have the players make the move on your signal and then accelerate OUT of the grid by touching the ball about 5 yards in front of them and then sprinting to get it.

♦ After gaining control of the ball, the players dribble back into the grid until you signal them to perform the move again.

♦ Take on a player ♦ Since everyone in the grid has a ball (or is supposed to), nobody plays defense, but

that doesn’t mean that you can’t create pressure on the players to beat a defender. After showing them a dribbling move, give them a condition that they dribble at another player and perform the move to go around the other player.

♦ Since both players are doing the same move they should never run into each other, but even if they get too close, it teaches them how to keep control of the ball under pressure.

♦ You can add some pressure to this activity by having yourself and a few parents run at the players to challenge them. This gives them more opportunities to practice the move without fear of losing the ball.

♦ Pick ball up, toss in air and control ♦ I learned this activity about 7 years ago and I have probably used this more than any

other to introduce controlling the ball. The setup is simple. Show the players how to throw a ball in the air about head height. Then tell them to try and “catch” it with their thigh, chest or laces of foot. This catching action is controlling the ball. Designate catching the ball with their thigh as number 1. Whenever they hear or see the number 1, they will perform the skill.

♦ Now, players are dribbling around freely inside the grid. You give them the signal and they pick up their ball, toss it in the air and control it with their thigh. Then, WITHOUT STOPPING, they dribble until they hear the signal again.

♦ With younger players you can give them 3 or 4 conditions before they begin to lose interest.

♦ This activity leads directly into the Receiving Square activity later in the training manual.

♦ Better players will be able to handle balls that are tossed higher in the air. If a player looks like he is doing well, encourage him to challenge himself by tossing the ball

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higher. However, don’t let them toss it too high, or the activity will degenerate into a “how high can you throw it” contest.

Body part dribble, stop♦ Each player has a ball and is dribbling when you say GO.♦ As they dribble, you call out a body part and they have to dribble with that body part. ♦ To get more complex, make them use more than one body part (knee and elbow)♦ Then increase challenge by making them stop the ball with the body part(s) mentioned.♦ After each stop, restart by having the player return to dribbling with their feet.

Follow the Leader♦ This is a simple activity that can be run with as few as 2 children.♦ The leader moves as creatively as possible (jumps, spins, rolls) and the followers must do

their best to imitate what the leader has done.♦ After 15 seconds or so, the leader moves to the back of the line and the next person gets to be

leader.♦ Don’t make lines too long as the children will find it hard to see the leader.♦ Add a ball to the activity for increased difficulty.♦ This game runs for only 2-3 minutes before players begin to lose interest (Mostly because

every player wants to be the leader).

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TAG GAMES♦The variations on tag games are endless and all of them offer a chance for players to compete and

learn.♦It is important to define a space for children to stay within because it adds pressure to the activity.

Freeze tag♦ The classic game here is 2 teams of different colors. If a player is tagged, then they must

stand frozen until a teammate unfreezes them.♦ The method by which the unfreezing occurs can also add to the fun and challenge of

the game. For example, you can only unfreeze by crawling between the legs of your teammate. Also, to improve communication, have frozen players say something silly like “I love soccer” until they are unfrozen.

♦ Always begin without the ball and then increase complexity by having players dribble with the ball as they try to tag the other team.

♦ You can keep this game going by unfreezing some players yourself if one team is quickly winning.

Figure 1: Have players start in opposite corners so that they have a chance to orient themselves prior to the start of the game.

Statues♦ In statues, if a player is tagged, then they must assume the shape of an animal. They can

be untagged by a teammate calling out the name of the animal or by some more traditional means.

♦ You can introduce this activity by having the kids run around and freeze into a shape when you call out. Try to guess what shape they are in.

Partner Tag♦ In this tag game, players are partnered up. ♦ On your signal, one partner chases the other until she is tagged. Once she is tagged, she

immediately becomes the chaser and chases her partner.♦ Players switch roles like this for about 30-45 seconds.♦ Give each partner a ball and try it again.

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Hospital tag ♦ This is a variation on freeze tag where the players are not frozen when they are tagged,

but “injured.” In order to get better, they have to go to the hospital. The hospital is a designated area outside the grid where the player will rehab their injury. A player will go to a parent in the hospital and the parent will give the child some simple task to accomplish before returning to the game. The simple tasks can be things such as juggling the ball on your thigh twice or 10 toe taps on top of the ball.

♦ Play the game for about 2 minutes. You can repeat several times.

Figure 2: Parents work the "hospital" where players come to rehab from being tagged. Give each parent a simple activity to do and encourage them to participate with enthusiasm. The rehab activities should be short and simple, such as two thigh juggles or toe taps on the ball so that players can return quickly to the game.

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Blob Tag♦ This tag game may or may not work with your players because it requires ALL of them to work

together. You might want to save this one for later in the season.♦ The setup is simple. You have two players who start the blob. They try and tag other players inside

the grid. If they succeed in tagging a player, that player joins with the other two and the three of them try to tag another player.

♦ Gradually the blob gets bigger until there are only 2 players left, those survivors become the blob for the next round. ♦ One caveat to this activity: players must stay linked together, they cannot tag a player when

the whole blob is not linked (holding hands with the people next to you).♦ If a player runs out of bounds, they are immediately tagged and must join the blob. That is

usually how the first couple of players end up being tagged. ♦ As the blob grows larger, the game goes faster, so don’t give up on it right away.

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Bring it back♦In bring it back, you give your players a condition and they try to solve it as well as possible as

quickly as possible. ♦For U8 players, all bring it back activities are done individually first, then in pairs. ♦The organization of all retrieve activities is the same. The players gather around you, they hand you

the ball, you throw the ball some distance away and the players run, get it and bring it back to you. The variety comes in how they bring it back to you. ♦ With feet♦ With hands♦ Skipping

♦ You can make bring it back more difficult by moving after you have thrown some balls out so those players have to find you. This will improve their vision by forcing them to look up to find you while they dribble.

♦ One caveat, most players will have trouble finding their ball, so don’t start moving until you are sure they can follow their ball after it has left your hands.

♦ Have more than one coach or parent do this with a larger team so that each player can have more chances to try it.

♦This is a fast paced game and players tire very easily, so don’t stay with it too long. Every few rotations, change the challenge.

♦Pairs activities♦Bring it back using 2 feet and an elbow.♦Three hands and a knee.♦How many passes does it take to get it back to the coach’s feet?♦How fast can you get it back to the coach’s feet?♦Against a defender, how long does it take to get it back to the coach’s feet?

Figure 3: (1) Players crowd around the coach with balls in hand. (2) Coach takes one ball at a time and throws it out. (3) The player must track down her own ball and bring it back to the coach. (4) The coach then throws the ball out again. The key ingredient is the challenge given to the players. Some easy ones are “dribble only with your left foot” or “dribble backwards.”

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GRID ACTIVITIES♦These activities require you to set up a rectangular grid of cones or parents. ♦Players must stay within the grid during the activity. If they cannot stay within the grid, then they

have lost control of the ball and are penalized by becoming defenders. ♦ Try dribbling around the grid yourself and see how hard it is to actually stay within it without

the pressure of other players or defenders, this should give you a good idea of how big to make the grid.

Sharks and minnows♦ Sharks and minnows is a common grid activity. It is known by many names, but the element

that is constant is that there are some players without balls, and they are trying to get a ball from players with balls.

♦ The most important organizational rules for this game are:♦ All players must keep their balls inside the grid.♦ All players must be moving at all times.

♦ Kicking away versus taking away:♦ A key element in this activity is that coaches must emphasize taking a ball away from

another player versus kicking the ball away. ♦ When a ball is kicked away, one or both of the players involved must waste valuable

time running to get the ball. ♦ If the ball is taken away by the defending player instead, it stays in bounds and both

players stay engaged in the activity.♦ Variations:

♦ Start with 1 player without the ball (the shark) and keep the grid space small so that there is a challenge to the players with the balls (the minnows) who are not being chased by the shark.♦ The player who loses a ball to the shark cannot get their own ball back from the

shark, but must take a ball away from another player. ♦ Increase the number of players without balls after you have run the

activity up to a 1:1 ratio of sharks to minnows.♦ Have parents be the sharks. They can give the ball back after they take it

so that the player gets another chance to be the attacker. This way the weaker dribblers are not stuck being the shark more often than the stronger dribblers.

Figure 4: Make sure to start with only a few sharks so that players are not under too much pressure. As they gain more confidence, add more sharks. If the sharks are parents or coaches, have them take the ball away and then give it back to the player. A player who dribbles out of bounds under pressure from the shark loses the ball and then must become the shark and get another player’s ball.

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Bases ♦ This is a typical sharks and minnows tag game with one big change. Inside the grid you place 3

small cones to create a small BASE. Make two of these bases. The bases are a safe haven and players cannot be tagged in the base by the sharks.

♦ However, they can only stay until someone else wants in the base and then they must immediately leave the base. ♦ The bases add an element of tactical thought to the activity that makes it more complex. This

is good to do when your players seem to be getting bored with other activities.♦ You can also juice this game up by creating a name for it like “STAR WARS” and make up a

name for the bases and the sharks other than sharks.

Go to Town

♦ This is a passing accuracy activity that also involves dribbling and excellent coordination. ♦ The basic premise is that players dribble from one side of a grid to the other. To begin with you

have some “sheriffs” on the outside of the grid with a ball. When you call out “Go to town” the dribblers try to get across the grid. The sheriffs try to pass their ball and hit dribbler or his ball. If a dribbler is hit, he becomes a sheriff for the next round. The game gets down until you have two survivors who become the sheriffs in the next round. ♦ This game takes a long time to play because the players have to retrieve their balls after each

round.♦ It is not game-like, but it does help players work on the mechanics of their passing and it does

begin to teach them to pass to space instead of always passing to feet. ♦ One Caveat: no sheriffs may be allowed to hit a player above the knee. If they do, they should

be sat out for at least one round.

Figure 6: Go to town. Grid size is dependent on age and skill of players. Older and more skillful players would require a larger grid. Players dribble from one side to the other. Then they dribble back again in the next round. Remember, anyone who is hit by a “sheriff” automatically becomes a sheriff in the next round. Repeat until you have only 2-3 players left.

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Figure 5: Bases Game. To begin with, limit the number of sharks (players without balls to 2). As your players become more skillful, add more sharks. Remember that a player can only stay in a base as long as no one else is trying to get in.

Dribble through gates♦ This is a good way to improve vision, ball control and coordination of players and

can be a good way to test improvement in ball skills.♦ Set up a grid with 5-8 gates (small cones placed 1-2 feet apart). The gates should

be randomly arranged within the grid.♦ Players without balls are instructed to run through the gates in any order until

they have run through all of the gates. As soon as they finish, they sit down. ♦ All players participate at the same time.♦ Now have the players run through the gates while dribbling their balls. Have a

parent time each player to see how he or she does.♦ Repeat the activity a couple of times to allow players to try and get better.

Figure 7: Players start at any point outside the grid. Try to dribble through all gates as fast as possible. An alternative is to have each player go through as many gates in 30 seconds as possible. Repeating the exercise allows them to try and top their previous score.

Figure 8: To decrease pressure, let players go one at a time, when the first player has dribbled through two gates, send the next player. This way the activity can be run continuously. As a player finishes they return to the group and rest. If you have too many players, make a second grid to reduce recovery time.

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Pass through gates• Set up the gates like you do in Dribble through gates, but this time pair up the players and

then have them try to pass through as many gates as possible in a set period of time (i.e. 45 seconds).

• Start the players anywhere inside the grid. When you say GO, they can begin counting out each gate that they successfully pass through.

• At the end of the specified time, stop the action and find out which team has passed through the most gates. You may be able to use them as a demo group for the rest of the team. • Rerun the activity 2-4 times.• You may have to make the field larger and the gates more spread out if you players keep

running into each other, but try it first and see how they do. • One caveat: if you have 7 gates set up, a partner group must successfully pass through ALL

the gates before repeating a gate.• You will notice a lot of standing around with players waiting for the ball to be passed to

them or watching their partner struggle to control the ball they just passed. One of the keys to success is when players pass and MOVE to a better spot. Run this activity more than once and suggest to the players that moving will help them compete, then they might start doing it more often.

• This activity is strictly a warm-up activity because there is no pressure of opponents to steal the ball away, therefore, it should not be run for very long.• It is excellent at teaching the mechanics of passing and during the rest periods you can

talk about how to pass correctly.

Turkey Shoot• In a grid, set up 15-20 cones randomly. The name of the game comes from the idea of

knocking over pins in a bowling alley. Partners pass the ball back and forth, as the pass the ball, they try to hit cones with the ball. • Partners may not hit the same cone again until they have hit all the cones. If the cones are

upright and a player knocks it over, she must put it back up before continuing the game. • Run the activity for 30-60 seconds. The partner group that has the most number of cones

hit is the champion. • Rerun the activity 2-3 times.

• Turkey shoot is like Passing through Gates, but instead of passing through the gates, the partners are trying to hit the cones on the pass between them.

• Players think this activity is easy until they actually try to aim and hit the cone. They will hit far less than they expect.

• As with the passing through gates, this is a low-level activity without the pressure of opponents. Therefore, never run both Passing through Gates and Turkey Shoot together. Players will grow bored quickly and cheating will become rampant.

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Figure 9 Turkey Shoot. Players pair up and try to hit cones as they pass the ball back and forth between themselves. Hitting the cone or knocking it over counts. Players must keep count of th e number of cones that they have hit.

“GIVE ME THE BALL!!!”• This is a short, fun activity that focuses on communication. It is an introductory activity that

can be run in open space without a grid or in a grid. • The principle idea is that players communicate in two primary ways, Voice and Body

Language.• Body language is simple: a player must be looking at you before you pass the ball to

him. A player must be moving towards you or away from you before you pass the ball to him.

• Voice: a player must DEMAND the ball before you pass it to him.• The player who has the ball does NOT give it to his partner until his partner communicates

with him. Instead he dribbles, waiting for the signals to be given. • Groups of 2 with one ball. The player with the ball starts dribbling and his partner moves into

space and then demands the ball by screaming “GIVE ME THE BALL!!!” • When his partner passes the ball to him, he dribbles until he hears his partner make the same

signal.• Kids will have a great deal of fun using their outdoor voices on this activity and that is to

be encouraged. They may not get it, but it is a great set up for Pass through Gates and Turkey Shoot.

• As the coach, BE ENTHUSIASTIC. The kids need to know that it is fun to pass and it is OK to demand the ball.

• The more they are talking to each other during a game, the less they can hear from parents and coaches and the better decisions they can make in the long run.

Receiving Square♦ In receiving square, the team starts out tightly packed in the center of a grid that is

made by parents and coaches or by players. The exact shape of the grid is not important as long as kids are not running into each other very often, so make sure that it is LARGE. The players inside do not have balls. The parents, coaches or players outside each have a ball.

♦ On your signal, the players inside run to anybody who rolls them a ball. The player must control the ball and give it back to the server in as few touches as possible. Then the player goes to any other server and repeats the activity. This lasts about 45 seconds. Then you switch groups, those on the outside go to the inside and vice versa.

♦ The goal is for the players to control a rolling ball with the inside of their foot (instep).

♦ After this, have the parents serve a little bouncing ball. ♦ After this, have the parents serve a floating ball. Players can control the ball with the

thigh or chest or foot. ♦ This activity is fun if you can have the kids keep count of the number of balls

that they have played during the time period. Encourage them to increase the number of balls they touch in each round. Because the services are getting more difficult, this will be hard to do.

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Figure 10: Servers are lined up around players. Each server has a ball. The players run to the server and the server rolls a ball to the player. The player controls it with the foot and plays it back to the server. The player then goes to another server.

• Variation• Player receives the ball from the server and instead of returning it to the server,

she turns and looks for another server who doesn’t have a ball. She communicates with that server and passes the ball to her. She repeats as often as possible in 1 minute.

World Cup• This is one of the player’s all time favorites With a twist….

• Organize groups of two players are around a regulation size goal (or whatever goal is handy) Each group picks a country to represent. You and a parent are the goalkeepers. If you have an odd number of players, one player plays alone.

• Starting from the goal, you pass a ball in any direction preferably kind of far away and high in the air. The partners (all of them) try to get the ball and score on you. The last player who touches a ball before it goes in the goal is the goalscorer and their team gets a point.

• Play the game for 5 minutes, the team with the most goals wins.• The twist in this game is that it is usually run as a game of elimination. The teams

that score rest and the last team that has not scored at the end of each round is eliminated from the competition. All of the other teams that scored move on. You can see the problem right away here. Players who are not engaged in the activity are most likely to need the practice and the pressure, but instead they are sitting out on the sideline more likely to misbehave. Remember NO GAMES OF ELIMINATION.

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Figure 11 World Cup

Coaches are goalkeepers. Make sure you have all the balls in the goal before you start. Otherwise the game will have to stop when the players chase balls. You can put more than one ball in play to speed up the goal scoring chances.

The Game♦ During the game which will be the end of every practice, you will want to include these

elements:♦ Two goals, both teams must attack and defend.♦ Constant play, keep a supply of balls handy, when the ball goes out of bounds, put

another one in play in a new area of the field. ♦ Never yell play, the ball is the stimulus. Players are conditioned to wait for you to

ALLOW them to play. Let the ball be the stimulus for the players to play. That way they become less dependent on you to decide when to play.

♦ Never play with more players on the field than there are during games. Typically, you have less space in a practice than you would have in a game and increasing the number of players on a team will be very confusing to the players.

♦ Remember that practice is supposed to simulate game conditions, with 4 v 4 you may find yourself with 11 players at practice and be inclined to play 6 v 5 instead. ♦ Don’t do it. Have some of the players play a small sided game (2 v 1, 2 v 2) on

the side supervised by another parent or coach. ♦ Or get some players from another team and make up a second game.

♦ Variations:♦ Players vs. Parents♦ 2 players and 2 parents vs. 2 players and 2 parents

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Other Aspects of Coaching

Coaching PhilosophiesI took these from a website where coaches submitted over 150 statements. Each statement reflects how a coach approaches the game. You should have your own philosophy and that should be made clear to your parents and players. It should also reflect everything you do as a coach in every game situation and every training session.

1. I wish to enhance my players' love for the game 2. My players can and will learn. 3. When we have ball, entire team attacks. When other team has ball, our entire team is on

defense. 4. It doesn't matter what the score of the game is, if you have learned something, then you

have WON the game. 5. On good days we play good soccer, on bad days we TRY to play good soccer6. We build character on the field 7. If the kids aren't having fun while they learn at practice, then they aren't "PLAYING"

soccer. 8. Coach at practice, not at games. 9. It's not the money; it's not the power.... IT’S THE KIDS STUPID!!! 10. To teach my players to play the game in the context of their particular age and level of

development, while keeping in mind that virtually none of my players will ever turn pro, but will in all likelihood grow up to become parents and hopefully coaches as well.

11. Practice as you play, play as you practice. 12. I love Yoda' s saying, "There is no try, just do." 13. I do not coach a sport, I coach kids !! 14. The game is the greatest teacher 15. The character of your players is more important than anything else. 16. Attack from the back 17. Carpe Ludum! (Seize the game!) 18. To inspire each player to love the game 19. Form is temporary, class is permanent - concentrate on development' 20. Practices are for learning; games are for seeing if we learned. 21. Soccer is a microcosm of life and how you train, play and deal with others goes along

way towards saying what kind of person you are and the person you will become. 22. Practice easy, Game hard; Practice hard, Game easy. 23. You hear - you forget, You see - you remember, You demonstrate - You understand

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10 Phrases I use in training and what they mean:

I have noticed that many times I say something and I assume that the people I am speaking to know exactly what I am talking about. Somebody pointed this out to me one time when they asked what “playing good soccer” actually meant. For years, I would say we want out players to play good soccer without ever defining what I thought it meant. It was up to each person to interpret that in whatever way they could.

This is not a good teaching technique. Being vague is great if you want to convey multiple meanings to the same words, but most of the time, the simpler you say something the better. We could improve out coaching by stating specifically what goals we want our players to achieve and giving them advice on how to make it happen. Most of us think that we are doing that, but unfortunately most of the time we are not.

Over the years, I have developed some phrases that are short hand for what I want the players to be doing. Some of these phrases are technical and some are tactical. Most of them tie into each other such that there is a bit of repetition. I don’t mind that because the concepts need to be reinforced in order for the players to internalize them.

I think the point of this is to get you to think about how you communicate with your players and what kinds of points you are emphasizing. What phrases do you use and do your players know what they mean?

Open up I probably use this term in teaching attacking more than any other simply because players can develop bad habits that are impossible to break. When the ball is traveling towards you, you must prepare to receive the ball by opening up your hips away from where the ball just came and in the direction you want to go next. This means that you have to turn your body to receive the ball with the foot farthest away from where it was just passed.

Look at the way our players usually warm up for practice. They kick the ball back and forth to each other while standing in place. I have lots of problems with this activity, but the primary problem is that it establishes the body position where the player faces only the passer and not the rest of the field. This is a habit that is hard to break. Look at any professional game and watch for five minutes. Count the number of times the receiver take the ball with the foot farthest away from where it came. It is over 80% of the time in most matches. Now look at a youth game, almost every time a player doesn't do that he loses the ball. Make sure your passing exercises DO NOT include passing back and forth to a stationary target.

Even if the player plans to pass it back to the same area, opening up your hips allows you to cause the defense to hesitate. They don’t know which direction you are going to go because you have more than one option. If you hips are closed (you touch the ball BACK in the same direction it just came from), then there is only 1 direction you can play the ball in to and this will allow them to compress the space.

Opening up your hips also has implications for seeing more of the field of play. When players get tunnel vision, it makes them very easy to defend. If you central midfield players do not open up, then you have lots of play on 1 side of the field and lots of turnovers.

You must incorporate into your training some exercises that develop this crucial skill. The more ingrained this skill is, the more successful your players will be.

Get wide

This phrase addresses the idea of shape and support. Young players are all crowded around the ball. As they get older and a division of labor begins to form, players realize that they don’t have

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to be next to the ball to be helping their team. However, players on the outside, especially wide midfielders in a 4-4-2 want to “help out” their teammates by moving in closer in support of the attack..

This has the effect of compressing the field. Most of us play games on fields that are too narrow, more suited to American football than to soccer. Players compound this problem by “pinching in.” In trying to support the attack, they make the field narrower and more easily defended by the other team. If they are patient and wait for the ball to work its way to them, then they are rewarded by having lots of space to work with and few defenders around.

When a player is wide and the ball is played to her, she can close on the ball and still be facing the goal. This makes it easier for her to dribble, pass or shoot. When she is not wide and the ball is played wide, she has to run out to get it. When she does get it, she is facing the sidelines and has to turn just to have the option of passing or shooting. If she does try to cross the ball after getting to it, she usually has to kick the ball across her body. This will result in a cross that never makes it past the near post if it does stay in bounds.

Show your teammates your frontside (hips) and show the defender your backside

This is actually covering two aspects, but I liked the symmetry so much, I decided to combine them. Showing your teammate your hips means that you are facing them. You are available as an option to him. He doesn’t have to choose to give you the ball, but simply having the option to pass to you might open up some other avenue of attack.

When players try to create space between themselves and the player with the ball, they often do it in the most direct method possible. This means running in a straight line to get to a point. It also means taking your eye off the player with the ball. You don’t know whether a pass has been made or not, but the defense does. They can predict with 100% accuracy where you are going to be simply by looking at the direction you are running in. Then they can see the ball being passed and they can react to it much faster than you can.

Runs to create space must ALWAYS be curved or run on a diagonal. Some part of your hips must be facing your teammate so that you can actually see when the pass is made. However, curving the run also gives the passer more space in which to pass you the ball. When you run straight ahead, unless the player with the ball is moving at an angle, there is almost no angle to pass you the ball other than in the air. A good covering defender will cut out almost every one of these passes.

Showing the defender your backside is the best way to shield the ball from the player. Now make sure that you don’t interpret this to mean “put your backside into the defender.” This is not a good technique because then your shoulders and the defenders are parallel and he can poke tackle the ball away from you. When shielding, your shoulders should be PERPENDICULAR to his. This keeps the ball on the far foot as far away as possible from a poke tackle.

When making a dribbling move to beat a defender, your move is set up by fakes with both the shoulders and the feet. However, no matter what move you make, you will always be using your body to keep the ball away from the defender. Therefore, your backside is what the defender will see most of as you make your move.

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Shake and bake

This emphasizes the fact that most players who are good dribblers have excellent body fakes and ball fakes. Showing somebody some shake and bake is to give them a good move. With our younger players, you may have to emphasize this point because they will try to rush through a move without a very good fake. Since the fake makes the move possible, it must be emphasized.

My wife thinks it is a silly phrase, and you are not obligated to use it, but remember the idea. And don’t forget that people need little hooks of vocabulary to easily remember concepts. I chose shake and bake because they rhyme with fake and because I can still see the chicken in the bag flying back and forth as I shook it to coat it with the flour concoction.

Play the way you faceThis phrase is taken from some coaching course I took years ago, and I have heard it so often that I couldn’t tell you who taught it to me. It simply means that you should pass the ball in the direction you are currently facing, even if it is back towards your own goal.

Passing the ball to a player who is facing the goal you are attacking, even if he is farther away, is almost always a smart choice. You can still get the ball back once you have turned to face the goal yourself.

This has direct implications for all of our defenders who are running on to a ball as they face their own goal. Instead of trying to turn against the high pressuring forward, simply pass the ball back to the goalkeeper. He is wide open and can help get you out of some dangerous situations.

This one can also be called “don’t turn into pressure.” This is for the players who must ALWAYS try to go forward with the ball even when they have pressure all over them. You can be successful beating a defender occasionally, but if you try to turn into the pressure every time, then the defender just waits until you make your move and then she takes it from you . Midfielders and forwards do this a lot at the younger age groups.

The concept of unpredictability comes into play here as well. If you always make the same move, then you will become very predictable for the other team to defend. If a defender doesn’t know whether you will pass or dribble, then she is less certain and hesitates. This uncertainty is usually enough to allow you to win most of your 1 v 1 challenges.

This also covers the concept of shielding the ball as well. The point of shielding the ball is to keep it away from the defender. If you turn into the defender, you are exposing the ball to him and your chances of successfully beating him are low.

Stand your groundThis is my introduction to players shielding the ball from an aggressive opponent. Most players when pressured by the opponent will try to immediately beat her with a move or kick (sometimes pass) the ball away. What we want players to do is to feel comfortable no matter how much pressure is applied. This is how the game can be slowed down. If our teammates are not in a position to help, then I can hold the ball until they are ready.

What we want our players to do is have the ability to change the pace of the game. Sometimes the game is slow and other times it is fast. If we are less predictable to the other team, then we are harder to defend. Development of the confidence to hold your ground against any opponent will help us do that.

If you gave the ball to a player and told her to keep it away from the defender, she will usually do so by running back towards her own goal, basically running away from the pressure. She is doing

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what you told her, but in the process she is giving up space to the other team and compressing the space that her own team has to use.

The concept of "stand your ground" is simple, initiate contact with the defender and establish good position, then stay put. By extending your arms and keeping the ball on the foot farthest away from the defender, you should be able to hold the ball for as long as necessary. If you put your shoulder into the sternum of the defender, you can use her weight as a third point of balance.

If you keep moving the ball and your body as the defender moves, you can get the defender to over-commit and then you can beat her. The key is confidence in your ability to hold on to the ball against pressure. If you are sure you can keep the player off the ball, then you can wait until the time is right to make your move or get rid of it. Developing this confidence takes time and experience. Lots of my activities are geared around stand your ground simply because it helps the player to develop confidence. It is also one of the ways that you can make a training session more game-like. 1 v. 1 battles are at the heart of the game. Confidence in your abilities 1 v. 1 can carry you a very long way.

Don’t dive inThis is simple 1st defender stuff. Most of our players when in the position of being the defender on the ball will automatically challenge for the ball no matter what the situation. This leaves them open for getting beat easily and creating trouble for the rest of the team. Once the 1st defender is beaten, our team has one less defender and their team has one more attacker.

With our younger players, we need to teach them to close quickly on the attacker. We want our defender close enough to reach out and touch the player with the ball. This limits the time that the player has to think about what she will be doing with the ball. This is the first step in good defending.

We also need to teach them to approach the attacker at an angle. If she runs straight on to the attacker, then the attacker can still go in any direction to beat her. We want to cut off at least half of the field from the attacker by approaching from the side. This reduces the amount of ground that our team has to defend. The rest of the players can then defend a smaller part of the field with greater numbers, thus increasing our chances of success.

The key for the player is patience, first set up the attacker before challenging for the ball. This increases your chances of being successful when you do try to win the ball. By approaching from the side and quickly getting close to the attacker, you can limit her options. This makes the defenders job easier and increases the chances for a successful challenge.

Don’t chase the ballThis phrase applies to when I am teaching players about the transition from 1st defender (defending the player with the ball) to 2nd defender (defending players near the ball). The most natural instinct in soccer is to chase the ball. If you are defending the player with the ball (the first defender) and that player passes the ball to another player, naturally you will follow the ball.

This is a problem only when the player you were just guarding moves to a new position and immediately receives a pass back. As the defender, you have just turned to chase the second player and now the ball is back with the first player and you are behind him. This is called being penetrated by a wall pass and the effects can be devastating to your team. You are trying to help out and giving the extra effort, but two players from the other team are working together to get in behind you. When they succeed, your extra effort chasing the ball was actually wasted.

So what do you do when the ball is passed off? You step back and become a second defender. You first turn in towards the attacker who just gave up the ball. You get your head around so that you can see the ball and you try to keep hand contact with the player as they penetrate. If a wall

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pass comes, you will be in good position to intercept it. If it doesn’t, then you can support the 1st defender.

Make diagonal passesPlayers are often enticed into kicking the ball straight up the field. This seems to be the most direct way to advance the ball. However, it is a trap that defenders set for you, here’s why…

As the ball is played forward, the defense can predict with accuracy where the ball will end up. This means that the team can shift over and compress the space. It also means that they are more likely to intercept the ball and create a counter attack. The defense loves when the ball is played straight. With the exception of the ball moving closer to their goal, it is almost always a no lose situation.

If the ball is played on a diagonal instead, not only does the ball move, but also the defender has to turn to see it. If several diagonal balls are played, then the defenders have to turn each time a pass is made. If they are not perfect, then gaps will open up in their defense. This creates opportunities for penetrating passes or 1 v 1 moves with good attackers against weaker defenders. Any time we can make the defense turn and face their own goal, we are in a very good attacking position.

Forcing players to make diagonal passes makes them see more of the field as well. This can only be good for your ability to possess the ball. Add the diagonal passes to players opening up to the field and you can greatly increase your chances of retaining possession of the ball. If players are confident attacking by dribbling as well making diagonal passes and opening up to receive the ball, then you can move directly on to shooting because they are ready.

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Goal Setting

Are you a Survival Coach? A survival coach chooses his practice topics based on what his team did poorly last weekend. So if it looks like we were poor at passing, then practice this week will feature passing exercises. Next week, the team did poorly at shooting, and so this week the theme of the practice is shooting. Since the team does poorly every week at the higher-level tactics that he wants them to use, it is a common practice topic to spend time detailing how the tactics are supposed to be carried out. He understands the tactics, but his U10 players aren’t getting it.

When I first started teaching high school, I was a survival teacher. If I could just survive to the end of today, then I will think about tomorrow and what I was going to do then. Being a survival teacher meant that I would realize that the end of a unit had come and then announces to the students “there is a test tomorrow on this unit.” Luckily, I had the kind of students who did little to prepare for tests anyway and there was generally little uproar.

I had the great fortune to be able to work with a special education teacher who worked with me team teaching a class. One day after we had worked together for about a month, she approached me about a new teaching technique called Content Enhancement. Content Enhancement was an approach that was designed to help Special Education students mainstreamed into regular classes. The primary goal of the program was to help students plan their schedule and keep track of assignments better. Content Enhancement also forced the teacher to redo their lectures using graphical organizers that aided students in their recall of information and reduced the amount of material they had to write. Basically it taught the teacher how to say the same things more succinctly.

One of the techniques of Content Enhancement was called the Unit Organizer. After sitting down with me for about an hour and helping me choose the content and activities for one unit, I had a great revelation, if one unit took 3 weeks to cover and there were 9 weeks in a grading period, then I could teach three units per grading period. If I could teach three units during one grading period, then I could teach six during a semester.

Now you are probably saying to yourself “why wouldn’t a teacher know this already?” Well the fact is that I was not a very good teacher at that point and I had had no teacher training prior to entering the classroom. While I was very enthusiastic and pretty creative with my ideas, most of them did not come out very well and most of what I did was either hit or miss with many more misses than hits.

While this experience transformed my teaching and started me on the road to being a good teacher, it definitely wasn’t the end of the story. Once I learned about the Unit and Lesson Organizers, I wanted to know more. Content Enhancement also produces an activity for teachers and students called “the 10 questions.” The basis for this activity relates to the nature of most public school curriculums in this country. The curriculum for any course is often described as “a mile wide and an inch deep.” Teachers are in such a rush to cover the curriculum that we often pay little attention to whether or not our students are learning any of it. I have heard endless tales of teachers talking about their student’s performance on a test. In every case they cannot believe that the students did so poorly. “We covered this material in class,” “I told them this was going to be on the test,” “I cannot believe that they didn’t get this.” These are the typical kinds of quotes I hear from my colleagues all the time. It doesn’t matter what level of course is being taught, the comments are similar. So maybe it has something to do with the quality of the teacher or the structure of the course. I prefer to think that it is a little of both. Teachers who do not constantly check to see that their students are “getting it” are setting themselves up for failure and frustration. The unspoken idea is that if they are a good teacher then it must be the student’s fault that s/he failed to learn.

Curriculum writers do teachers no favors either. It is clear that the amount of information that can be covered in any course is increasing very rapidly. The amount of hours available to teach the class has not changed in several decades. Therefore, anyone who attempts to teach a survey

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class must spend less time on each topic if they are to cover as many topics as possible in a given time period. Students are given a taste of many ideas, but are never allowed the time to fully develop an understanding of any of them because of the pressure to cover the curriculum.

In Content Enhancement, that is referred to as the curriculum treadmill. Let’s get on at the start of the year and try to sprint through to the end of the year. Unfortunately, we lose many children who got lost at some point and are no longer interested in trying to catch up. The 10 questions allows teachers the chance to get off the curriculum treadmill by asking this one question: if you were to meet up with one of your students three years from now, what would you like to be able to talk to that student about? What idea would you like your student to be able to talk to you knowledgeably about?

Any teaching that sticks for that long is likely to have been internalized and part of the student’s knowledge base. That would be one way to know that you have been successful as a teacher. So, if you were to start at the beginning of the year, what ideas would be MOST important for your students to learn? Using that as a guide instead of the curriculum will allow you to choose fewer topics to cover and to cover each topic in greater detail, thus taking you off of the curriculum treadmill

Asking the 10 essential questions is very much a goal setting activity. In soccer, this activity is rarely done except in the most general way. “We are going to win state cup,” or “I want my players to develop better skills,” or “I want the team to have better shape and support.” These types of general goals are vague at best and useless at worst.

Many coaches also choose goals that reflect the way that they understand the game and not the way that the players understand the game. For example, many coaches of players under 12 years of age want their team to have better team shape. For even our most mature players, this is a difficult concept to understand and yet there will be coaches of under 9 players out there making that a priority at their training sessions.

While this may be good coaching for the coach, it is completely inappropriate for the players because they lack both the skills necessary to successfully carry out the tactics involved and the mental understanding of the game to know why it would be important to do so. Without a good foundation of technical skills, the complex tactics that some coaches employ are lost on the players.

In school, we are very aware of the development level of our children, we use many different methods to assess what skills the children possess and then we use a number of teaching techniques to help them develop more advanced skills. In soccer, we often ignore where the players are starting from and force them to fit into our way of understanding the game whether they are capable of doing it or not.

So before setting the goals for your team, you need to assess the skill level of your team. Once you know what the level is, then you can begin to formulate goals for the team that may actually be useful in helping them to develop. Goals should be specific and measurable. For most teams, you will want to set both short and long term goals. The goals should be emphasized every practice and your activities should reflect your attempts to achieve these goals.

It is important to remember that the development of technical skill is dominant to the development of tactical awareness. Most players who quit playing soccer do so because they stopped getting better. Usually the reason that they stopped getting better is that their coaches did not know how to raise the level of their game. Even among coaches who do know how, often they become fixated on winning games as the only measurable result of playing soccer. If you are a professional or college coach, then that is definitely the case, but for the rest of us, winning is measured in how the players develop and how many of them return for the next season. We win when our players learn, develop and continue playing.

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Your goals must reflect this reality. You should write goals that can be measured during a game as well as during a practice. The goals should be concise and easily understood by your players. If the players do not understand a goal, then rewrite it or develop a new goal. I have listed several goals below. See if you can identify which one is primarily tactical in nature.

1. Players will be more consistent at controlling balls out of the air. 2. Players will use 3 different moves successfully during a match.3. Players will be able to juggle the ball 25 times consecutively. 4. Players will complete 5 or more passes in a row 4 times during the game.

For each goal listed, you can then develop a way to measure it. For the juggling goal, the measurement is simple, you give them 5-10 minutes to come up with the highest number of consecutive juggles and then record the information. Players who can achieve the standard set are given a bonus or asked to reach another level (like juggling 50 consecutive). Goal #1 is a little less specific because you would have to measure how often they are successful at controlling the ball out of the air. If the success rate is less than 20%, then you can choose a number higher than that as your goal. In this case, the goal should be a moving target that is you should keep raising the bar until they reach a very high success rate.

If you didn’t figure it out, goal #4 is primarily tactical. Measuring the passing accuracy of players is a technical skill, but the number of passes you can string together is a tactical challenge. This is where most coaches make their mistakes. They are focused on the shape and support of the team that will lead to increasing the number of consecutive passes completed instead of focusing on the skills of passing that will improve the level of the individual player. This difference may be subtle to you, but it is a major one to the player. As he matures, he may have mastered the simplest passes and be able to use those consistently in the game to achieve your goal of possession. But he is not developing different passing skills that may allow him to become better as a player. The development of these skills is what will keep him interested in the game. The tactical benefit is that it will allow him to solve problems in different ways thus making him more dangerous to the other team.

Some coaches will say that if we ignore tactics that we will be stunting the development of our players, so when do you actually cover tactical aspects of the game. Since tactics are player decisions and the most basic player decision is “what do I do with the ball when I get it?” Tactics can never be divorced from the teaching of techniques. For example, if you are teaching a dribbling move to beat an opponent who is coming straight at you, then you will practice the move first without a defender, then with a passive defender, then with a defender at full speed. When you go into the game, you will be stopping the players at some point to point out where they could have used the move. That is the point at which the player is making a tactical decision. With the defender in this position, I will use this move. So the decision is the tactics and the move is the technique to solve the problem presented.

Some coaches forget that and instead focus on team tactics. Team tactics are decisions that the whole team makes or is supposed to make. These would include the way the team defends and the methods we use to attack. If you instead focus on the improvement of technical skills, then the individual tactics will take care of themselves and we will be able to teach group tactics and team tactics very quickly when the players are mature enough to understand it.

You can think of it like a home improvement project. If you have the tools and you have the skills, most projects run pretty smoothly. There will be problems you have to solve before you achieve you desired result, but the more skills you have, the easier it is to solve the problems. We want to make sure that our player’s tool kit is as big as possible so that they have the greatest chance of success. Setting goals that will help your players gain the skills necessary to succeed is one of your primary jobs as a coach.

Stop being a survival coach and do your players a favor. The time you spend setting goals and working to achieve them will be well rewarded.

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How not to coach a youth soccer game:

These descriptions are caricatures of coaches I have observed over the years. You may find yourself in one or many of these descriptions. As you develop as a coach, hopefully, you will begin to eliminate these personalities from your coaching. Remember that what your players need is a coach who is under control, evaluating the game and letting the players play.

Soccer is not a coach-centered game, the coach is simply there as an evaluator of his player's performance. If you find that you are drawing attention to yourself and away from the game, then step back and remember that the players you can help most are the ones on the sidelines, they aren't doing anything.

The commentatorThis coach paces up and down the sidelines talking about the game. Usually he does both play by play and color commentary. His comments usually include the referee, the players of both teams, the other coach and sometimes the parents as well. Usually he stands in front of his players on the bench so that they cannot see the game and he rarely pays attention to them unless he calls them up to substitute someone into the game.

He thinks he is the show and that the game is just the stage. He tries to draw attention to himself by attempting to make funny comments. He also wears his heart on his sleeve and you don't need to guess how he feels about anything that happens on the field.

The refereeThis coach is unhappy with at least 50% of the calls that are made in any game. These calls can be anything from throw-ins at midfield to fouls in the penalty box, he is an authority on every one. Since he has never taken a referee course or even read the rule book that came in his coaching package at the beginning of the season, he feels free to criticize any call.

Calls made in his team's favor are usually make up calls for ones that the referee missed. Even when it is called in his favor he feels that a more stringent penalty should be assessed. If he had his way, then every kid on the other team would be yellow carded at least twice a game.

The BrainThis coach wants to do all of the thinking for his players. He is like the master puppeteer, pulling the strings that are connected to his players, orchestrating everything that they do on the field to achieve his desired results. He wants to substitute his more advanced brain for their less advanced brains. If he could, he would play the game for them as well.

Barking out instructions on the sidelines like a drill sergeant, he tries to make the game go through him. Every possible decision a player could make is "helped" by support from the coach. The coach doesn’t want players, he wants a team that makes all decisions on the field exactly the way he would.

Unfortunately, often his players cannot do what he asks and the puppet strings get tangled up. The coach will substitute a player to untangle the strings, but even this doesn't help, his puppets just cannot keep up.

The Whiner This coach agonizes over every mistake made by the participants in the game. Not a single person can ever live up to his standards of performance. Referees can only make bad calls, players can only make bad decisions or exhibit bad technical skills. The other team is always unfair to our team. Not only do they get most of the calls, but also they get away with everything.

The disappointment of the coach is made known to all. He is the kind of coach who is happy we scored the goal, but unhappy about the other 17 chances we missed or the fact that the shot wasn't struck perfectly. Give him a chance after the game to reflect and he will invariably talk

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about the things we did wrong first and might at the end talk about the one thing that went right in the 8-0 win against a superior opponent.

The Cheerleader

This coach is intent on cheering his team to victory. He is not as focused on drawing attention to himself as the other coaches, but the result is the same. He cheers heartily every time his players do anything right or wrong. He constantly reminds them how good a job they are doing and is blissfully unaware that his players have tuned him out.

Because he is unable to identify when a player did something right, he spends all of halftime and the post-game congratulating the players on what they did during the game. He wants to make sure that everyone's self-esteem has grown during the game no matter what.

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Why are the referees so bad?

I cannot tell you how many times I am asked that question. It doesn’t matter what level we are talking about, or who I am talking to (coaches, parents, etc…) the referees are always bad. It doesn’t matter what the result of the game was, but if our team lost, we can almost always hear someone blame it on the referee. Of course, the referees really aren’t bad, but they are stuck in a no win situation. Few people understand what it is they are supposed to be doing. Few people know the rules of the game well enough to understand what the referee called.

First, lets get straight what the referee is supposed to be doing. His first priority is to ensure that the game is SAFE for all participants and to make sure that no one is injured during the game. Some of the rules are present for that purpose only, for example dangerous play is dangerous to both the player committing the foul and to the player receiving it. Tackling is strictly regulated so that injuries are reduced. In adult leagues, all of the participants probably have to go to work the next day and help to provide for their families, it would be terrible if a player was injured and could not help his family.

The second job of the referee is to ensure that the game is PLAYED FAIRLY according to the laws and spirit of the game. For this, the referee must know all of the laws and all of the penalties for breaking those laws. This part is pretty easy, there are few laws in soccer compared to football and they focus mostly on contact between players.

There are two parts of a referee’s job that are very difficult to pull off. The first is playing the game in the spirit of the laws. For this the referee must have a good understanding of the flow of the game and his role in maintaining that flow. Sometimes a referee is too strict and every time there is contact, then a foul has occurred and he blows the whistle. This breaks up the flow of the game and turns it into a series of choppy starts and stops. Other times, the referee doesn’t call any fouls even when they are obvious and the players begin to play against each other too aggressively, thus increasing the risk that someone will get injured. Most referees call the game somewhere in between these two extremes, sometimes letting a foul go and other times calling a foul in a similar situation.

The referee must also be able to make split second decisions. The faster the game is played, the faster decisions need to be made. You know that players are more likely to make mistakes when the game is played faster and referees are also more likely to make mistakes. That is the nature of people. You cannot blame the referee for not seeing or calling everything; it would be impossible for him to do so. The less experienced a referee is, the more likely he is to make a mistake. It is exactly the same as your players. The referee is a necessary and welcome part of the game. If you have trouble understanding this, then get yourself into a referee course and then get out and call some games. If referee education were part of the requirements for coaching, there would be a lot better understanding of their role on the field and how they do their job…..

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About the Author:

John Murnan is a USSF “A” license coach who also holds a National Youth License. He focuses exclusively on developing the skills of youth players through a unique combination of games and activities.

John has worked with several clubs in S. Florida, including Jupiter, Delray Beach, Palm Beach United and Wellington Wave. Currently he serves as the Director of Coaches for the Cherokee Impact Recreational program and as Head Coach of the Etowah High School Girls Soccer team. He is also a staff member on the Georgia Youth Soccer Association Coaching Education Program.

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