Help me! Coaching 13-14 yr. olds who are new to soccer.

[Bryan Gividen]

Current day. The level of play among the teams in Northern AZ (where I currently live) is atrocious. (NOTE: There are no real soccer leagues run around here. A bunch of U12 leagues, but it is city run stuff that is far from competent.) With the exception of two high school teams, all the coaches around here know very little when it comes to soccer. Enter me. I want to build up the soccer teams at our school. Since most players first real competitive soccer comes at High School level, players aren't well versed. I have decided to start a program at the Junior High to train players in the basics. They'll be able to scrimmage another Junior High squad if I can contact the coach from that area. It is my duty to train them.

I consider myself decently knowledgable when it comes to Soccer. Basic strategy and skills are no problem. I have two big problems:

First is conditioning. I have no clue what good conditioning for this age group is. I'll meet with these kids 3 times a week from now until the end of summer. I need to know how to prepare them physically for matches.

Second is that even though I think I know everything (what 17 year old doesn't?) I don't. I'm fearful of what effects my coaching would have on the kids in the future. The High School coach that these kids will go to knows little to nothing on soccer strategy. But all I have is a summer with these kids. The training I pass on to them will be much heavier than the training they will receive in High School. Does anyone think this will have an extremely negative impacts on their play in High School?

Any general comments or suggestions directed toward a 17 year old who is probably getting in over his head?

[Richie]

"I have decided to start a program at the Junior High to train players in the basics."

So the school gave a 17 yr old permission to do this Bryan?

"It is my duty to train them."

A soccer apostle? Good so am I.

"I consider myself decently knowledgable when it comes to Soccer. Basic strategy and skills are no problem. I have two big problems:

First is conditioning. I have no clue what good conditioning for this age group is. I'll meet with these kids 3 times a week from now until the end of summer. I need to know how to prepare them physically for matches."

That's a long time, spring just started so you have this spring and this summer to train them right?

"Second is that even though I think I know everything (what 17 year old doesn't?) I don't. I'm fearful of what effects my coaching would have on the kids in the future."

Look the problem with these kids is they don't know the game, and their skills are bad. What ever skills they have were probably learned wrong. That is the hard part relearn and teach new skills. That is your main problem not conditiong.

You have to correct bad technical skills as you see them, every time you see them. Like the push pass, how to tackle, get them to look and think ahead before the ball gets to them, how to control a ball out of the air, how to shield the ball under pressure, how team mates support the dribbler. Confidence with the ball is the key. That confidence and thinking ahead will allow them to get their head up. Then they can do something pass or dribble or shoot, and that will make them better players.

Do a lot of dribbling work because everything starts from the dribble. So do one on one work attacking and defending because that what it comes down to at the moment of scoring goals and defending.

2 of your 3 practices a week should be pretty intense practice that will help the fitness. Make all your exercises into games where the attackers can score goals, and the defenders can win the ball and immediately attack and score themselves. End by always breaking the team up and playing a game. Use regulation size fieldfor that. Lose the ball 3 players slow down the attack, and the rest behind them retreat behind to their defensive half of the field. Push them to do that.

the third practice use small stations 6/7 of them. in each station they work on a different skill 3 or 4 players in a station. Once they get ok at one skill move players to another station that they are weak in because everyone will not be the same in every skill. Some are better then others. Go from one station to the other to correct and push the players to push themselves.

Find a farely decent player who is a hard worker and could be a leader. Then make him the leader the captain let him push the players to push themselves. Peer pressure works, tell him you don't want a hitler however.

Make a practice plan on paper before the practice. Then make the next practice based on weakness you saw in the last practice. Don't try to do to much in one practice it leads to confusion. Complicated skill break it down into its individual parts and work on that over multiple practices.

Don't be afraid to make ajustments in the plan as you need to in the current practice. Then just carry over what you did not get to in other practices.

Assume nothing about the player. They have to prove they have the technical skills. Saying they can do it means nothing. Can't do it in practice games can't do them in real matches.

Since your young always, always stay calm when correcting. When you correct also praise the effort. Find something good that they did before it will make correcting them less distastefull to them. Stay calm show your emotions to them when it comes to your love of the game. Pass that on to them. Someone does something good get excited about it, make sure the other players see and hear your enthusiasm. It is contangoius to your team. Get them to praise team mates play on the filed you are team building my friend. Plus it is the start of good communication among your players

"The High School coach that these kids will go to knows little to nothing on soccer strategy."

Well work on simple tactics with the players in that 3rd practice. They can still do that on the field even if the coach does not know tactics. The important thing is the player know certain simple tactics like the takeover for example. Do a lot of things using the takeover.

Also beat a player one on one that creates space for team mates then look to pass that is a very simple tactic.

Live long and prosper appostle :-)

Richie

[Bryan Gividen]

Thanks for all the input Richie. My first meeting with the 16 kids who signed up (decent numbers considering the school's population is 300 boys and girls and I am training only boys) will be a week from today. Living in a small town has its advantages. (For instance, I am good friends with the principal who readily approved usage of anything I needed. Namely the football field (no good soccer fields) and goals from the school.) Since I knew the principal and about six of the boys' parents, getting approval for this wasn't hard.

One question on your comments. You said to make two of the practices good, physical work outs. It seems like you are suggesting integrating all physical work outs into soccer related workouts. Should I stay away from point blank running? The workout I do to keep myself fit is definitely NOT feesible for Junior High kids only two days out of the week so I have no clue how to train them.

Let me hope my apostalic work results in divine play.

[Brownswan]

1. 13-14 year olds need more conditioning training than u-10 or even u-12. Puberty has really kicked in, with growth spurts, and they tend to be clumsy compared with u-10s.

Do not neglect stretching warmups. You can try to make it interesting by using a ball in the exercises: stretching with the ball, etc. At this age, they really do need to stretch and warm the muscles before exerting them.

2. since they lack ball-skills, include a ball in every training exercise: run with the ball, sprint to a ball, dribble it around a cone, sprint back -- always, at some point, include touching the ball.

3. Always end with a small sided game. Keep it fun, above all. Training games - 3-v-3 for example -- can be run inside a rectangle with the other players on the perimiter as free pass receivers, allowing wall passes to either team. My kids had a lot of fun with this, and variations of it.

[Michael Russ]

Originally posted by Bryan Gividen

One question on your comments. You said to make two of the practices good, physical work outs. It seems like you are suggesting integrating all physical work outs into soccer related workouts. Should I stay away from point blank running?

Absolutely IMO. Especially long distance running. The critical conditioning for soccer players is recovery rate.

I would recommend that your technical practices be divided into 3 phases.

Fundamental Phase, Match related Phase, and Match condition phase.

Fundamental phase:

Use drills that afford lots of touches and lots of movement.

For example break up into two groups of 8. In each group have four guys on the outside of a box and four guys on the inside. Then have the guys on the inside move around in the box and make and receive passes to the guys on the outside. Make sure they dont just go around in a circle, force them make cuts and sprints, then jog followed by another sprint. When the inside guys are dead, switch up and give them a chance to recover while the new guys run around inside. As they warm up, stop intermitantly and do stretches. As you progress, add restrictions, based on capabilities. ie, weak foot only. All passes must be made with outside of the foot. All passes must be received with the outside of the foot etc.

Avoid anything where a player will go an extended period of time without touching a ball. LIMIT LINES DRILLS AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE!

Match related phase:

Use small sided games to work on how to apply pressure and how to respond to it. Make sure to start simple, and add restrictions as success warrants. don't spend 10 minutes trying to teach them some complicated game at first, just start with simple 2 v 2 games and then throw in restrictictions or players to try and simulate what you want to work on in that practice. Use things like uneven sides to simulate match conditions.

Don't use games that will take a lot of set up time from one to the next, you don't want to be setting up cones and flags, while your players are standing around. so think before hand how you will progress from on part of practice to the next.

Believe me, if you work these guys hard in these small sided games, conditioning will not be a problem, and your players touches on the ball will improve tremendously.

Be carefull not to over coach during these games. Let them play for a while and look for coachable moments. When you see something you want to comment on, stop the play and make a quick comment, and get the play moving again, no long lectures.

Match Condition Phase:

Alway end the practice by moving into a match with two goal keepers on a larger field (not necessarily a full size field). Although it should be similar to match conditions, it is still not necessary that it be 11 v 11. Once again, don't over coach. Focus on one specific part of the game that you want to impress upon them in that practice, and only stop when you see an opportunity to comment on that aspect. If you stop every 5 minutes with all kinds of different advice, they won't retain any of it. Make notes of those other items, and make them the focus of the next practice.

Speaking of notes. Make sure you make plenty of them. Index cards with information on each player are extremely helpfull.

Finally do a cool down, and talk a bit about what they can do at home to prepare for the next practice.

[Richie]

Bryan said "Namely the football field (no good soccer fields) and goals from the school.)"

Little piece of advice if those goals take longer then 10 minutes to put up forget about them at most practices. Use cones, gargage cans anything that can be set up without wasting a lot of practice time.

"You said to make two of the practices good, physical work outs. It seems like you are suggesting integrating all physical work outs into soccer related workouts."

Yes, I am right now. Your players need skill work, and they also need to get into soccer shape. Right now try to do both at the same time.
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Put light plyometrics in your warmup

1. Skipping
2. Striding
3. Side Shuffling Right
4. Side Shuffling Left
5. Back Peddling
6. Skipping for Height
7. Skipping for Distance
8. Sprinting
9. Bounding Right
10. Bounding Left
11. Backwards Sprinting
12. Bounding from the left foot to the right foot
13. Broad jumps
14. Sprinting
15. Walking Lunges
16. High Knees
17. Butt Kicks
18. Straight Leg Run
19. Sprinting
20. Rest and Stretch

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Here are a few things you might want to use.

Pairing is good a lot of what I do at the beginning of the season is player to player skill work and using pairs also for fitness work. Some skill work does not require a lot of space. So you can have two rows of players making a lot of 2 player pairs each pair has a ball. and you can just walk the rows and make comments. You can even put this kind of repetition as part of your warm-up before practices and games. You can have each player work up and down the ladder. Throw to the foot, then to the shin then to the thigh to the stomach and to the chest then to the head and down again. Then your partner throws and he goes up and down the ladder.
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Have one that I like using three players and two balls. Receiver is the middle player. One player one touch passes on the ground to the middle player with his back to the the third player. Then the middle player passes back to the first player, then the middle player immediately after the pass faces the third player. The third player tosses the ball in the air to the middle player. The middle player heads back to the third player. Then turns to meet the push pass of the first player then immediately turns to meet the header of the third player he heads back and immediately turns to return the push pass of the first player. It takes timing and skill. Then after some repetitions one of the other two end players goes to the middle
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For quickness in general. Win the 50/50 ball

You can do figure 8's Put up two cones and your players run around and throw and around them making a a figure 8. Have them go in both directions. Then gradually bring the cones closer together to make the 8's in a smaller space.

Also try thisX X
X
X X Lay out 5 cones Players run around the cones always cutting back around the center cone.
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Fitness is important. Being able to push oneself mentally even if your tired is a good character trait for a player who wants to be a starter.

Oh yeah, tired players also stop thinking when they are tired.

So fitness is very important. But skills are a must. So try and do both within each exercise. Push your players in each exercise. Do not go over the line on pushing players, best is to try and stay right on that line.
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Regards

Richie

[Bryan Gividen]

Thanks to everyone so so much for helping me out. Every single one of these comments has been written down in my notebook. I'll see how each of the drills given go over and I'll also see how everything works. Thanks to everyone so much.

I'm open to any more comments or suggestions if people are willing to give them.

[uniteo]

I'm going to offer a slightly contradictory view here on fitness. Given that your players are at such a basic level, and that you are only with them 3 times per week, I would not concern myself with fitness as a separate issue.

If you run your practices correctly the fitness component is built in...As has been previously said, you want to avoid lines when doing drills, so that players are constantly moving and on the ball. Make sure they keep moving...and when designing drills insert a fitness component. For example, in working on dribbling, you can do a simple slalom run, or you can do a slalom run with a turn and pass at the end, followed by a 10 or 15 yard sprint to a target. You've added work on additional skills (turning and passing) and fitness in what is essentially the same drill. And your getting them used to the types of movements they'll use when you get into combination play.

And you'll want to incorporate lots of play in your practices, which is the best fitness tool of all. In this respect the skill level of your players and your desire for fitness work together. With small sided games you will want to increase field size for your less skilled players so they have more time and space on the ball. More ground to cover, less players so less opportunity to hide from play and rest on the field.

And finally, with running, remember to keep any sprint work relatively short. Most sprints in the game are no more than 10 or 20 yards, so no full-field sprints. Half field is too long.

Finally...tell them to watch soccer. Good soccer, just so they can see what it is supposed to look like. Tape (or find somebody to tape) the Champions League games. Would you expect a high school basketball player to never have seen an NBA or NCAA game? It is an all too common expectation.

Good luck

[Turk from Pigs Eye]

I agree with Uniteo. Normally, when the players get to the JV level they should spend time on conditioning, but if they are pretty green you should play more. If they can watch games critically they can learn a lot. Does somebody have FSW or MLS Shootout that can record games?

[CG]

here are some good sites to check for drills/activities:


http://www.nasl.com/drills.htm

http://www.finesoccer.com/finesoccer_drills_archive.htm

http://www.worldofsoccer.com/books/team/default.html

http://www.eteamz.com/soccer/pills/jpill.htm

http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~dgraham/manual/

http://www.worldclasscoaching.com/samples.asp


If you have any questions feel free to ask.

[SankaCofie]

tell them all to take nandrolone in their breakfast cereal. i give my kids an interesting new concoction which is a mix of cheerios and nandrolone, we call it Nandrol-o's. That and teach them the benefits of foul play and they will be on the road to becoming excellent young soccer players.


seriously. i'd have them jog around the field once before they warm up, and once after practice, the rest of the time should be devoted to practicing chilenas.

oh yeah... and SHOW them some taped games every once in a while.. or the U.S. WC DVD.