2019 Coaching Thread

Discussion in 'Coach' started by stphnsn, Mar 11, 2019.

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  1. jmnva

    jmnva Member

    Feb 10, 2007
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    We use Score for our uniforms.
     
  2. jmnva

    jmnva Member

    Feb 10, 2007
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    I had my 1st session with the HS girls today. I had 12 at practice which is a great turn out.

    It was a blast to work with the group. They are smart, a little sassy and had decent skills
     
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  3. soccerinmich

    soccerinmich Member

    Jun 26, 2010
    I am currently coaching u12 girls. I am just curious how you all have your team warm up before games?
     
  4. CoachP365

    CoachP365 Member+

    Money Grab FC
    Apr 26, 2012
    Assuming you play 9v9, the game before you is running long so you don't get the field until 20 minutes before your kickoff...:

    Brief dynamic stretching session:

    4v4 in area from the top of the box to the center circle, about as wide as the penalty area, usually through gates, with the starters.

    starting keeper is warmed up by bench players, usually they're playing a ball in to assistant who lays it off for them, ideally one of the players is the layoff and they get through 3 rounds (4 shooters, 1 passer).

    After the ref checkin keeper and starters get in position and we shadow play from the back through the lines while asst. and I walk around providing minimal pressure - mostly just jumping on zardes touches and sending it back to the keeper to start again.
     
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  5. CoachP365

    CoachP365 Member+

    Money Grab FC
    Apr 26, 2012
    Caveats: I coach low level community travel, the need to get them up to game intensity before the 20 minute mark of the 1st half is why I've found 4v4 or 5v5 for warmup works for me. Also a lot of them need a few touches/passes to shake off the nerves/rust, better to get it out pre-game than in the first 20 minutes of the first half.
     
  6. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    #206 elessar78, Sep 6, 2019
    Last edited: Sep 8, 2019
    Rondo while people gather. When everyone gets there we do a quick movement type thing. Then a 6v6-ish, one team attacks big goal other team attacks tries to play back to me at center circle. I then give myself about 5 minutes to talk lineup and game objectives. Last 5 is for them to get mentally prepared for the game.

    Now this all depends. If there is no real space to warm-up then we may be limited to doing some movement-thing in lines or we stick to rondos/double rondos.

    In tournaments where we have multiple matches in a weekend, after the first game I don’t make them do a full warmup. I’ve won a couple, didn’t advance in a bunch but overall I hate tournaments.
     
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  7. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    My plan for my 12Us this season: 11+ Kids, dribbling in small space, rondos, shots on GK.

    Our first game is tomorrow. We'll see what adjustments I need to make after that.
     
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  8. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Don't take this as criticism, just knowledge sharing

    During my D (the old version), the GK section—the GK coach talked about warm-ups from the GKs perspective. He didn't like the traditional 3 lines shooting at the GK or pass to the coach for a layoff then shot on goal.

    His rationale was that it wasn't a good warm-up for the GK. In his view, the warm-up should build up the GKs confidence. Getting forty hard shots (usually with no defender) in a row at you a) did not build confidence b) unrealistic to what they would face in a game and c) just brutal physically on a GKer. To the last point, GKs are people too (maybe, psycho-animals IMO) and they don't want to take that kind of pounding before a match.

    He recommended a warm-up with getting their footwork moving with a variety of catchable balls. Challenging shots for the keeper to save should happen in training. If a trained assistant isn't available, teach a back up GK how to do a keeper-friendly warmup.
     
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  9. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Game 1 was a decent outing on the score board and came away with a win. The competition wasn't great. My U10s are a decent group just needs to be sharper with technical details (like receiving with their back foot), fine-tuning their positioning, learning body shape.
     
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  10. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Ran across this gem on the twitter today. It's a paraphrase, so bear with me:

    At many youth clubs they find the athlete and try to make him into a footballer. At Barca, they find the footballer and try to make him a better athlete.
     
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  11. jmnva

    jmnva Member

    Feb 10, 2007
    Arlington, VA
    Club:
    DC United
    Tonight I decided to coach a kindergarten boys team.

    My wife's response when I asked her if I could was awesome. Paraphrased it was "TBH I've been waiting for you to ask. 3 teams is your normal."

    It should be interesting-- I've never coached a boys team for an entire season
     
  12. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Least favorite part of being "in charge": making the cancel/still-on call for practices games.

    Even with weather radar, it's still a damn crap shoot.
     
  13. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    Went from a 5-2 win 2 weeks ago, to a 5-1 loss yesterday.

    They scored their first goal 20 seconds in. We didn't have a good warm-up (clearly). Long drive for us and kids filtered in. As we were trying to get into our warmup, the refs did check in.

    We had no pressure-cover in our back line and gave up 3 goals on breakaways. Two on a first time GK.

    Taking our lumps sucks.
     
  14. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    Heard that. My team is now 0-3 and have given up 17 goals and scored 4. Half of my players are playing travel soccer for the first time this season. My plan had been to continue to rotate players through the lines (A/M/D) every game to get them all experience playing everywhere so they understand the different roles. I think I'm going to do that one more game. Then we will play the second half of the season with more settled positions. At this point I have a better feel for who the players are and what their strengths and weaknesses are. And some players just will not or canot play certain positions so I'm not going to force them into it.
     
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  15. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    I'm having similar struggles moving players around into different positions. One issue is me because I'm just learning what positions they are good at or comfortable at. Two is that they are not used to being moved around. Neither is an insurmountable problem—just growing pains.

    There were positives yesterday. Play was mostly in the opponent's half, but at the same time this opened us up to the counters/breakaways. Our CBs were pushed up to midfield with nothing behind. We got burned with that for 3 goals.
     
  16. rca2

    rca2 Member+

    Nov 25, 2005
    My approach depends on the age level, but I rotated players to mimic interchange between lines, which I feel is an intermediate level topic. Putting off the rotation will just make teaching intermediate tactics more difficult.

    For anyone, playing in a different position requires some adjustment. It is confusing and takes a while for the players to be able to read the game.

    I don't believe in teaching "roles" to field players until they are advanced. I intentionally used a system of play that used pretty much the same fundamentals at each position. The exception being that forwards finished, but I didn't find any player who didn't understand the idea of shooting at the goal.

    Putting players in new positions is stressful, but stress is required for learning. If you don't rotate the players, most of the players will not master all the fundamentals.

    One thing that I thought helped immensely to bond the team was that I taught a high pressure zone defense. To be successful, players must depend on their teammates. Again it is a learning process, but once they finally "get it" there is a great deal of positive feedback.
     
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  17. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    Part of the problem is my top 8 players know how to play. The bottom six who are brand new have the bunch-ball, chase everywhere mentality. So I have half the team who are where I expect them to be and more or less do what they're supposed to do, and then I have have other half who are getting in the way.

    Maybe the answer is to distribute my better players into regular players into more regular positions so I have a solid core and then rotate part of the team into new positions each game. That way I know I have players I can rely on in each line while continuing to get everyone experience throughout the field.
     
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  18. soccerinmich

    soccerinmich Member

    Jun 26, 2010
    I am having the same issue and I believe we are coaching the same age. U12 girls.

    I have a core of 7-8 players that I have been coaching for years, but we lost 6 players to a pay to play club after last spring and are trying to integrate 5 new girls that have come from our rec league.

    We started the season well with two 1-1 draws against good competition. We lost last weekend 7-1 against a team I expected us to beat. The problems I am running into:

    The core group is growing increasingly frustrated with the new players. There is a serious team unity issue and the core group is positionally and tactically sound while the new girls have never had positions. We have a two week stretch with no games and we began last night working very diligently on connecting our lines and moving as a unit. Lots of triangle and diamond support play, focusing on how do I move off the ball to be an option to a teammate.

    Hopefully some of it starts to click or it is going to be a difficult season with us taking a lot of lumps
     
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  19. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    This gets to what stphnsn and I were talking about a few pages back: culture. Try prioritizing culture/psychosocial over technical/tactical for now. Be intentional about how you work to integrate the new players into the team. Maybe put the returning players into the role of mentors for the new players.
     
  20. rca2

    rca2 Member+

    Nov 25, 2005
    Even with adults coaches face the challenge of varied abilities and experience. When I selected lineups and planned substitutions, I would always think in terms of a leader for each line. Someone that could direct and coordinate. Generally I would put the leader in a spine position, where it would be easiest to communicate with the others in the line. (I don't believe it is the coaches job to direct the play from the sideline, especially not a development coach. For me soccer is still a player's game.)

    In a 433, I would put the leaders at the 2 CB, CM and CF positions. With a pool of 8 experienced players, that is how I would use them--rotating them through those positions. I found over the years that putting 2 strong players in the back pays bigger dividends in terms of their ability to influence the game. Having two, allows one of them to get forward in the attack regularly. It also allows them to switch off on the runs. Most defenses have problems picking up the midfielders running forward. Almost all of them won't effectively mark a CB running forward.

    With the flank players, I would ensure that they played on both flanks as well as in a different line.
     
  21. stphnsn

    stphnsn Member+

    Jan 30, 2009
    I've seen some minor frustration among my 12Us, but it's mostly been due to a few players' lack of focus more than their tactical/technical deficiencies. I haven't seen anyone refusing to pass to the weaker players or anything like that so far so I think that's positive. Our team spirit seems to be pretty good at this point as far as integration is concerned. It's not a cliquey team.
     
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  22. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    I remember why I don't go to high school soccer games. In the second half both teams had six total possessions with 3 passes. One with four. Ball spent most of the time in the air bouncing around. Both teams are playoff caliber and one is the reigning state champs. One team was playing with 2 sweepers with 3 marking backs in front.
     
  23. rca2

    rca2 Member+

    Nov 25, 2005
    Just curious. How many forwards did the opponents have to deserve 3 marking backs and 2 sweepers?
     
  24. elessar78

    elessar78 Moderator
    Staff Member

    May 12, 2010
    Club:
    Arsenal FC
    I believe they had 3 forwards. But none seemed particularly dangerous.

    Team with two sweepers, "home team", had one midfielder who would just dribble until she lost the ball. Both teams had zero ideas out there.

    Ive coached with both head coaches and their assistants and really surprised at the play.
     
  25. CoachP365

    CoachP365 Member+

    Money Grab FC
    Apr 26, 2012
    Do their club teams look different?
     

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