A bit of a dilemma with my G04 (u13) team. We are a mix of 04 and 05 girls, but will be playing in the 04 division this year. Part of my issue is trying to decide which "tier" will be best for us. Our league has 3 tiers (not including DA and ECNL). I "think" we should play in Tier 2, but it won't be easy for us. If we play in Tier 3, I think we win most of the games. Good for confidence, but is it good for development? They are still young and could move up in a year if they needed to . We are just moving from a lower league (comparable to tier 3) into a more competitive one. We've been playing friendlies this Spring to get a gauge of where we belong. When playing Flight 2 level teams, we've won a few games. And we've lost a few games by a score of 2-0. I can't say we've been outmatched, but we give up a strange goal here and there and have trouble finding the back of the net. We played 2 games this weekend. Saturday was against an all 04 team. This team is planning to play Tier 2 (they were undefeated in Tier 3 last year) Lost 2-0. Played pretty good, but could not score. Decent build up, good play through the middle third. A But, lost the ball in the final third, with minimal quality chances. Other team scored off a rebound when my keeper came outside of the 18 to play a through ball with her feet. Bit of a mis-hit to waiting attacker who had an easy finish. The 2nd goal was after 4 of my girls watched a ball come down in between them to a lone attacker, who collected it, found an open player on the wing who was wide open to bury it. Other team didn't have too many other quality chances. I think if we play them 5 times, we win 2 of them and they win 3. Sunday - We played an 05 team that is planning to be Tier 2 in 05. I had 8 05 players and 6 04 players at this game. We could do no wrong on this game. Passing was crisp. Made great runs off the ball. Finished with precision. 6 different girls scored a total of 10 goals. Their keeper made at least 6 saves that would usually go in the net too. So, I know we have the ability to score. I called off the dogs a bit in the 2nd half, but playing keep away for 30 minutes wouldn't have been any better than scoring more. My gut tells me that we should spend some time over the next few weeks working on play in the final third. More of a short sided 4v4+2 going to a big goal type of a game. Work on recognizing space/queues for making runs, patience in front of the goal and looking for quality scoring chances. But the other half of me thinks that if we don't let those 1 or 2 "Strange" goals in per game, that we overcome that deficit and find a "Strange" goal of our own. So work on defense. I guess, the attacking game I'm thinking about would work for the backline as well. Thoughts? Ideas? Am I thinking about this wrong? We have a game on Wednesday against a team that we recently beat 4-2. They are an 04 team that is dealing with the same dilemma. They did really well in tier 3 last year, but don't want to get pounded every week in Tier 2. And then we play again on Friday against a team that is a higher level Tier 2 team that could probably be a lower level Tier 1 team.
Really tough question. How important is winning? I think your age group is at a crucial time when a lot of players drop out, often due to a lack of fun. How important is player development? If your team is constantly struggling to win some matches, you have to choose between player development and team development. What do I mean by that? Trying to build the strongest team detracts from trying to improve each player to the greatest practical extent. Conflicting issues include playing minutes, position assignments, team training plans and individual training plans. Strategies for building teams often focus on strengths and specialization; strategies for building individual players train weaknesses as well as strengths and that age is too soon to specialize in one position.
I don't want this to sound like the a-hole on a soapbox answer. But consider freeing yourself from these week to week constraints. Based on what you know about your players, decide what aspect of their technical and tactical game they should develop this year. I've been where you are at and what I found was I ended up solving last week's problem too often. My approach these days is more tactical and technical periodization. Tactical: we work on build out, build up, break through, and chance creation. Each week is on one of those topics for two practices and I just cycle throughout the year. Technical can be tackled with it's own periodization cycle (which is what I do for up to my u10s). So it could be a cycle of dribbling, striking, defending, and receiving. The beauty of tactical periodization is that a technical topic usually pairs well with the tactical. It puts the technical lessons within a tactical context. How is dribbling different when getting out of my defensive third vs trying to create a shot? How are my concerns different if I lose the ball? 99% of all teams need work with all phases of the game. Even the phases that are easy for them—the coach can increase resistance or difficulty. Hope this is helpful.
@elessar78 that was the best explanation of a progression for teaching team tactics that I have seen. Timely too for me. I was just thinking about how I would approach training for U14s. I agree with your point that following a season plan is more effective for development than correcting the mistakes observed in the last match.
Soccer isn't played in discrete phases like football: offense/defense/special teams. Phases flow from one to the other seamlessly. Improving build-up through midfield, for example, lets you hold onto the ball more. Opponents can't score without the ball. Allows you to create more chances TO score. Allows you to control the tempo of the game more. So, indirectly, it may help accomplish the task of reducing chaos-goals against your team and increasing your chances of scoring more.