Better Than Average Talent, Can't Score...

Sorry for misleading. They did dribble out the content when they opened up the free membership a few years back, I thought at this point the free membership got you all 6 or 7 modules at once.

 

"Style of Play" is a factor in athlete development. A developmental coach should have a view in his head of the senior game and what qualities players ideally need to play senior soccer well. In my view a senior player should be able to play any style well. With U10's I started out teaching fundamentals in the team tactics context of high pressing and counterattacking. I thought of counterattacking as "direct play" using combination passing. My next step would have been to lower the line of confrontation, which would have involved essentially the same player movements and skills, just on a different area of the field. At the time I thought of it as direct play versus indirect play, rather than "possession". At a certain point possession style uses direct play to attack and finish. So in that respect possession style builds on the things learned in direct play.

If I wanted to teach players to play possession style (and I did), I would not instruct them to play possession style like a senior team did. I would break down the elements of possession style and teach it in a progression over the development cycle. Which is in fact what I did, as described in the paragraph above. But you don't start with passing. You start with dribbling, if the players cannot already dribble well.

High school is a weird situation. A coach could be a development coach looking at long term player development or the coach could be a competitive coach training a team to win matches. The competitive coach would have to figure out a system of play for the team and then train the team to effectively use that system against specific opponents. I expect a lot of High School coaches try to be both. Given the difficult training session to match ratio, it is probably the most challenging job in soccer.

 

I also would love to hear from others that have paid for the membership and have a season or two under their belts with it. How did it work?

I will start a new thread to ask...

 

@Soccer Dad & Ref I haven't used it in 20 years, but in ancient times when I coached youth I heavily relied on materials available at Georgia Soccer. They were highly respected. I haven't used the current materials, but I suspect the current materials are just as excellent and still free. I expect that it is based on traditional best practices.

I hope this helps while you research 3four3.

http://www.georgiasoccer.org/coaches/coaching_resources/

The other resource I highly recommend is Dennis Mueller's Daily Footwork Drill handout (a/k/a 1000 touches drill).

http://www.ucs.mun.ca/~dgraham/daily_drill.html

 

There is a right way, though. Valuing having the ball is the right way. Every action being intentional is the right way. Getting every player so that they are comfortable with the ball (younger) or with their role in the team (older). A 14 year old that never touches the ball outside of practice is probably not going to become Ronaldinho, but I can usually get them to be able to receive, shield, and pass about 20 yards accurately, which is all I need from them if I have other kids that are more technical.

Beyond that, there's a lot of room to apply those principles to your preferred style of play. Drawing the defense in then breaking quick, wearing the defense down with hundreds of passes, playing down the wing for cutbacks and crosses - all of it rests on and is most effective when everyone knows why you play that way and your training activities are directly related.

That's one of the biggest takeaways from 3four3 for me - have a philosophy, haveyour training activities directly relate to how you play. If you aren't going to
be a string 43 passes together team, maybe work more on choreographed direct play - if you know where the next pass is going, you can cover a lot of ground pretty quickly.

 

I think that for weak high school teams (and it works too when they aren't weak) Anson Dorrance's lineal 343 system would work really, really well (although I personally have never used it in that form).

For those that aren't familiar, the midfield plays in a line across. The team shape stays compact moving to adjust to circumstances. In attack the forwards shift to the strong side and the weak side mid moves forward into the space. In defense the backs shift to the strong side and the weak side mid moves back to cover the space.

How compact the team stays depends on how big a threat a ball over the top is. Ideally you have a keeper good at sweeping balls coming behind the back line. Either a high press or immediate pressure on the ball by 2 players while the rest fall back to a lower line of confrontation should counter long ball tactics.

The simplicity helps focus on fundamentals instead of having to teach a bunch of specialist positions to players.

If you are wondering how this meshes with the USSF fixation on 433, this is good preparation for playing a 433 later in life. Think of the outside mids as fullbacks that run shorter sprints because of their placement in the midfield line. A plus for immature youth. In the classic 433, there are 3 CMs who are joined by a fullback to form a diamond when attacking. 343, although with a diamond rather than lines.

 

We played this a few years ago in my first year as an assistant coach. The highlighted sentence was the single hardest thing to coach. So, so many of our kids had it drilled into their heads that there was some sort of mandatory vertical "don't step on my lawn" spacing between the lines. Thus, when our backs shifted, our mids held their line across and the back side was left wide, and I do mean wide open. Even after giving up I think it was 6 goals from switches played into that exposed area, no matter which kid we put in the outside mid position and no matter how we explained, coached, cajoled, or begged it was almost impossible to get them to break their former training.

As a high school coach that I think can be one of the most difficult things, particularly if you're at a "regional" or private school - there's no real common core of understanding let alone a common style of play. And there's absolutely not enough time to build one up during the season, and the rules don't allow for much (if any, depending on your luck) organized practice out of season. In my case, as it's a private school, I don't even necessarily know who I'll have as players from season to season - it can be downright maddening. Fun, but maddening.

 

That has to be a local problem.

Flank players interchange lines, even in lower division professional play and even in low level adult recreational play.

Silly thing is that the ancient 424 depended on players switching lines. So these kids grandfathers switched lines.

 

Believe it or not, this is how we were coached when I was a kid growing up in the then-soccer-hot-spot of CT in the 1980s/90s. The whole area was awash in a very static 4-4-2 with sweeper/stopper and nobody was swapping positions within a line, let alone between lines.

I vividly remember one game when I was playing right back making an interception and streaking up the right side then making a cross into the box only to see that everyone on both teams were standing there mouths agape because, well, because right backs just don't do that. You'd think I had dropped my shorts to the ground before making the run given the stunned looks all around.

Granted this was only HS ball and not club, but we were way too poor to even know club soccer existed back then.

 

@Peter Rival I was playing then, often as a flank player, and saw a lot of what you are talking about. Playing with former college players was a pleasure, but I hated playing a 442 with rec teams because always at winghalf I was playing against 2 opponents, one who defended and one who attacked, because I simply got no support from the fullbacks. You also would not believe the number of times fullbacks demanded I drop back and help them mark 1 attacker. I got yelled at a lot because I would drop back until there was a 2nd runner.

I can tell you that I stayed wide as flanker. If there was open space in the center I would pass to the striker or CM to exploit the space. Cutting inside would take the space away from them by allowing the defense to become more compact. By continuing the flank attack, eventually a CB would have to commit wide creating 1v1 in the middle.

While soccer is tactically different at the top of the pyramid, I can tell you most certainly at amateur levels wingers cutting inside is overrated.

Peter, the important thing is that you didn't accept the 1980's soccer lobotomy. There too many people that think "formations" define fixed "positions" on the field rather than roles.

My experience is funnier. In high school gym class in the late 60s we played 235 for six weeks. In 1968 during HS football preseason, we played a WM (using a pointy football was banned until later in the preseason).

 

I was one of those kids in the 80's/90s who was on a rec team until a Dad came and said there was a club team for kids who were good and not"did we want to join" but instead "Did we want to start a rival club and beat them"

Hell yeah we did. We played a 4-4-2 like everyone else but our coach was the son of our HS coach and he didn't know what to do so he ran and ran us. We won lots of games by running teams into the ground. We overlapped a ton and only now as an adult do I see how rare that must have been then and still is now.

I really like the 4-2-4. We are just 7v7 and next year we will be 9v9 and therefore most teams will run a 3-3-2. I'm going to run a 3-2-3 and see how it goes. Kids are young and they have good lungs. Get out and use them.

 

You can do a lot with a 323 in terms of preparing for a future 433. The "23" is of course the classic and still used W attacking shape. The back three could attack like 2 FBs and a CM in between them. OR they could play like 2 CBs with a 6 in front and the FBs are missing.

Both would provide experience useful for the future. The first is a W with the two CBs missing. The second is an M with the two FBs missing.

 

I would just like to see us hold and build off a shape. I assume having 2 in the midfield forces either the backs or forwards to come back and forth as needed. This will then make it easier to teach that its ok to make runs from certain positions and who fills, etc. That said much of this is a dream for this team.

We struggle to do a 4v1 rondo for more than 3 passes. Taking a step back midway thru the season I realized that my kids got what we were teaching but didn't have the individual skills to execute. Therefore some would purposely cheat to help out others and then those used those others as a crutch. This offseason I gave the kids a list of stuff they could do on their own. I guarantee that outside of my top 3 no kid has touched a ball since early November.

 

Increase the space until they are successful.

 

I dealt with this when I was coaching our middle schools' teams. I adjusted my training sessions down to the least common denominator. I had the basics for the novices, but I could throw in additional challenges or restrictions for the more skilled players. Making things scaleable is the key when you're dealing with a group whose skill levels vary greatly.

 

I did that just this past year during one set of rondos. I wound up with effectively the 'B' side of the team right now, with only a couple of 'A' players, one of whom was both bored and under-performing. Instead of letting him continue to attempt trick flicks I put him in the middle of the rondo (IIRC it was ~8v3) and made him play the pivote role. That forced him to do a lot more moving, a lot more thinking, and have much better positioning in receiving the ball.

The best part was that I got to single out the more-talented player and challenge him without making it obvious to everyone else that he was being singled out. Sometimes teenagers can get cranky and lose interest if they think someone else is getting special treatment, even if it's deserved talent-wise.