Our State is adopting this for FALL 2017. I got a jump on it and started incorporating it as part of training this past weekend. It's for 10s and younger only.
I got to explain it at our travel coaches' meeting. First I went over some admin stuff the state youth board tried to pass - consolidate divisions from 6 to 5, allow 7 guests vs 3, etc. Told them none of that was happening due to procedural missteps. After I explain the build out line, a new u10 coach pops up "Wait, they rejected those other things but approved THAT? I've played my entire life and have never seen a field lined that way..." Should be an interesting fall....
i like the idea in theory. getting coaches to accept the goals that come with teaching young players to play out of the back is another matter, practically. we played with BOLs in the spring, but our coaches kept hoofing it long into the crowd instead of playing short. that's something else to address at my coaches' meeting next week.
The problem I have with the concept is: What does "play out of the back" mean? It is a popular phrase, but it doesn't have any specific meaning in terms of the attacking principles of play. It seems to me that there are 2 schools of thought, neither of which is best described by this phrase. There is a tension between "penetration" and "support" (some coaches say depth instead of support). A team must have both to be effective. Neither penetration without support and support without penetration will be effective. One view is to penetrate as far up field as early as practical with the focus on unbalancing the defense. Another view is to penetrate up field while maintaining your own good shape. This second view maintains compactness while the first view stretches the team's shape requiring more sprinting by everyone to keep up with the ball in a compact shape. This is what I think is behind the "build out of the back" movement. But passing the ball along the back from one FB to the other FB does not promote penetration. This is the trap that too much of the current coaching fad regarding building out of the back falls into. Instead of building out of the back, I would stress the back line maintaining their support of the attack and look at the depth between the three lines to insure it does not get too far. We talk about playing in the gaps between the opponent's mid and back lines, but we need to do the same thing in the gap between the opponent's mid and forward lines. I don't see why SSG drills for "breaking lines" are not generic regarding which line is being broken. Through passes and 1-2s are just as important in back as in the front.
@elessar78 think about the tactical lessons in rondos. Barca used rondos to teach how to break down lines in a generic fashion. They didn't have 3 special rondos for backs, mids, and forwards. Training the necessary skills and tactics is different than team tactical exercises where you give the team specific tactical problems to solve using those skills and tactics. For the rest, what I am referring to is that, if you want to break lines using short passes on the ground, your alternatives are to pass through the gap between 2 defenders or else pass through the gap between a defender and the touch line. A 4v2 or 5v2 rondo provides those passing opportunities. Now just imagine how your rondo fits onto the 11v11 model. I.e.: 4v2--CB/RB/CM/RM vs CF/LW.
I've been following the build out line very closely but just learned at a coaches meeting last night that the build out line also serves as a line denoting when you can be offsides, as the midfield line does in full sided soccer. Can someone explain to me how that helps promote player development. Seems to me that we want our defense pushing up to midfield when our offense has the ball to allow the defenders to support the attack. But now an opposing forward can sneak in behind them between the midline and the buildout line and cherry pick, forcing the defenders to mark him and destroying their ability to push up in support. What am I missing?
It was a change that sneaked in. To modify the offsides law requires approval of the IFA Board. I suspect it was a change that no one tested before implementing. Why have Law 11 at all in a small sided 7v7 U9 and U10 match?
Looking for feedback from someone who has seen this offside variant in practice who can tell me whether it's as disastrous as I fear it to be.
US soccer is acknowledging that in 90% of the u10 games, coaches tend to park a kid at the top of the 12. With the buildout line halfway between the 12 and midfield at say 30yds on a 55-65 yard field, that's 6-12 yards closer to the play for all those kids. If you're teaching the game to people who don't watch the game, make it look like something they might watch - ice hockey...
Ok, but if the defense doesn't move up to midfield in response to that being the demarcation for offside, why would they move up the buildout line just because that's the new demarcation for offside? There's no logical basis for believing that will happen. But really what I want to know is what it looks like when it's employed. Do defenses fail to push up and support the attack for fear of the cherry picking attacker camped behind them? I would think so. No way I'm pushing up to midfield if there's an unmarked, onside attacker 10 yards behind me waiting for a long ball. That attacker must be marked, meaning I can't push up in support. And meaning that, if I do push up, we are trapped in a game of long ball.
Basically anything other than launching it out of the area with a punt. A 50/50 ball that little kids are poorly equipped to handle. That results in chaos around where the ball lands. It forces kids to challenge themselves to pass and dribble away from their goal. As I noted over the years, if you don't have a "big foot" to take goal kicks the hardest part is to play the ball in out of a goal kick without getting into immediate danger. I used to train this restart specifically and now it makes it easier for a few years.
My experience was different I guess, because it was 11v11 and the opponents were playing kick and chase bunch ball. Short passes and dribbling didn't work in getting out of the back. It took long passes changing the direction of attack to get past the "bunch" chasing the ball. On goal kicks, we started by kicking toward the touch line. After a while this opened up space in other areas of the field. We punted a lot, but since opponents were playing bunch ball there was plenty of open players to kick to. The 8 and 9 year olds didn't have any problems with the techniques required, including the novices I had. It just took about six weeks to teach them fundamentals. Bottom line is that teams cannot defend everywhere. If they spread out, they leave more space around the ball to exploit with short passing and dribbling. If they bunch up, the space is away from the ball. Fundamentals are fundamentals either way.