Hey guys, I'm wondering if some of you guys have any tips for defensive drills, or ideas I can teach my U-8 squad. Anything will be appreciated! Thanks!
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s Welcome to the board. I guess I will be the heavy, and insist that: Since it takes many times longer to teach kids how to attack than defend, you shouldn't do ANYTHING to teach defense besides get them to play 1v1 and show kids how to tackle properly.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s That's been my basic understanding so far. The kids are still pretty young and mostly have a taste for attack. Thanks for the reply!
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s At this age, it is still small sided games and defense tends to be 1 v1. I just try to reinforce is use of the body to nudge a player off the ball and try to do is break the habit of running at/to the ball. getting between the ball/ player and goal and closing the space when away from the ball.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s Which is weird, because four of my biggest and strongest kids on my U8 squad have a total defensive mentality. I let the team scrimmage the other day and not one goal was scored. I've got the Italian U8 squad. Seriously, I'm trying to come up with ways to get them off the goal line. Their previous coaches had them babysit the goal instead of playing the field even though no goalkeeping is allowed in their league. I've got my work cut out for me to undo that programming.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s The previous coach had called these kids sweepers. Everyone knew that sweepers stayed back. So I called them rovers and told them that everyone knew that rovers played up. I.e., the back player in my diamond was not attached to the goal. He was attached to the forward triangle. He was responsible for pushing up to support the attack and was expected to take on a break-away 1-1. The net effect was we had 4 kids on their side of the field against their 4 and 4 sides on our side of the field against their 3 (we also didn't play a cherry picker on offense who sat next to their goal). The other coaches hated playing us. Oh, and I rotated my kids through the role. It worked well the first season and not as well the second. In retrospect, I let up on constantly making sure that kid played up. So, they drifted back and became a sweeper.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s My U8 daughter's team does this to great effect, and have figured out that if the back player in the diamond goes on the attack, then one of the side players should swap with her to protect the back. My (albeit somewhat limited) experience is that the 1v1 drills are a great way for this age group to work on individual defense. Put a couple of pugg goals out back-to-back and have them go 1v1 (score in either goal), which will force the defender to think about their position relative to the ball and goals and to keep closing in on the attacker to win the ball rather than just standing in the goal mouth. If the defender wins the ball, then they become the attacker and can try to score. The U7's I coach love this game.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s They play 5v5. So it's very easy for a kid to sit on the back line and not budge. It's also easy for a kid to get set up in the cherry pick. I've got a pretty aggressive bunch this season, so I see a few of my kids cleaning out the picker if another team sets one up.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s I wouldn't spend five minutes on defending for U8s. Maybe a little bit of time is useful for U-10s...but only for travel teams, IMO. Just get those U8s to develop their skills with the ball. I feel like we can teach defending fairly easily at older ages, but ball skills are precious and the kids that get them early will go far with the sport. Oh...and have fun!!
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s Actually I was at a clinic with St. John's U soccer coach. His basic response for teaching young kids defense was to have them play basketball. 1 v 1, 2v1, 2v2 etc., gave them an idea for positioning.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s If it's okay with the moderators, I'd like to make this into a U8 coaching thread similar to the U6 one we had last year. They're great for bouncing ideas off of others coaching the same age groups. Thanks!
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s We had our first couple of practices this week (U7 girls playing 4v4 in a U7/U8 league). The good news is all my girls from U6 3v3 came back, and they seemed to have remembered everything they learned last season! We also picked up a couple of new girls. We were doing some 1v1/2v2/3v3/4v4 scrimmaging, though, and one thing I noticed is that they are all a lot more clumsy -- which I'm sure is partly to do with their age/coordination. But part of it seems to be that they are really aggressively going after the ball to the point of fouling and running each other over. They act like boys! They will be running at each other without slowing down and just clumsily smack into each other at full speed -- I had four on the ground at once, one time. I obviously need to teach them the proper way to slow down / stop. I don't want anyone to get hurt (a couple of them are big and reckless). Anyone have thoughts on this? (1) am I right to be concerned about it, or does it just come with the age group (U8 daughter's team never had this problem, though), and (2) any if so, any suggestions to help? Thanks.
Re: Defensive Drills for U-8s Funny, that. My kids play basketball, too. A guy I know who trains D-I college basketball players (and runs AAU teams) told me to have my kids play soccer during their basketball off-season to develop the quickness needed for basketball. Complementary sports, it seems.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s Our league is a bit different, we're playing 7v7 with a keeper. I have to say up front that I loathe 6- and 7-year olds having to play this. They need to be playing no more than 4v4, no keepers. I've been training up to this point with fun games and 1v1, 3v3 games like you'd expect. So today we were allowed to practice on the game field for the first time (field wear issues). So I used half of the hour and fifteen minutes to go over the very raw basics of being a goalkeeper (with a 6x18 goal!) The other half was getting them used to the 3-3 formation we're going to start with and the terms "backs" and "forwards" and their roles. I did manage to fit in some games (3v3 w/keeper, shooting at the keeper stuff.) Needless to say it was one of the more boring sessions for the girls, and I could feel for them as they were losing interest as I'm trying to explain what I need them to do in a given situation. But I didn't know any other way to get the points across, especially with some of the details of being a keeper (positioning, hands, footwork, how far they could go up with the ball in their hands, distribution). That's something that should wait until they get into the older age groups, IMHO. We have the next practice at the game field so I'm going to let them go at it and make corrections on an individual basis. Hopefully the older ones who've had a season under the belt can help the younger ones.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s My daughter is now with a girls U8 team, coming from a mixed U6 team. She's much more into it than she was with boys playing, that's for sure. She doesn't hesitate as much as she did before. It's definitely been better for her.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s I'm coaching U8 rec this year for the first time...I've done the U6, U10 travel, and U14 travel bits before but this is a little different. I'm just gonna keep working on ball skills, fun, and snacks. We only get one practice a week so how much could I hope to accomplish anyways?
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s That's where I'm at with my kids. Re: the kids running into each other. I found that after a few nasty collisions in the first practice, they're realizing hit hurts to hit each other. They're naturally backing off, now.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s I found this site on a Soccer America blog last month and am using it for our team's website this season. http://www.teamsnap.com It's in beta right now so it's free, but they're going pay in the future, but there is supposed to be a free option, and the pay ones are reasonable. It has tabs so the parents can check if there going to make practices and games, stats pages, a snack signup page, photo/file uploads, message board, etc. You can post a message and have it auto send it to your roster's e-mail addresses, so you can communicate anywhere you have web access. I've looked at a bunch of these but this is one of the better ones I've seen. And no, I'm not associated with them. I just like the product.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s When I was coaching that age, I always thought the most important thing was to teach them the importance of defense. All kids want to score - not many want to defend. At that age, they need to know how to collapse in defense and spread in offense. I always demonstrated with my hand. Close and Open. "Defend like a fist, Attack like a hand" The kids could see the difference in my hand and actually grasped the idea. Once you teach them to collapse in defense, you then need to teach them to distribute wide and up the line. Do this, and you'll crush the "mob" teams. Towards the end of of the year, you can teach distribute wide up the wings AND THEN cross. Next year, teach distribute wide up the wings and then DIAGONAL cross. When they see the passing lanes, it gets really fun.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s Well, since I'm double booked with the U10s, I'm just co-coaching the U8s. We had our first practice today. The following are ideas, as demonstrated by my co-coach (who, by the way knows a lot about the game and has coached at the college level)...which should NOT be done at U8s. 1) Do not lecture U8 boys for 45 minutes of a 1:15 hr practice 2) Do not ask questions of U8s like, "if you're in support, then what is he?" 3) Do not practice headers 4) Do not tell them that they have one idea of fun, but another idea of fun is "getting better at soccer" 5) Do not tell them you will teach them good tactics 6) Do not tell them to always look to pass first. I thought my head was going to pop off. I need to start running half of these practices. I fear for the games. Thanks for listening...........
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s Thanks. Frankly, I would love for my kids to play for him when they're 18. But this...this is terrible. He didn't even try to learn how to coach U-Littles...didn't even try.
Re: Coaching Ideas for U-8s We had our 2nd practice last night for my son's 2nd grade team-basically 7&8 year olds. Mixed team-6 boys 4 girls. I am not coaching but the drills they did were pretty effective. They set up 2 rows of cones and did races up and back dribbling between the cones to practice keeping the ball close. That seemed to keep the kids attention pretty well and it was letting them practice useful ball control skills. They ended practice with a 20 min. scrimmage so they could practice game type situations of throw ins, etc. They play 4v4 in this league with no keeper. They also have a semi-circle outlined in front of the goal that is the "dead zone" you are not allowed to shoot in this area and if the ball goes in that area it is called dead. I think this is a crazy rule. Anyone have an explanation of why they do this? Any help is appreciated.