What is everyone's opinion of training games that segment the field (Channels, thirds, etc). I see lots of social media posts with training activities that divide the field into thirds and then have a restriction (only 1 player in the attacking 1/3 but 2 defenders in the same area. Or 3v3 in the middle third, but 1v1 in the attacking but one of the middle 3 can combine to attack). I've gotten away from these a bit lately. I don't feel it's very "game realistic". About the only time I split the field is to put a channel on the outside. And that is if I want us to work on crossing from wide or getting the ball to the width when playing out of the back. Love to hear opinions
Not against segmenting fields. Our age group lead does that, but I think our group is maybe too young for it. It's generally confusing and they spend most of the 15 minutes just figuring out how that certain activity works. Then we never come back to it so I don't feel the topic is ever fully learned. As you can see, I'm not very pro-variety in terms of activities. Segmenting thirds and channels is adding complexity. I'm not against complexity, but I think it should be added. So start with a "bare" grid, then add the complexity/segmenting (as a progression) to tease out the learning objective. Maybe, come back to a "bare" grid to test for understanding.
I hate putting artificial restrictions on the field, but I do it occasionally to emphasize a point. If I do that, I try to progress out of the restriction to a free play session so see if the point sticks or not.
Going back several decades professional coaches of senior teams have divided the field into zones. But doesn't mean the youth game should mimic that or needs to. It goes back to a question I had in the coaching thread several weeks ago. Soccer is a simple game, two goals on either end. Do we need to complicate it more than that with fancy restarts or unique rules that don't exist in the game? Or is the "influency" a good thing—take the players out of their comfort zone, keep their brains off balance, abstract the game (then put it back together)?
I do it to try to stop kickball from happening. Divide the field into 6 or 8 bands, ball goes forward more than 2 bands you have to play it back one before moving forward any more zones. then we remove the cones and see if they keep playing that way.
I don't believe "kickball" is a natural way to play. I never saw it in playground soccer growing up. The first impulse of a child is to win and keep the ball--i.e., dribbling and scoring. I think kickball is taught by adults. I believe that kids by age 8 intuitively understand the tactics of playing keep-away--maintaining possession by combination passing. Small-sided keep-away games--rondos--are the key. Zones come in handy when progressing past the SSG's to larger sides with 2 or more lines.
"taught" When scores start to be kept and winning and losing is attached to some artificial value then kickball appears. When there's a big cheer after a "big kick"—it positively reinforces kickball When some yells "kick it!"-kickball is unintentionally "taught" Age 8 can certainly do rondos, but I still find a disconnect between rondos and say scrimmages or games. Last year we worked a lot with rondos at u8, but in games you'd only see flashes of it. 1-3 "rondo" based team movements per half. But I think that's the start, over time, with constant work on positional play—I expect they stitch those rondo-based movements closer and closer together.
I disagree a bit. I think a child with a ball is focused on controlling it. I think in our current nobody watches the game culture, once kids start trying to play in a team setting the weaker players qiuckly realize their teammates stop giving them grief if instead of following their first impulse to dribble and giving it up to stronger players, they get rid of it as soon as it comes to them. Or, there might be 1 or 2 kids who do know something about the game even at 5, and they tell the other kids "just kick it to me". And their team wins, everybody is happy. I don't think adults need to be present for kickball to be taught. I do agree that when you present things in terms of keep away, they relate to that much better than saying "we're going to play possession soccer..." The first use of zones for teaching is adding the condition "the goal only counts if everyone is past halfway" in order to get Duncan to move from directly in front of the pugg in 3v3, right
Watching the 6Us and younger, I wouldn't technically term it "kickball". They really want to run with the ball, but there's no weight on their touch yet. So everything is too heavy a touch. At about 7YO and older, some "tactical" reasoning comes into play and I do see what I would call kickball because they can "fear" being scored on and they can reason "get it far from my goal". But they aren't, IMO, trying to start an attack.