Want to learn the Basics - Player roles

What age are the players? Age is a general guide, but generally you tailor the training based on your assessment of how far along in development the group is. Some groups are advanced for their age and some aren't.

It is easier for me to explain if I know your background. Have you played soccer, basketball, football, or ice hockey on a high school varsity or higher level? If you have been exposed to professional coaching before, I can give a short answer.

Basic tactical principles are taught in small groups 3- or 4-a-side. With really young kids you start with pairs. You don't teach novices special "roles" like target forward or defensive midfielder. You have to teach general roles first. Teach crawling before walking; walking before running.

There are two basic positions: keeper and field player. That is where you start with novices. Playing 8-a-side you give novices a simple system to help them work together, but spend your training time on fundamentals-not on teaching a complicated system of play which they may never use again.

(1)331 and (1)232 are common systems for 8v8. NSCAA recommends the 232 for 8v8 in their curriculum. (USSF currently has a more complicated curriculum and uses 7v7 and 9v9 rather than 8v8. I would love to have a discussion with whoever thought it was better to have a progression from 5v5 to 7v7 to 9v9 to 11v11 over a short span of development.)

 

In baseball you teach pre-teens fundamentals rather than training specific positions. How to catch, throw, field, bat, and run bases. Soccer is the same way. In baseball the kids learn the fundamentals by doing. Soccer is the same way. Telling them how to play won't work. You don't start out by explaining what a squeeze play is or how a catcher picks off someone trying to steal second. Asking questions here is a good way to get information, but teaching the kids by "explaining" the information you collect to them won't work.

Here are my recommendations:

1) Use 232. How to play the system is more intuitive than 331. Use the kids as on field leaders and mentors for each other. Chances are the kids know more about soccer than you do, so just tell them "232" and assign them positions. (LB RB/LM CM RM/LF RF). For U12s at the beginning of the season, I lined up 11 players in a 433 and told them the labels I was using for each position, to avoid confusion. Each position should have a unique label. If you want to use different labels than I suggested, that is okay. Just be consistent and encouraging. Rotate the players so they all spend some time in their favorite positions. Don't force anyone to play keeper. Don't give instructions during the game. Do give encouragement and positive feedback.

2) You don't have coaching or playing experience or training, so you are going to have to let the kids improve by playing small sided games.

3) Create a fun and positive atmosphere for games and practice sessions.

4) Keep them busy. Playing is fun. Standing is not. Maximize the kids' playing time. Eliminate down time as much as possible. That means if you have 16 players, run 2 4v4 games, not 1 game with 8 kids watching.

5) Treat the kids fairly and with respect.

6) Use some type of keep-away game as part of warmups. Typically 5v2 or 3v1. This is what teaches them to "spread out."

7) After warmups use small sided games with goals to add direction to the movements. Use 3v3 or 4v4. No keepers.

8) If you see kids are getting frustrated and cannot string two passes together, reduce the pressure on the players with the ball. You can do that by--
a. Unbalancing the sides. 3v2, 3v1, even 4v1 is you have to in order to get success.
b. Increasing the size of the playing area. More space means more time.
c. Adding more goals. This makes the defense's job harder.
d. Adding zones to reduce movement.
e. Have the defense use "half" pressure. Moving toward the ball but not getting closer than 2-3 steps away.
f. Or some combination of the above.

9) If you want to practice your system, and don't have 16 players, you can go half field running an attack (232 or 032) against a defense (1230) with a large goal. Put small goals on each side at the half line to give the defense a way to score if they win the ball. Halfway through your planned time switch the players around so everyone gets some attacking and defending time.

10) Save time at the end of practice for an "unrestricted" game, i.e., a scrimmage. Divide the team into 2 sides and let them play. If you have 16, you can go 8v8 with keepers. If you have only 10, you can play futsal, 5v5 with keepers. Less than that I wouldn't use keepers.

Players love scrimmages.

You are doing a good thing for these kids.

 

i'm working with the same age of kids with, it sounds like, the same type of skills. plenty of individual skill for a lot of the players (and some not so much) but no understanding of how to play together.

ball mastery and receiving and passing are basics that everyone hates to work on, but if you can't do those, you can't play the game. i alternate practices doing static footwork exercises and dribbling cones each day for ball mastery. we work on passing with all surfaces and receiving with feet, thighs, and chest at all practices.

as far as teamwork goes, 3v3 and 4v4 games are a key. it will get them used to playing with teammates, but it's small enough to keep everyone involved. encourage them to pass and move. as soon as they pass, they need to find space to support their teammate, to give the guy with the ball someone to pass to. no standing and watching. in a 3v3, you want them in triangles but i don't like to designate them in positions because they will all have to rotate around as play happens. in a 4v4, they're in a diamond shape but not with designated positions because they have to move as they work the ball around same as a 3v3.

 

Once you've outlined the basic positions and concepts of attacking and defensive play, it really pays to stress the importance of smart passing.
I remember my little brothers u7s coach used to do alot of work on passing even at that age group and they won every game in their season, the other teams could hardly touch the ball.
I feel like alot of youth soccer is reliant on that 1 fast kid on the team who can dribble past everyone, or the 1 stocky kid who can kick harder than everyone else. By establishing the importance of effective passing, the whole team is able to contribute to every game and play as it should be played.

 

I didn't say anything. You generally can tell a poster's coaching experience and background, from the degree which the poster focuses on the importance of teaching team tactics to U-Littles.

Not always though. I have seen some very experienced, licensed youth coaches expressing essentially the same opinion. I am thinking about that club that advocated teaching a possession style passing game to U8s and U10s, and not just select kids in advanced programs. Not clear was when they were going to get around to teaching kids to dribble. Perhaps they think dribbling is an unnecessary and outdated skill. My thought was this talk was just marketing to pull in the parents.

 

My thoughts were based on my little brothers team and my own personal opinions, I have no experience in coaching, I was just expressing some things i'd noticed with my brothers team and my own opinion.
His team, at the start of the season, was essentially being carried by this one kid who was great at dribbling and quick, some of the other team members would hardly touch the ball all game.
The coach (after receiving feedback from parents) then decided to focus on a more possession, pass based game, which got all of the kids involved and ultimately they all had alot more fun, which is indeed the point of soccer.
What I was saying, to clarify, was based purely on my experience watching my brother play. I see how I have worded my previous message, and I didn't mean to speak in a general sense, of course my brothers teams experience isnt universal. I'm not a credible coaching source and I didn't mean to present myself as one by any means.
Not trying to be a dick or argumentative at all but your response kinda was just saying "no", you didn't really elaborate on anything at all and I don't really see the purpose. If you had the time i'd like to know your thoughts on the subject, i'm sure you know alot more about it than I do, maybe you could educate me as to why i'm wrong, I could probably learn something
Sorry for the long response, have a good one mate.

 

Good attitude HeyGuy. No matter how much you know about a subject, there is always more to learn.

Elessar78 is an experienced youth coach, but the subject is really broad and he is pretty busy. I am retired so I have more free time. If I linked some free PDFs would you be interested in looking at them? The US Youth Soccer Association has a Coaching Manual that describes how to coach all ages of youth teams. It is rather long, but then coaching is a big topic.

The USYSA stuff is pretty good. But there is no one way to coach. There are about as many ways as there are coaches. So I like to think of it as better ways to coach, rather than right or wrong. The USYSA manual was written by a committee of experts, coaches, teachers, doctors and scientists, so I think you can trust it more than just an anonymous poster on an internet forum (like me).

 

Yeah for sure, thanks man!
That'd be great, link whatever you think is the best source
I'm sick at the moment so I have a lot of spare time so that'd be cool, should be interesting.
Thanks again.

 

This will give you a comprehensive overview of coaching youth soccer. It will probably raise more questions. People here are pretty helpful, if you do have questions.
http://www.usyouthsoccer.org/assets/1/3/US_Youth_Soccer_Player_Development_Model.pdf

 

I am in the same exact situation, and we just played our first game today and was seriously destroyed by the other team. I have so many questions, my team is at ends with each other, my players handling skills are a disaster, yelling.

I have 2 really good players, 4 ok players and 6 players that need a lot of help. These replies are are helping, but much work needs to be done.

 

What age level? How many a side in a match?

 

5-6 graders (boys)

 

What Elessar78 said. Leave some time at the end of each training session for a scrimmage. Gives them something fun to look forward to. Introduce all the fundamentals but the primary coaching objective is to improve ball skills.

 

From my experience, getting the players to position themselves in the generally correct places takes some time (if it's brand new to them) but also helps everything else come together once they understand it. I do it in the following way - outline the formation with cones/whiteboard; explain how much each player moves (for example, center back supports behind the midfield and doesn't make runs past the midfielders); and then put them into a scrimmage with at least the wide channels coned off (extend the edge of 18y box length of the entire field).

The wide midfielders and/or wide backs play only in the wide channels. Central players play only on the inside. If the players drift away from their zones when the team is in possession you stop and give the opposing team a free kick. That should at least help with getting the wide players to give some width and the central players from running all the way out on the flanks all the time and gives the team some structure.

You could also divide the playing area in half horizontally so that attacking players stay in the attacking half, defensive players stay in the defensive half, and midfield players can go in either. That would help the players from going too far forward/backward.

I'm leaving a lot of small details out to just give an overall idea here. But in general, the above should help the players to understand where they should move when the team is in possession. You could do similar for defense, such as everyone has to be in the defending half or everyone has to be in two of the three vertical spaces.

I find that getting the players organized in terms of where they position themselves is the first step to getting the team able to play a bit. Once they know where to go, then the work on technique, possession, etc. becomes more effective. Arguably you could just go straight into possession type games and work on principles of spreading out, giving support off the ball, etc, but this will take a lot longer as they gradually learn the principles and then through mostly trial and error figure out how to apply it from their position during the game.

Hope that helps.

 

To add, you can be as simplistic or as complicated as you want. The absolute simplest would be that players play in mostly one zone and only support from that zone. So strikers stay central and try to offer an option to receive at their feet, center backs do the same, outside players go up and down the field in the wide channels. If the wide player can pass inside to the striker, then the striker and his partner can look to attack through the middle. If the wide player gets it and decides to keep it wide, then he can look to put a cross into the box. Center mid supports everyone from a pretty central position and spreads the ball around or dribbles/passes forward when he can.

That's very simple, but if your team did it well they would play pretty good soccer. However, it's very limited. Players will develop pretty well doing this, but will maybe end up kind of robotic because it's so strict. So the next option would be to give the players some more freedom. Some examples would be allowing the wide players to dribble or make runs into the central area, strikers allowed to make diagonal runs out into the wide channels, center back allowed to dribble the ball forward if there is space (probably with the center mid dropping to cover him). Those are just a few ideas that would immediately give your players more decision making. That would also allow them to develop their own game more so than the simplest example, because they will naturally do the things that they are good at - ex. fast striker makes a lot of forward/diagonal runs looking for the ball in behind the defense, wide player who likes to dribble and shoot may start dribbling inside trying to beat players or play through balls, etc.

For me, I like to have the players understanding in general where to move and position themselves. With absolute beginners I would probably be really simple and strict in the beginning few months (maybe 4-6 months depending on how they are developing, how many sessions you have per week, that kind of thing) and give them more freedom as they develop.

 

Actually they would not "play pretty good soccer" but to some people they would look like adult players do. This is like teaching kids how to coach third base and signal for a squeeze play before you teach the kids how to throw, catch, and bat the ball. Fundamentals first.

When I coached U10s (20 years ago) they played 11v11, so I had to teach some system. So I spent as little time as possible on team tactics. We played a 433 diamond back high pressure modified zone defense. We used zonal marking, but I never told the kids they had to stay in their individual zones. The most important thing they had to learn was to read the game and decide when to leave their zone.

So you don't teach players to do takeovers, make clearing runs, and make overlapping runs while attacking or teach the first defender to recover into the second defender position after being beaten in a zone defense, switch men when marking man-to-man, or put immediate pressure on the ball if they are the nearest player to the ball? And if you are using zonal marking, you also don't teach players after a transition to defense to shift strong side to fill in an empty zone nearer to the ball to establish the team shape as quickly as possible?

A basic tenet of my coaching philosophy was to never say "stand here" to anyone.

 

I hesitated to comment because it's not easy to explain everything in complete detail on the internet. RCA, I understand where you're coming from and agree with you. The OP asked for help getting players to understand their positions. What I suggested would work to give the players a sense of structure so they aren't running all over the place. They could get the gist of it by doing what I suggested a few times. Then the players have an idea of where they move in general per their position, so concepts like support and creating space make more sense as to how they are applied in the game. If you only train principles and the players have no idea what the roles are on the field, then there will be confusion in the game as they struggle to understand how to apply the principles from their position.

Most of the time should be spent on teaching principles and technique to young players (say U12 and below). I never suggested otherwise. I only mentioned adding zones to a scrimmage to give players an idea of where to move. IMO, when we teach principles, the point is to improve understanding and application in the game. If the application to the game isn't there, I don't think the teaching has been effective.

I've done it before by teaching principles and expecting the players to understand how to apply it to their role in the game and it wasn't that effective. It took a lot of trial and error for players to figure things out. Does the center back support from behind the ball, ahead of the ball, do they overlap the wide player? Without giving definition to any roles, all of those are viable choices. But they all have different consequences in the game. We can argue about when players need to be aware of and concerned about those consequences, but for me since it's part of the game it's worth consideration.

 

It does take time to work out, but they do learn. I used a simple 433 with a high pressure zone defense. Typically I expect U-little teams to lose the first 2-3 games before tying a game. Then they will win their first match and really buy into the lessons. After that they dominated every game.

The classic practice structure progresses from individual technical exercises through restricted SSGs to unrestricted games in order to facilitate the players applying the techniques and tactics taught in game like conditions.

To teach the 433 system of play (team tactics) I put everything together with shadow play for defending and pattern play for attacking. After the shadow/pattern play, I would run -33 against -341 at half speed to give them an idea how it worked in the final third. I only did this once as nobody else played a modern system. Everybody played 235 kick and chase bunch ball as if it was 1930. The principles of play are all you need to beat kick and chase bunch ball. Compress the field on defense; expand it on offense. Penetrate by playing into the loads of available open space.

 

It is responsive to the op, but one of your ball skills videos would be of more help to him. Like this one for instance: