I’ve got a really talented 14 year old player. Been coaching her for years. She’s always played as an attacking mid or forward (experimented as an outside back for a time, but wasn’t ideal for her). She is tenacious and fast . She has great skill on the ball. Her field vision and awareness needs a lot of work. She’s been able to get by on her skill and speed. But I need her to see the field better. I’ve been working with her to get her head up and look around for options. I’ve put her on touch restrictions for short periods of a game to make her think about her next move. I’m wondering if I move her back to the #6 role for a bit to let her see more of the game from behind the ball. She is smallish, but very strong and physical. She also gets fouled a lot and has been hurt off and on because she plays so hard. Partially fouled a lot because she holds the ball too long. I don’t want to stifle her creativity and I want her to play with good decision making (instead of me putting her on a touch restriction). All ideas are welcome.
Does she have teammates that can continue the play if you have her back as a 6 distributing to them? If not it seems like she's just going to get the ball deeper and have to beat more players to get to shooting range. Any chance she can scrimmage practice with a higher level girls u14 team, a girls u16 team, or a u12-14 boys team that aren't playing jungleball - where she'll have to play quickly because her speed will be nullified.
I’d say our team plays pretty good soccer. We are actually a mix of 05 and 04 players playing in the 04 age group. She is one of 8 05s on our 16 player roster. She doesn’t need to be the “do it all” player. She scores a bit, but isn’t our primary goal scorer. I could probably put her at the #9 where she can try to beat a player 1v1. But I see her as more of a playmaker. And will win the ball back quickly if she loses it. I have a solid backline and decent wingers. And I have a few others that can play in her #10 spot. She does play quite a lot of minutes because we are better with her on the field. She’s starting to understand she needs to look for options sooner. But she needs to get her head up sooner.
"To play fast, you have to want to play fast." She needs to appreciate the value of playing quicker and see the results before she'll start doing it regularly on her own. Players only play as fast as the have to. I like the idea of getting her training with an older group more than moving her back on the field (even though that was my first thought too).
she can be a wide playmaker. One school of thought, is that you bring along field awareness. So instead of having to develop it 360° as a central player, you stick them on a wing so they only have to contend with 180° of action. Once they manage that well, introduce central roles.