Hi Folks, Curious to know how you position your strikers during the game. Dan Blank, author of Soccer IQ, instructs a great strategy of 'playing behind the fence' for mid-fielders. Would this also apply to Strikers? Thanks, Scott
lol, well after watching my son's team lose again to an inferior team it struck me that our big problem is the positioning of our center forward. We have two kids that mainly play it. When one isn't playing center the other is on the wing. Problem is that when the wingers push the ball up the field, the center forward comes out to help them. Winger ends up through balling to the center forward who is then run into the corner. This leaves only the attacking midfielder, who has to make a bonzi run into the box as a potential target. This has been going on all year and happened a lot last year. I'd say less last year because the full backs under the old coach were making more overlapping runs. My son plays attacking half back. So for most of the year he would run up and I didn't think about it too much. But last few games he has gotten put out there as a winger. And that is when I really noticed the problem. Literally we lost to a team where we had faster and more technically proficient players to a man. But we lost because of poor positioning.
I think for youth soccer the center forwards should be trained to learn two things. Hold up play and laying balls off and ............. Making short diagonal drag runs to move defenders. What I've noticed however at least at our club is that most of the training so far has been about passing, shooting, defending. But at least at the U11 and U12 levels there hasn't been much taught about forwards and how they should move. I remember they did learn how to dummy the ball on some set pieces. But that is about it.