Managing players that excel

Same principles as always. You have to keep adjusting the training to maintain adaption.

You can work on weak areas in her skills and her game.

You can start teaching more advanced topics. For instance, bending the ball, deception, blind side runs, assign her more challenging tasks to accomplish in training games and matches.

For decision making and tactics, I like the idea of 3v3 with the best player sided with 2 weak players. Good positioning, good decision making, communication, and accurate passing (direction and pace) are much more important with weaker players.

For skills, have her play 1v2 instead of 1v1.

During SSGs and scrimmages, have higher expectations and be more exacting in feedback on her positioning and decisions. Still not talking about expectations of successful execution. Successful execution is not a concern to development.

Arrange for her to guest with an older team during their training. Of course, the success of this depends very much on the coach. She may be better off with you.

For that matter, arrange to have a joint session with an older team so that you create a mixed age academy environment. This will benefit all the players.

I suspect that I didn't give you any new ideas, but this is the best I can contribute.

 

What RCA2 said (thx you gave me some ideas)

I have similar situation with a U12G team. I have 2 standouts (one is an all-around standout, other is just super fast with incredible body control)

We find things to try in games. This weekend it was - beat their midfield line in 1v1 (or 1v2 even 1v3), cause defensive line to converge on you - THEN find your open teammate on the front line, based on who comes at you.

I'll warn you not to put leadership responsibility on her - too young for that. The extent of responsibility for team should be - "assists count more than goals."

I'll flip your question around - How do you motivate the rest of the team to keep them from relying too much on your standouts, while still challenging the standouts? Recently, some of my players seem to have lost their ambition.

I've heard comments like:
I'll never be that good.
We lost because xxx wasn't here.
I don't want to play CM, that is xxx's position.
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@TCRZero

I found that playing a high pressure zone defense and rotating players through different positions was an excellent team builder and confidence builder. It took a couple of games to master, but once the kids "got it" they were all enthusiastic.

It makes everyone realize that the strength of one link is not the measure of the chain's strength. That every link is important and contributes.

This was with U10 and U12 girls playing 11v11 on relatively large fields.

If you try to "hide" weak players, it sends a very negative message to everyone, parents and players. My approach was to turn all players into strong players. U10s learn very quickly like little sponges.

 

I don't feel that we've tried to hide weak players, but we have let them play in places that catered to their strengths. We will be rotating much more than we have in the past this season, they all are too comfortable in their spots.

This is all new since the first of the year, I think some of it is a maturity thing - starting to become more self-aware and self conscious. Some of it also comes from our standout player becoming much more dominant on the field suddenly - beating players rather than making a pass right away (which leads into numerical superiority downfield.) With indoor on the turf, in a combined U11/U12 league - she's clowning tons of opponents, and I think her teammates are a little intimidated.

 

I suggest you encourage the director to let her play up. There's a u11 boy at our club who plays on the u13 DA team and he is the most technical player on that team- even though he's giving up at least 4 inches and 20 pounds to everyone else. I can't imagine if he was still playing u11, it would be pointless and he would regress. When kids are ready they need to play up- even if its just once or twice per week at training. They need that exposure.

 

Sounds to me like an early bloomer situation. Regardless of the cause, that is the situation you have. It a delicate balancing act to do what is best for the development of all the players. You don't want to discourage somone from beating players on the dribble. I haven't had this problem I think because I rotated the players. Like for instance the best player would play a quarter in CM, a quater in sweeper, and then a half in goal. It avoids single patterns lasting the entire match. Other matches I might play her a quarter at CF and no keeper.

But then these players were rather special in that they always solved tactical problems by passing to open teammates rather than dribbling for penetration.

With the rotation, players get to see the match from other player's perspective. It promotes cooperation. Of course my success was with U10 and U12 girls. They are socially advanced compared to boys.

 

Couldn't agree with this more. After a couple of years coaching in the U10-14 range and looking at the big picture I will openly go to a parent and tell them that maybe it's time to move up to a better club or have him/her play up a year. The first test is usually moving up for a weekend tournament. While it stinks to lose your best player and change the dynamic of your team, looking out for each individual player is important as well. When it's time to move on to bigger and better things I always encourage them which obviously the club officials aren't fond of. During tryout season I'll always send out the DA Tryout applications (In NJ we have 5 Pre-DA and 4 DA clubs on the boys side). For some, it's a great chance to move up and continue developing. For others, it's a wake up call (for both kids and parents) that they're farther away than they think.