Club Scrimmage

     I didn't get started trying to arrange for a scrimmage between Girl Power and one of the U8 boys squads until late in the day Saturday.  Yet when the teams and parents actually began arriving at the field just two days later for the match the excitement was palpable, like it was a rivalry game (derby) that we'd been anticipating for weeks.  The girls were really fired up to play and relishing the thought of taking on a tough challenge. 
     As a training and learning opportunity for the girls I was looking for a couple of things from this game.  I wanted to see them test their skills against tougher competition and I knew that this boys team would not just give them space to dribble.  Rather, the boys would certainly challenge quickly and forcefully on the ball and that would force our girls to be quicker and more creative with their moves.  There is a challenge that a coach faces, and that I've discussed here before, when you've succeeded in getting a player or a whole team to buy into our club philosophy that they need to play skillfully, patiently, that they need to be willing to take the long way around to get to goal.  The challenge is that when they face really tough competition they'll revert back to their old "kick it and run" style of play and forget in a panic everything they've learned about having a soft, skillful touch on the ball.  Clearly that didn't happen in this scrimmage.  Our girls showed over and over again their willingness to patiently find open space, working touch-line to touch-line and even back towards our own goal when necessary to find or create attacking lanes.  They were challenged fairly vigorously by the boys but they stayed true to their skills.
     The second thing I was hoping for though was that the boys' team would challenge the girls hard enough that the girls would feel some pressure to go beyond their dribbling skills.  These girls are very comfortable with each other and they do see themselves as teammates, as together in everything.  But they don't actually cooperate much on the field.  Specifically they are all watching the ball waiting for their turn most of the time and they even get in each others way quite a bit.  Ron and I talk with them constantly about this at practice and games and I think that intellectually they get it but in game situations their instincts take over and they just want the ball.  So what I was hoping to create with this scrimmage was a situation where their instincts would be challenged in a very concrete way, a situation where they would have to learn that sometimes you can help your team by playing a certain way away from the ball.  Some of them do demonstrate some very good field awareness and anticipation throughout the game but that's as individuals.  They haven't yet developed the sort of wolf pack mentality that a brilliant team has.  And brilliance is the goal.  Right now we're a team of brilliant players.  Where we want to get to is to be a brilliant team.  I'm looking to see them challenged in a way that forces the individual players to realize "if I want to score I need help.  If I want the team to win I've got to know how and when to help." 
     I'm not looking for passing at this point though.  What I want to see is that players are aware of what might happen next in a a given game situation.  Here's a specific example:  You see one of our girls, say Ashley, get the ball and start working up the field.  She makes a move to clear one defender then another but just when it looks like she might really break loose you realize that now one or two of her teammates have crept up behind her and are now only a few yards away, if that.  Ashley then gets trapped by a couple of defenders and cleverly decides to turn backwards for a few steps to gain some space.  She'll want to turn around, get into space and then make another move to go laterally and out-flank the defenders pursuing her.  But what happens over and over again is that when she decides to turn backwards to find space what she finds is her own teammates standing right in her way.  This happens over and over again with all of our players.  It's maddening because you think that given that it happens so consistently they'd be expecting it by now and that the players off the ball would have learned to maintain more space.   It's crazy.
     I really appreciate the quality of the game the U8 boys gave us.  That was a beautiful match on both sides.  Hopefully in our upcoming tournaments we'll see more of that sort of competition.

U10 Boys on the Right Track: They're All Strikers.

     I try to train all my players to be strikers and goal scorers.  That includes the kids who don't run very fast (yet), the kids who are a bit afraid of the ball or of contact with other players, the kids who can't take five steps in a row without tripping over a blade of grass.  It includes the kids who think they "only like defense" and the ones who always volunteer for keeper duty.  It even includes the kids who aren't even sure yet that they like the game enough to work hard at it.  All of them.
     The rationale is simple. Eventually players do have to play positions on the field in order to play effectively as a team.  They can't chase the ball around in a swarm forever.  But the fundamental ball control skills that a striker learns are essential for effective play everywhere else on the field, including in keeper; touch, control, ball striking.  Depending on the team you're on, we get one or two hours per week for training. Time spent trying to teach players tactical position play is time not spent on mastering fundamental technical skills.
     My daughter plays on the JV team of one of the local high schools.  I've seen several of her games this season and my experience is always the same.  Watching her team and her opponents play you always see the players well spaced and maintaining effective positioning on the field.  They're fit and can run up and down the field without difficulty.  They're tough and unafraid of contact.  But they also play a very skills-poor form of soccer.  Every player on my daughter's team is looking to pass the ball immediately but they don't all have reliable passing strokes nor do many of them have good first touch on the ball.  So what you see is good spacing with the ball bouncing all over the place;  no really organized attack since no one has the confidence to actually keep the ball and create shooting opportunities.  They are playing exactly the type of tactical game their coach wants them to play but the team for the most part lacks the technical skills to pull it off.
If you aren't comfortable enough with the ball at your feet to move with it while looking up you won't see or create many real passing opportunities.
If you don't have a good stroke on the ball you'll likely waste whatever passing opportunities you do manage to find.
If you don't have a good first touch on the ball then when an occasional quality pass from a teammate finds you, that pass will be wasted as it bounces off of you.
The tactics are pointless without the techniques.

     Watching my U10 Rec team play Sunday I couldn't have been happier with the progress they're making.  They've all got a long way to go in developing better fundamentals but they are in the right place attitude-wise right now.  They all think they're strikers.  They take it for granted that their job is to keep the ball and go for goal.  If that's their attitude then getting them to work on their skills is an easier task.  I don't have to convince them as to the "why" of doing that skill work.
     But do they pass the ball much or play any sort of organized attack?  Not often.  In fact there was a great moment in that game where Gabe made a fabulous run, weaving in and out of at least three defenders and as he cleared the last of those Quinn was wide open in front of the goal and yelling for a pass.  Gabe didn't pass the ball but tried to take on one more defender.  He got stopped and lost the ball.  As they were coming off the field Quinn said to Gabe "dude, you never pass.  I was wide open."  Gabe's calm reply to that was just to look at Quinn, one eyebrow raised, and say "I was headed to the goal."
     Try for a moment to see the contrast between my daughter's high school team and my U10 boys from a coach's perspective.  It's unlikely the high school coach is going to get those players to improve their skills much at this point so long as they continue to focus on tactics and outcomes, so long as they are always trying to manage a win rather than developing the players skills.  So in a sense it's too late for that team, for those players.  But these boys, who are now all convinced that they can carry the ball right into the goalie box, they want to work hard on their fundamental skills because they know those are the skills that get them into that 1v1 with the keeper.  Understanding how to utilize their skills collectively will come to them over time as they gain more playing experience and, when they do start cooperating, they'll have the skills to do so effectively.
     Right now a player like Gabe sees the path to a shot as being a zig-zagging line that starts at his feet and ends in front of the keeper.  Eventually he'll see that there are other paths to the goal involving his teammates as well.  When all you focus on in practice are those individual skills the cooperative skills can be slow in coming.  But Gabe's got time.  I've got time.  What's the rush?

     Fundamentals first.

Opportunities

Here is some roughly edited video of the 9/13/14 Girl Power game.  It's eight minutes long, nearly a quarter of the actual game.  I left a lot in, including some not-so-good play, in hopes that the girls can watch the video and start to get a better sense of how they often get in each others' way despite all their good skills.  So, try to get you player to watch it and see if they can spot the moments where they miss opportunities because they are too focused on the ball.




Additionally, there are two things I want them to notice about their play that are very positive.  First, they are simply relentless and that is a constant advantage to them.  Second, when they did get scored on they went through a brief period where they were playing too fast and with too little skill and patience.  But they were able to get past that and re-establish their pace and dominance of ball possession.  That's going to be important whenever we face stronger teams.  They've got to stay committed to playing with the all the skill and control that we work on at practice.

Legends U11 Boys: Patience.

     Given the way our boys had played that last game in Nicholasville I was very surprised by what I saw yesterday.   We possessed the ball at least 60% the time and for the first ten minutes Lexington FC couldn't get it out of their own half and I was afraid the game might be a blow-out for us.  But then we get beat on a counter attack.  And then again...and again.
     I saw two things happening.  First, the other team realized that none of our players is anxious to give up their own dribble so the Lexington defense adjusted to begin challenging aggressively in one-v-ones rather than laying off and covering passing lanes.  Second, our own boys were so focused on attack that they failed over and over again to anticipate those counter attacks.  Our players in defense got caught ball watching at midfield repeatedly, punts and clearing passes flying by as they stood stone still.  I even pulled a few of them off the field at points in the game to discuss that issue.  This failure to play solid defense surprised me as I thought they played so well in Nicholasville.  In that game their level of cooperation, communication and anticipation was very high.  But yesterday they each seemed to be playing alone and so they chased the ball a lot, crowded the six yard box when they didn't need to and at one very embarrassing moment they even failed to realize that the other team had been awarded an indirect rather than a direct kick.  This, even though the referee said the word indirect at least three times.  So, as the other team is setting up, our boys are forming a wall rather than marking up man on man.  That should have resulted in a goal for Lexington but we got lucky.  I call that moment embarrassing because to see players at U11 seemingly unaware of what the referee's call was shows that to some extent some of our players are caught up in the rush of the game, like a six year old would be, but not fully engaged in the game the way a more mature player is.  As coach Ben explained it to the boys after the game, soccer is in some ways like chess or checkers; you can't play well if you don't know where all the pieces are all the time.
     I've got to find a way to address that at practice while still keeping our focus on developing skills.  I've got to put them in situations where they have to use those skills while still keeping an eye on the rest of the field, situations where some sort of pressure forces them to anticipate.  What I won't do is give up on the skills-heavy character of our training.  Anyone who watched that game yesterday had to have seen how much more skillful our boys were in general.  I don't mean by that that we played better.  The other team played more effectively and their cooperation and energy level as a team were admirable.  They beat us straight up.  But our boys stayed committed to using their skills generally.  They took on their one-v-ones and won a lot of them.  The Legends development goal is to take players who've learned to be ball-hogs and then give them the understanding of game situations that allows them to become co-ball-hogs, to cooperate while still being willing and able to take on those one-v-ones.
     The post game talk yesterday was a difficult situation.  I have to be honest with them about what I'm seeing so that, hopefully, we can learn from what happened.  At the same time I want them to be able to walk away from the game feeling good about where they are in their development, to be confident that it'll all pay off.  I believe with this group it will pay off and I know they can play more effectively as a team.

Teachable Moments Part Two: The Game is Just More Practice.

     What Girl Power does to dominate games is as plain as day.  What our girls do is simple; they possess the ball.  They come and get it, they dribble and dribble some more and when they can see the goal they shoot.  No passing, no clearing kicks, no fancy overlaps (yet!).  They play with complete commitment to their skills and with complete confidence in their ability to win every one-v-one they go into...and it works...over and over again.  They are, in the words of Hailey's dad, straight up ballers!
     And yet what I hear from the other bench is always the same:  Pass the ball up...clear the ball out...kick it!  I walk away from a game like Saturday's really puzzled.  Can't they see what we're doing?  I hope they do, honestly.  I hope our girls are setting an example that others will want to emulate.
      I tried in this game to give each of the girls very specific challenges that I wanted to see them meet on the field.  They were all playing with such amazing grace, creativity and energy it seemed like a great opportunity to present them each with a challenge based on what I was seeing in the game.  I asked all of them to try a Puskas move and a Cruyff turn.  I saw lots of Cruyffs.  They love that one.  Not so many Puskas though.  That's a tougher one and I think the fake shot component is something they may be a little embarrassed about using.  It can seem a little theatrical.
     I also asked them to use that carry-over dribble touch we've been working on.  I was really happy with how willing they were to give it a try in the game.