Once again the boys were completely dominant in a match where our opponent was struggling to play together with any organization in defending or attack. This happens frequently in league play and in past seasons we've definitely taken our turn as the disorganized team that gets pounded. Obviously it's fun to go out and win games, especially when we have so many different players getting onto the score sheet. But at this point in the season it's also become clear that our Cardinal league division wasn't well constructed. And that's a little frustrating. The boys are playing well and progressing individually and as a team, but we haven't really been challenged yet by a team that plays as well or better than us. Like the sorts of teams we're sure to see in tournament competition.
Last Sunday's loss was a bit of a fluke and I blame myself to some extent. Every coach should have some ideas ready for how to hold their team back if they are playing against a much weaker opponent, just to keep things from getting out of hand. I don't like the idea of just holding them back. As a coach, a match against a really weak opponent usually feels like a wasted match to me. What I want to do is find a way to make these situations challenging to our players.
So what I've tried to do in these sorts of lopsided situations is to give the players specific tactical "restrictions" that are genuinely challenging. I will ask them to play in a particular way that is difficult for them but that is also a way of playing they need to learn and master for our future development. In our Sunday game the first restriction I put in place was that the midfielders and defenders would have to successfully play the ball back to our GK before we could try to take the ball into the other half. The problem in that game though was that while I was able to explain to the team what I wanted them to do, I couldn't get complete buy-in from many of them and quite a few of the players were irritated with me that I wasn't going to just let them play. I failed to get them to embrace the opportunity to work on some complex tactical play, and to do so against an opponent who probably wouldn't give us too much trouble anyway. Rather, the players saw my tactical instructions as mostly just a way to hold them back from beating up on their opponent. And that's my mistake. They got the impression that I wanted them to run the race at a slower pace when what I really wanted was them to run their fastest but just to take a slightly longer route.
In yesterday's match I didn't try to put any restrictions in place. I figured with the field conditions it would be a slow game anyway. I was getting concerned in the second half of the match though because we had too many players just sort of hanging out at the eighteen yard box. I get that they could smell the blood in the water and were circling around expecting more goals to come. But that's not a game situation we'll get against good teams so I felt like that was a lot of wasted time. In the future, if we play against a weak opponent you can expect that we'll find ways to avoid that situation and take the opportunity to play in a more complex and expansive way. One easy way to do that is that I'll ask the team to retreat to the half line every time the other GK either gets the ball in hand or has a goal kick. By doing this the players will get the chance to re-start their attack from a neutral position every time rather than just pouncing on a poor play from the other team. If I do put any sort of tactical restriction in I'll try to message everyone on PlayMetrics so you know what to look for.
No comments:
Post a Comment