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The all Encompassing Soccer Youth Soccer Coaching Thread


horn4life

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Is this the thread where I yell at you and tell you to play my kid more? Obviously he's the best kid on the team and he should be starting! 

But seriously, thanks for the thread. I'm so thankful for all the coaches in my son's life. He's been playing soccer for 7 years now and absolutely loves it. I was never a soccer fan, but I've gotten into it because of him and the coaches that have inspired him. In fact, he and I were texting each other this afternoon about the Champions League matches when he should have been doing school work and I should have been paying attention in some meetings.

I don't have a lot to contribute to this thread, because I'm still learning soccer tactics and strategies. But I will say from my years in the classroom and coaching tennis, it sounds like your philosophy is spot on.

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14 hours ago, HornOnTheBayou said:

Is this the thread where I yell at you and tell you to play my kid more? Obviously he's the best kid on the team and he should be starting! 

But seriously, thanks for the thread. I'm so thankful for all the coaches in my son's life. He's been playing soccer for 7 years now and absolutely loves it. I was never a soccer fan, but I've gotten into it because of him and the coaches that have inspired him. In fact, he and I were texting each other this afternoon about the Champions League matches when he should have been doing school work and I should have been paying attention in some meetings.

I don't have a lot to contribute to this thread, because I'm still learning soccer tactics and strategies. But I will say from my years in the classroom and coaching tennis, it sounds like your philosophy is spot on.

HAHA!!!! I actually had in the original title thread (or why isn't my kid starting!). 

I also realized that this particular time is probably not the best time to focus on coaching kids because of Covid.  But on the other hand soccer might be one of the great safe things we could do with our kids right now.  

I will give my single two best tiny tot coaching hints right now.  1) force them to use their weak foot as soon as possible.  I want ATTEMPTS at any new skill and I praise it profusely, especially when failure is obvious.  For a tiny tot, it is simply trying to use the weaker foot.  IF you can get them to be comfortable being uncomfortable and not always having success at an early age, they become fearless! 

2) Teach them to use the outside of their feet as soon as possible. I can come out to your kids rug rat soccer team and in two or three practices have them blowing by the opposition.  Simply as watch the best players in the world.  Almost all passing moves with possession of the ball are initiated with the outside of the foot.  That little flick with the outside of the foot is a HUGE advantage at the rug rat level.

FEARLESSNESS!!!!

What makes kids (and all of us afraid) is simply the embarrassment of failure.  If you want to truly have your team become great... embrace failure, celebrate failure, make your players understand that failure is quite simply the ONLY WAY any of us learn.  What I noticed over the years is that I could teach kids new skills and they would master them, but for most the transition to using them on the playing field took perhaps as much as a season or two before I saw those skills used on the pitch.  I knew they had the skill mastered, but they didn't want to embarrass themselves by perhaps not executing it perfectly in a real game.

So one solution I came up with was emailing the parents the skills we were trying to learn.  I also got the parents to cheer wildly at any ATTEMPT at using any of the skills we were trying to learn in a game or scrimmage.  The parents settled on yelling "ole!" on every skill attempt.  The kids were getting nearly the same level of enthusiasm, as scoring a goal. The positive reinforcement for the attempt, made the kids willing to try and fail. The negative and fear of failure were replaced by cheers.  They would fail and still have a smile on their face, because of that cheering for prior failures.  I even went to tournaments with the idea of simply trying to integrate one or two skills, or one strategy.  I did not care about winning the tournament.  I knew that if I could get my players to fearlessly take what we were trying to teach them n practice into live games, the winning would come. And it always did.

I will also say that the first team I started coaching was downright terrible.  A Dad who volunteered (God bless him) didn't know that much about soccer.  I remember the first practice standing back trying not to take over, and talking to the mother of a girl who would become my best player.  I asked how they did last season?   I will never forget her reply!  She pulled her sunglasses down to the tip of her nose so I could see her eyes. She replies, "We did score a goal last year... on ourselves..."  That was the starting point of a team that became so dominant a few years later my biggest problem was trying not to beat teams by 10 goals.  As lopsided wins honestly are not good for EITHER team, and I honestly did not know how to keep scoring down after being a doormat for so long. Remember these are kids, and a sense of fair play and sportsmanship is also something you want your players to learn.  I think it helped knowing how losing felt, in them understanding why I was pulling kids off and playing short most games.

 

 

Edited by horn4life
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  • 3 weeks later...

Great posts Horn4Life. 
I was dumped into coaching my daughter's team starting in Kindergarten and adopted a very similar philosophy as you, though not nearly as refined. Great ideas there - I wish I had that when I started. 

I can attest - ditching almost all drills and playing fun games works wonders for the younger kids. Having a ball at every kids feet for 90% of practice improved every kid and made it fun. They all wanted to come to practice every week, and every kid re-signed up over the 3 seasons I coached. We also dominated most of our games, though I had a couple of exceptionally talented kids so not sure I can take full credit there. 

Here was a regular game we played which was especially good and the kids liked:
Freeze Monster Tag: 
select 1 or 2 kids to be the "freeze monsters" and have them start away from the other kids. 
All the rest each have a ball and are boxed into half the field (can freely dribble around). 
When you release the monsters they try to steal the balls. If they get one away from a kid, that kid is frozen. 
When frozen you stand with the ball over your head and legs spread apart. If another kid kicks their ball through your legs you are unfrozen and can dribble around again. If the freeze monsters freeze everyone they win. 
Rotate so every kid has about equal time being a monster. 

Another thing I found helpful - we would close most practices with a team scrimmage. Sometimes I'd get the parents/siblings involved and have the kids play their parents/coaches/siblings. They loved that - it really brought out their competitiveness. And it also allowed them to see first-hand how effective spacing and passing can be which is really hard to teach to the younger kids. When they all charge the ball and the parent passes to a wide open other parent - they learn quick to play a little defense without having to try to drill that stuff. 

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some good stuff on here.

Here's something ALL of my kids' coaches (md me) have said over the years, "work on your skills/game at home"  Well that was pretty vague and the results were as well.  Finally one coach did the obvious and had a monthly homework sheet.  He'd ask to see it at practice but basically was more for he parents.  Basically was a list of skills, Cruyff turn, 10 balls volleyed from L/R foot, 10 balls off the chest, etc.  Nothing too ocmplicated, but something that a kid and PARENT could easily achieve.  

SOOOOOOO much better than just, work at home.

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On 12/17/2020 at 12:56 PM, pied said:

some good stuff on here.

Here's something ALL of my kids' coaches (md me) have said over the years, "work on your skills/game at home"  Well that was pretty vague and the results were as well.  Finally one coach did the obvious and had a monthly homework sheet.  He'd ask to see it at practice but basically was more for he parents.  Basically was a list of skills, Cruyff turn, 10 balls volleyed from L/R foot, 10 balls off the chest, etc.  Nothing too ocmplicated, but something that a kid and PARENT could easily achieve.  

SOOOOOOO much better than just, work at home.

There used to be a a great UEFA skills site with videos that I used a lot.  I found a link to it, but it was a dead end.  It was cool because i could email it to the parents, to explain the skills we were learning, and what to cheer like crazy for attempts at.  The kids liked it because you got the skill explained by a younger coach but they got to see clips of the skills being used live, by players they knew.

The better players will always work on their skills, it's honestly the weaker players you need to bring up to build a solid team.  The reality is a lot of kids/parents won't take the time. Or can't in some cases.  At the end I usually had a fairly specific idea of what I wanted to try to teach over the course of a season.  But the real secret was to keep the practice moving, moving, moving.  In the end I wanted to make sure they got to 1000 touches a practice because I was never sure what they might do on their own.  Usually what I ended up doing was simply adding in each new skill as part of the warm up, as they got close to mastering it.  I also used a lot of "stations" rather than have the players all do the same thing.  Especially when it came to individual skills development.  You want the weak players to have a good place to start, but you also want your strong players to be able to move ahead to more advanced skills.  I would do this individually, but also in groups.  Complete one skill challenge then onto the next one.  It might be juggle the ball with 10 juggle touches using any body part at station one.  Maybe juggle with 5, 7 or 10 touches using only your feet at station two.  Station 3 might be get the ball up to a header without using your hands at all. Then station 4 might be small sided 2v2, 3v3 small games.  The kids want to PLAY at station 4, getting there more quickly becomes the incentive to practice more at home to not be stuck in the first three individual skills.

I also did a lot of crazy goofy stuff, like I brought out one of those huge exercise balls to scrimmage with one day.  It was hilarious, and fun for all.  You can't just grind them into developing, you have to make them personally want to get better, I used scrimmages/ small sided games as "carrots" a lot.  I would only go full sized scrimmage a few minutes at the end of practices toward the end.  I preferred small group work. The smaller sides in your games the more touches! Three games of 3v3 would be better than two small sided games of 5v4. Which are both better than one 9v9 for example.  The reason being that all the kids will get three times as many many touches in the 3v3 vs 9v9 activity. It's all about the touches!

 

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  • 11 months later...

Actually, I would love to coach again.  Went out to T&C to see the semis of a Lonestar tournament last weekend.  

I do not miss hearing the fucking dumb ass parents on the sidelines thinking they are assistant coaches, that is, as always, an easy observation. 

It would be really fun to take a young U9-U10 team and turn them into bad asses.  Or better yet ,help some younger coach to that, and take all the glory. 

 

THANK YOU for COACHING!!!

 

 

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My kid plays for the same club as @BrickHorn's kids, albeit a couple of age groups older.  I remain grateful that throughout his 12 years of youth soccer, now culminating on a team playing at the national level in 2 leagues, somehow the coaches have almost always been able to field teams that are highly competitive without being dirty, and in general the parents have been pretty chill.  The shit I hear from other teams' parents is often ridiculous and sometimes shocking.  Coaches shouldn't endorse that behavior.  Way back in the NASA days, one of my son's coaches threw one of our own parents off the sideline for general dickery, and it was completely deserved.

Kudos to all of you who have taken the time and effort to coach kids.  It doesn't go unnoticed.

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  • 1 month later...

So I didn't really wanna start a new thread because I figure it would not get much action. But do any of you dads/middle age dudes still play? 

I've been playing in a weekly pick-up game on Saturday mornings in New Braunfels for the last 7 months or so and it's like half dads/coaches who used to play and half guys in their late 20s who like to keep us fresh. Some of these guys play in rec leagues in SA/Schertz but those games are like Thursdays at 10pm so I never can play. 

Anyways, just wondering if there's any of yall who look for pick up games. We have one in NB that goes every Sat at 8am regardless of weather if yall ever wanna make the drive. 

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On 2/5/2022 at 9:34 PM, NorthLoop said:

So I didn't really wanna start a new thread because I figure it would not get much action. But do any of you dads/middle age dudes still play? 

I've been playing in a weekly pick-up game on Saturday mornings in New Braunfels for the last 7 months or so and it's like half dads/coaches who used to play and half guys in their late 20s who like to keep us fresh. Some of these guys play in rec leagues in SA/Schertz but those games are like Thursdays at 10pm so I never can play. 

Anyways, just wondering if there's any of yall who look for pick up games. We have one in NB that goes every Sat at 8am regardless of weather if yall ever wanna make the drive. 

When I started playing indoor in an over 40 league when I was pushing 50.  Indoor was so endurance draining that 5 minutes was enough to gas you (IF you were playing hard.). The funny thing was we had a shitload of folks on the team, but at any point in time we had a handful of injuries.  Hamstrings were very popular in our group! 

I used to also go play with some Turkish guys just 3 v 3.  But I was older again by 10+ years and was always the weakest link.  Which bothered the shit out of me, but those dominating days were long gone.  Pickup games can be awesome, but only if everyone is chill and there isn't the one A Hole who thinks it's the olympics.

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12 minutes ago, horn4life said:

When I started playing indoor in an over 40 league when I was pushing 50.  Indoor was so endurance draining that 5 minutes was enough to gas you (IF you were playing hard.). The funny thing was we had a shitload of folks on the team, but at any point in time we had a handful of injuries.  Hamstrings were very popular in our group! 

I used to also go play with some Turkish guys just 3 v 3.  But I was older again by 10+ years and was always the weakest link.  Which bothered the shit out of me, but those dominating days were long gone.  Pickup games can be awesome, but only if everyone is chill and there isn't the one A Hole who thinks it's the olympics.

Oh man. We've had a few 3 on 3 games when turnout was low and those are brutal. You can't stand still for a second. I like a good 6v6 or 7v7 with medium sized goals and goalies. 5v5 with little goals and no goalie is fun too. I'm usually in the bottom half of everyone as far as skill but we also have some pretty good players. Luckily nobody is an asshole though - we even have some kids and teenagers that play with us and everyone kind of plays them differently depending on their skill level. Mostly we just like to get a good 90 minutes in and have fun. 

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10 minutes ago, NorthLoop said:

Oh man. We've had a few 3 on 3 games when turnout was low and those are brutal. You can't stand still for a second. I like a good 6v6 or 7v7 with medium sized goals and goalies. 5v5 with little goals and no goalie is fun too. I'm usually in the bottom half of everyone as far as skill but we also have some pretty good players. Luckily nobody is an asshole though - we even have some kids and teenagers that play with us and everyone kind of plays them differently depending on their skill level. Mostly we just like to get a good 90 minutes in and have fun. 

The little Pugg Goals were the shit.  Pop up in seconds and small sided game on.  Sounds like you found yourself a nice pickup game.  

I set up a casual game for whoever wanted to play at a nearby park for my girls team when they were like 11, and the more the merrier.  Parents, siblings, boys, girls, just keep making the field bigger and goals a little wider as the numbers increase. Good times.

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  • 1 month later...

So we had one of those overzealous young guys playing with us today who launched a rocket shot at me (I was in goal - I usually play goalie half the time as I played a ton of GK growing up and in HS, even went to camps). I blocked it... but I may have broken something in my hand. Probably the hardest shot I've ever blocked in my life. Blocked it with my palm but the back of my hand is swollen and black. Beer tonight to ease the pain, x-ray tomorrow. Looks like I'll be playing striker for a few weeks. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Put my boy in a club last season to get him familiar with the game and help him be active and social. It's been fun watching him grow. He had just turned 4 when he started so obviously he was all over the place.  This past week though felt like a little light switched turned on. I can't explain how awesome it is to see his little mind working on the pitch to get his job done. Game day and he was killing it . I know he's little but damn did it feel good to see him play 

FB_IMG_1648322459686.jpg

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  • 3 weeks later...

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