You Are Not Responsible For Your Robot. Er I Mean Player

Training sessions are where the coaches are in charge.

Games are where the players are in charge.

Some of the things I've heard adults yell at children at soccer games are just downright hilarious. Like the coach who yelled at a 6-year-old, "Give him a target on the flank!"

Oh, how I wish the kids would start shouting back. Go ahead and give an earful right back to the loudmouths on the sideline.

I would have loved to see the little boy turn around and say:

"Excuse me! Give him a target on the what? Do you realize I'm 6 years old? How little time do you spend with 6-year-olds that would make you think 'Give him a target on the flank' makes any sense to us? Maybe after we learn how to kick the ball farther than five yards we can start giving each other targets on the whatever."

If you've been around youth soccer games you've probably noticed that whenever a little kid manages to break away from the pack and toward the goal, the shrill screams of "Shoot! Shoot! Shoot!" begin. How wonderful it would be if a kid would just stop in mid-stride, turn to the sideline, and shout:

"Listen here, and listen good! I KNOW I'm supposed to shoot. I'm 6 years old, but I'm not an idiot. And what if I didn't want to shoot? What if I wanted to dribble around the goalkeeper. Am I allowed to do that, or are you in charge of every movement and every decision I make out here?"

One the most common screams from the sidelines is "Pass it! Pass it! Pass it! Pass it! Pass it! Pass it!" I want a little kid to tell them:

"So you've noticed that I've gained enough confidence to try to dribble through a mass of kids who are kicking at my shins. You see, I've been playing around with the ball in my yard and I'm starting to figure out this dribbling thing. And you want to discourage me! Well guess what? I'm going to ignore you. When my teammates start asking for the ball, then I'll start thinking about whether I should keep dribbling or pass the ball."

I once heard a mom yell at a child to pass the ball before the 6-year-old even got control of it.

"Hey Mom, do realize how ridiculous you sound?"

From Mike Woitalla's Article: Time For A Children's Revolt

The little boy dribbled and kept dribbling. He had taken the ball away from the midfield pack and zoomed toward his own goal. This surprised the other children and allowed him to keep the ball to himself for much longer than any player had managed during this U-8 game.

Having put some 15 yards between himself and the other players, he slowed down and seemed to marvel at all the territory he now had to himself. He started making a wide U-turn and flashed a big smile.

He moved down the sideline and back into the other team's half, then put his foot on the ball and stopped. When a couple of his little opponents approached, he accelerated toward their goal and took a shot that nearly scored.

What creativity, improvisation and savvy! And in his smile was the joy of soccer.

So how did his coach react?

First with red-faced screams of ''You're going the wrong way! You're going the wrong way!'' Then furious shouts of ''Pass it! Pass it!'' -- a chant that several parents took up -- followed by head-shaking in frustration.

Of course, the coach was shouting instructions to all his players throughout the game. That's the norm in youth soccer, in which misguided coaches -- and the other adults on the sideline -- believe they're helping children become better soccer players by telling them where to run and when to pass.

But what really irked the coach about the clever boy's maneuver was it was risky. A misstep and he could have provided a scoring chance for the other team.

From Mike Woitalla's Article: Do We Want Robinhos or Robots?

Why are the coaches in charge of the training session and the kids in charge of the games?  Because in training we, the coaches, decide what will be done and what environment it will be done in.  It is our time to instruct our players how we feel they can be successful. We can decide that today we will only work on the scissors.  We will encourage girls to use the scissors every chance they get. We will set up situations for them to succeed using the scissors.  We wont get mad when they try a scissors when they are the goal and, often times, we may even give out points for every single attempt of a scissors, whether it is in a "good" place to do a scissors or not. 

* * * I put good in quotation marks because my idea of a "good" place is any place you feel confident you'll have success irregardless of where you are on the field.  Some people view a "good" place as a place where if you lose the ball it wont hurt your team.

In games, the players on the field are in charge.  They show us what they think is going to be successful. 

They are creating the environment.  They create it by where they go on the field, what they do with the ball, and how they react to each situation.  While the coach can stand on the sideline and yell out instructions the entire game to the kids and get them exactly where he wants his little pawns to go, you need to ask yourself, "Are we developing soccer players or training robots?" 

Most coaches and parents on the sidelines think that they are responsible

 for

their players actions on the field.  Lets think about that for a minute:

 If you are responsible for your children, then you have to figure out how to program them to make the "right" choices.  And you need to do it quickly.  You have to learn the right techniques to get them to think, feel, and behave according to your definition of "good."

All of this sounds alarmingly like obedience training.  It comes as no surprise to find coaching books at your local bookseller written by animal trainers.  "What works for Fido can work for your child!"

If you're totally responsible for coercing your children into being good, then it makes perfect sense to enlist some program or system like that.  Such an approach may make parents/coaches feel big and in charge, but it leaves the children feeling small and incompetent.

The fact that our children have been given the power of choice, as self-directed human beings, can thwart even the best obedience-training program.  Children will soon realize they are in a no-win situation.  Either they kill their own decision-making spirit in an attempt to reduce their parents' anxiety, or they rebel against their parents' authority.  That's the catch-22 of the "responsible for" model of parenting/coaching.  Parents and coaches either program their children correctly or they have failed.  Children either conform to the system, surrender their individuality, and become "the child we don't have to worry about," or they rebel against the system, failing to "get with the program."

In this system, the possibility of children learning to act for themselves and think critically about their choices does not exist.  Doing so would equal rebellion.  If your child ends up "doing the right thing," then you've raised a robot.  He did exactly as he was programmed to do.  But if your child ends up thinking and acting for himself, then you've raised a rebel.

From ScreamFree Parenting by Hal Edward pg 18-19

So the question we have to ask is even if we could control our players on the field, would we really want to?  When we constantly yell out instructions to our players we, coaches and parents, think we are helping them and setting them up to succeed.  What the players hear is "You don't trust me to make the right choice."  It does not matter what we are yelling.  Through all of our helpful and good intentioned instructions, the message that comes out of it is "You can't figure this out."

So coaches should say nothing?  No.  

What coaches and parents have to realize is that we are responsible

to

our players.

We have to realize that they are going to make their own decisions and it is our job to discuss with them how they felt things turned out.  Instruction to the players on the field can be good if it is a topic that you have not discussed previously to your team. But a non-stop barrage of demands from the coach is not good.

Examples:

Good Instruction to a U10 team:  Just before a player on the other team hits a long ball the coach yells "Drop!"  The next time the coach gets a chance ask the girls why he said "Drop?"  Hopefully the girls will say, "Because they were going to hit a long ball."  Then the coach can explain how to spot when the other team is going to play a long ball.  When a players head goes down and she takes some quick steps up to the ball, she is going to hit a long ball so we should drop.  The next time the other team is going to hit a long ball the coach should say nothing and see whether or not the girls have learned.  If they did do it remember to highlight what a great job they did.  If they didn't do it ask them why they decided to stay up.  Let them tell you.  You shouldn't tell them.

Bad Instruction to a U10 team:  Play Lefty!  Play Red!  Dribble!  Pass!  Shoot!  Get back!  While all of these may be good instructions individually when dispersed every once in a while, you are not playing a video game.  Telling your players what to do in every situation makes them reliant on you to make their decisions for them.  These same coaches wonder why their players cannot think creatively how to solve problems on the field.  They can't understand why their players can't make basic decisions on their on. 

With all of this in mind, it is especially important that we let our young teams play free from the constant barrage of instructions.  Will they always know what to do?  Not a chance.  Even when they do know what to do will they do it?  Not always.  But if we let them learn and talk about what happened later, the kids will be making the decisions for themselves.  And who knows, maybe as an added benefit, coaches and parents will have fewer health problems directly related to stress.

Scrimmage vs U13 Mix Team Saturday 9-29

A few players, including Shannon Higgins, Carla Werden, and Walker have achieved a status where they are referred to by Dorrance as Coach.  With UNC ahead 2-1 during a brief break in the 2001 NCAA semifinal, Dorrance was warning his team that they needed to keep playing aggressively when he was suddenly interrupted by Walker, who said, "Hey, y'all, we're going to keep running until we pass out and we're going to win this frigging game!"

Says Dorrance: "At that moment I was thinking, 'This is the ultimate evolution.  I'm just an appendage here.'  But that's what you love.  It was a defining moment.  That's why I should never be running the team.  My hand is on the tiller, but it's a soft hand.  Every once in a while they'll make a mistake and you're there to help correct it, but they are running the ship."

From The Man Watching- A Biography of Anson Dorrance, the Unlikely Architect of the Greatest College Sports Dynasty Ever

One of the reasons I love coaching for Bangu so much, is that the kids in the club want to play all the time.  On Tuesday I sent out an email to our U13 Blue and White teams asking them who wanted to play on Saturday morning.  I knew both groups had training later in the day, but I wanted to get the 12's another game in before we go to the Sockers Event.  With in a couple of hours I had 8 girls committed to playing and ended up with 12 of the U13 group.

My goal for the scrimmage was for the girls to continue their work on their ball movement and being comfortable on the ball.  Not going 100mph forward every time.  It is nice to play against older teams in our club because they; force us to play quick, play to win, and they make us better all the time.  It is a great environment.

The first 20 minutes of the scrimmage it seemed as if the girls had not learned anything during the last three weeks of training.  We were forcing the ball forward every time we got it.  I was also disheartened by the fact that no one on the field seemed to care that we were not playing well.  At that point I subbed in Blitz who is recovering from a bad bout of osgood schlaaters and has been taking it easy and letting her knees take some time off.  Blitz is competitive.  Even though her mobility was limited she immediately let her teammates know that it was not ok for them to give a poor effort.  Things changed and we looked good for the rest of the half.  We moved the ball well and players started to get creative with the ball at their feet.

At half time I addressed the fact that as much as I want the girls to always play well and hold them selves to a high standard of play, it does not matter.  What matters is that the girls, themselves, want to play well and hold themselves accountable for a high level of play.  The drive has to come from them.  I told them that I don't control how well this team does, it is entirely up to them.  I will give them direction and advice.  What they decide to do with that direction and advice will determine how well we do.

The second half was great.  We started consistently stringing 5-6 passes together and one time we put together 15 passes.  The best part of this, was that the girls weren't just passing for the sake of passing.  They were looking for openings and moving the ball from one side to the next.  It was very impressive. 

The U13's have some very good players and they scored a handful of goals on us during the game and the score was probably 5-0.  But the girls were focussed on the fact that our goal for the day was to improve our ball movement and creativity, which they did.  They did not get down when the 13's scored and they were having a great time seeing how well they could move the ball on such a fast team.

I left the game very happy about our performance.  I hope that we can continue to improve on this as we go into the Sockers Event in two weeks.  I hope the girls, and parents, realize that we may take some lumps as we learn to play this style of soccer because it is much tougher to keep the ball and be creative, than to simply boot the ball down the field and chase after it.  We definitely have some athletes who can thrive in this bootball style of play, and we would be pretty successful until we play a team who is just as athletic as us and they force us to be creative.  By that point it would be too difficult to change our ways and we will get beat.  See the USA vs Brasil semi final game of WWC 07 for the perfect example of this.

Training Friday 9-28

I worship the dribble.  As a child I did nothing but dribble.  In the living room, between the furniture and the chairs, in the garden around my dog.  I learned all about life with the ball at my feet.

-Ronaldinho

The goal of today's session is to use the scissors move to unbalance a defender before you take them on.

Too many players dribble in a straight line, right to the defender, and attempt one move.  That is too easy for the defenders.  By dribbling straight, you allow them an easy time of jockeying and you allow them to continually move in the same direction, thus helping the defender to keep a good center of balance, which makes it easier for her to tackle you.

If you throw in a little change of direction, a scissors or two before you get to the defender, she will have to shift her weight with each move, and in doing so it unbalances them.  By the time you get to the defender, if you have unbalanced her, your final move and success rate will be much higher.

I.  Partner Scissors Exercise

1 partner has the ball and does a scissors looking to beat the defender.

The other partner is the defender and must keep one foot on the cone until the attacker touches the ball.

Attackers get 1 point for every time they get by their partner.

Key Points:

-Mix it up and use different variations and take the ball different ways each time.

Variations: Normal, dummy, double, triple, nutmeg ect.

-Watch the defender as you do your scissors.  What way does she lean?

-Start about a yard away from the defender.  If you start too far away she will have too much time to react.

***

I showed the girls that if I do a normal scissors one time, the defender is looking for that the next time I do it, so I do a dummy and go the other way.  The third time I go against her she is determined not to get beat to either side so I nutmeg her.  Before I do my move I'm taking into account every other time I've gone against her and how she has reacted.

Variations:

-Let the defender move before the attacker touches the ball.  The defender still has to have one foot touching the cone, but now they can reach one foot out to poke the ball away.  This keeps the attackers on their toes and keeps them quick on the ball.

-Take away the cone and have them dribble at the defender

II.  1v1 To Two Goals

Set Up:

Grid 20yd x 18yd

Procedure:

-2 groups going 1v1 at the same time.  This forces you to keep your head up and look for the open space.

-Point for every time you dribble the ball through one of the two gates you are attacking.

-Play for 2 minutes and see how many goals you can score.

As the girls started to play I was hoping that they would use the scissors a lot during this exercise and they did.  But they were dribbling straight at the defender, doing one scissors and hoping they would get by her.  They simply were not getting the importance of unbalancing the defender before they did their final move so I said that you got 3 points for every goal you scored and 1 point for every scissors you did.  It does not matter where the defender is, if you do a scissors you get one point.

After playing a couple of games with these rules, the girls started to see that they could score more goals because the defenders had no idea of where the attacker was taking the ball with all of their fakes.  Scoring and keeping the ball became easy.  The girls were starting to understand that running 100mph forward all the time is not that effective.  Changing directions, scissors, keeping yourself under control while still moving quickly is the key to our success.

A couple times when I asked for scores, one of the girls would report that she had 20+ points and then her partner would respond that she didn't have any.  The defender could not get the ball because she did not know where the attacker was going with it.

I then added in the nutmeg challenge and we got more nutmegs than during any other exercise we've done this year.

III.  6v6 Scrimmage

3 points for a goal

1 point for every scissors

2 points for every nutmeg

This was probably the most fun scrimmage we've had to date.  The girls were creative and confident on the ball.  They found that when the dribbler didn't sprint forward every time, the other players could make runs and we began having some great combination play.

Training Sunday 9-23

To me the Olympics are not about 'dream teams,' they're more about dreamers.  They're not about medals, but the pursuit of medals.  The Olympics are not about being No. 1, they're about sacrificing and trying to be No. 1.

-Herb Brooks

The goal of today's session is to work on first touch and thinking creatively.

I.  Footskills Work

Double Moves:

Scissors

Stepover

Scissors Stepover

II.  3 Person Passing and Receiving Grid

I usually never repeat a training exercise during an entire years worth of training.  But with this first touch and passing exercise I really want to work on our form so we will do this exercise a lot this year.  Today I added the challenge of having the passers moving as they pass the ball.  It is much harder to deliver a accurate pass on the run.  I am also continually asking our girls to pass the ball hard.

III.  5v2 Keep away- Split the Defenders

I love this exercise because it challenges players to think about how the defense will react to each pass.  If you challenge yourself to always be looking to receive or make a split pass you will find that you are always moving and thinking about the next pass or how to set up the split.

Set Up:

-2 Teams of 7 people

-2 players from each team defend in the opponents grid

-If the defenders get the ball they give it back to the attackers

-1 point for every split pass

-Play for 90 seconds

The first time we do this I just let the girls play and see how well they do.  Some of the girls do a good job of moving off the ball and look to make the split, but others stand around when they don't have the ball and when they get it they are only looking to get rid of it, not looking to make a play.

After asking them how it went and hearing their responses that it didn't go so well I picked out the 3 players who I felt did the best job of moving and jumped in and played 4v2 looking to split the defense.  In 30 seconds we more than doubled the high score from the groups that had gone 5v2.  "What's the difference?"  I asked the girls. 

-Movement off the ball (You have to always be creating an angle to either receive a split pass or give one.)

-You have to be looking to make the split (Again, we are looking for creative players.  Players who want to step up to the challenge and make a play.)

-Good first touch

-1 touch the split pass.  (A short pass that causes the defense to shift followed by a 1 touch split creates the most success since the defenders don't have as much time to react.)

-Hard passes (I keep telling the girls to learn how to both pass and receive a ball that is passed hard because the faster the pass is, the less time the defenders have to react.)

-Communication (Everyone is talking about where the ball should go and directing others what to do.  The more info you have, the better choice you will make.  It is not just talking to the person on the ball, but the people who are making runs.)

When I send the girls back out to work again they find themselves having a lot of success. and I added the bonus challenge of nutmegging the defender for an additional 3 points.

IV.  7v7 To Goal:  Look For Split Passes

We finished with a 7v7 scrimmage where we awarded 3 points for every goal scored and 1 point for every split pass.