Dribbling & Turning: Tonight’s U8s session

Tonight’s session had the topic of Close Control, Dribbling & Turns, so the session I planned & carried out was as follows.

Key objectives:

• A ball with every player at all times
• No player stood waiting / queueing at any time
• Dribbling & turning both unopposed & opposed

Warm Up / Starting Session: Gates

Each player had a ball and to begin with we allowed them to dribble through the games and try/perform different turns as they went through the gate.

We then demonstrated and asked them to try the following turns/skills when going through gates (each time pausing to demonstrate):

• Step over (inc exaggeration as if they were going to shoot)
• Drag-back
• Inside / Outside hook

Key points were the players were to also ensure they were keeping their head up whilst dribbling to see where other players were and to visit a different gate if another player was going to the same one. Lots of positive praise for good turns and where players were experimenting.

We then changed a player to be a defender who’s job was to tackle players and that player would then become a defender. Key for the attacking players here was to use the turns to avoid the defender.

Pirates of the pugg

Next we setup and played Pirates of the Pugg as described in the link above. The game continues to work on the players dribbling, with a defender in place but it also provides the defender with an objective as opposed to aimlessly kicking the ball out of play.

Each player who was tackled became a pirate until one player was left. We then rotated to allow each player an opportunity to start as a pirate.

So more dribbling under pressure & also a chance to test their knowledge of characters from Pirates of the Carribean.

Castles

We used the game Castles next as described in the link above. We asked players to turn in the inside box, avoiding the defender and had the first player to visit all four corners as the winner. Again rotating the defender in the middle and praising where good turns were used & also where they were being clever and waiting for the right time to enter the box and turn. It also requires the player to perform a turn and exit at a higher speed which is great practice for them.

3v3 SSG

We then ended with a 3v3 SSG.

Summary

This is a new group of players we’re working with so it’s important to build rapport at the beginning of the session which we did by asking how they’d got on at school that day, what they’d learnt at school, what clubs they played for, what they did at the weekend, what team they supported etc etc – light hearted and jokey.

We used a whiteboard to described the castles session & also had the players reflect on what they’d learnt at the end of the session and wrote it on the board to demonstrate what they’d learnt.

It felt like a fluid session which kept to the topic and the players enjoyed it – they were also very tired at the end despite regular drinks breaks.

I’ve put this session up as a) it might be useful for someone new to coaching this age group or b) more experienced coaches may be able to critique and question to help with my learning. I’d be happy to see comments from either band

 

Coaching Day 22: “Combining To Score With One Touch”

I’d decided to use a session which I’d seen on Dan Wright‘s blog recently tonight because I felt it provided a training exercise which was game realistic, which (as Dan describes) provided the players with lots of decisions to make and which works on some of their core footballing skills (pass, dribble, control, find space).

The session as Dan described can be found here. I altered the session slightly and used an end zone instead of goals which meant players needed to stop the ball in the zone rather than shoot. We play on a multi-pitch all weather surface so the area I used was actually a tennis court with the zone being the service line to the base line (and the singles sideline) which actually provided a good playing area.

I had 2 groups of 8 players and spent 10-12 minutes with each which realistically only provided enough opportunity to give each player a go as a defender (approx 3 each) whilst allowing time for tears, tantrums and a couple of opportunities for me to talk to the players where they did something very good or I felt the need to explore a decision they’d made.

The session actually works very well as it forces the players to frequently decide whether to pass or dribble, they need to find space, they need to be able to control the ball to score a point and the defenders HAD to get the ball to me on the side in order to score a point so there was lots going on and lots for them to take on board.

In addition to the attacking/possession aspect to the session it also provides the defenders with good practice. They have to defend 1v1, 2v1 and 3v1 and once they get the ball they HAVE to do some with it in order to score a point which gives them a focus.

Definitely a session I’ll use again and there are progressions which can be added if I have more time in the future. I’d certainly like to use this and then progress to a 4v4 game to see how it compares to a conventional 4v4 game at an Under 8 age group.

Managing young expectations

I had a chat with one of players after training tonight. He’d trained well, played well and made some good decisions so I wanted to tell him and make sure he knew that he’d done well and that I was impressed with him. He said to me, “I’m trying to work hard because I want to be scouted”, which is clearly on the back of two other players of ours being “scouted” recently.

I told him not to worry about being scouted at his age (7) and that I felt he should just enjoy his football and worry about being scouted when he’s older. I wasn’t really expecting the question but I don’t want a 7 year old boy becoming obsessed or even concerned because he’s not been scouted – especially when he’s a class act.

I worry for our kids who’ve been “scouted” – I hope they do well but I really hope they don’t just get dropped after a few weeks and become despondent, especially when they’re also good young players.

Coaching Day 21: Prior Planning Prevents Poor Performance

Last Wednesday’s training session was something of a learning experience for me because of the phone call I received 15 minutes before the start of the session. Those of you who read the blog regularly will be aware that two of us run the session and that we usually start & end the session with the kids together but split out in the middle for 15 minutes of sessions with half of the players each.

So, as I’m arriving home last Wednesday afternoon and thoughts are focussing on making the best use of the 15-20 minutes where it’s just me and 7-8 players I receive a phone call. “Hi Simon it’s Phil’s wife Kerry, he’s broken down and isn’t going to make training. I’ll bring the balls down, is there anything else you need?”. “The cones, bibs and a whistle if his is around” came my reply. As I put the phone down I must admit to feeling a bit panicked – from planning for 20 minutes I now had to plan for a whole session with 18-20 7 year olds and no support.

I arrived 5 minutes before the session (work doesn’t allow me to get there any earlier) and the first thing I did was to make sure that one of the parents was going to be around for the duration of the session. I needed to have someone there to be a second pair of eyes and asked one of the parents just to help if (when) any of the kids were injured or started to cry so that I could try to keep the session going one of the parents duly obliged and assisted a couple of times during the session.

I had a few ideas on what I could do with the session because, whilst I hadn’t planned for a whole session I have enough experience now to know what games you can use with a larger group of players but I decided I’d go through the warm-up and go from there – using the kids mood as a factor in deciding what I’d then move on to do later in the session.

Before we started the warm-up it was evident that the kids were hyper which, in all honesty, appears to be the norm this season. I expect this is due to a) their age and b) the fact that most go to school together. I gathered them together at the start and explained that Phil (the manager and usually “bad cop”) wouldn’t be there so I’d be running the session – I also explained that I’d be telling Phil who was well behaved during the session with Saturday’s game(s) in mind.

For a warm-up each player had a ball and I started with the kids dribbling from one-side of the all-weather pitch to the other, using different surfaces of the foot to dribble and trying out turns etc before progressing to a sharks v minnow type of game. This further expanded to other types of dribbling and passing combinations (inc work in pairs) and kept the players reasonably engaged whilst keeping them warm and giving them maximum time on the ball. There were a few kids who were playing up and were no doubt mindful that the manager wasn’t there but I made an effort to ignore them and keep the session going which ultimately saw them join back in rather than continue to be disruptive.

In an hour session we spent the first 20-25 minutes doing ball work with the players being encouraged to express themselves by trying different turns & tricks. A lot of our players are often very keen to show me their tricks, turns or skills they’ve learnt or tried and I take this as a positive. I hope it reflects that I encourage & praise their efforts and show a real interest in what they’re trying – I also try to help them correct their technique every now and then which they’re receptive to as it usually improves their success rate.

Whilst the first 20-25 minutes had kept going it had certainly been a challenge trying to get their attention, explain any progressions or changes in what we were doing and there were times where it was organised chaos. However, how can one person and 19-20 seven year old bos & girls not be??

Once the first part of the session was complete I decided that the best way to keep the session successful was to move to a game but I got them together after a quick drinks break and explained that some of the behaviour wasn’t very good and that I expected better behaviour during the game – once again using Saturday’s game as a reminder.

The game I believe was the best step to take during the session and in the circumstances. The game ran well, the players did a number of things which allowed me to praise them and I was also able to take time to talk to certain players for short periods to ask them a question about what they’d just done or congratulate them on something they’d done really well (and explain or ask if they knew what it was they’d done well).

At the end of the session a number of parents (who’d watched) were complimentary of how I’d kept the session together and managed the kids at certain times (i.e. explaining the behaviour I expected) and thanked me for running it despite Phil’s absence – which was nice.

There are a number of learning points I took from Wednesday night, such as:

• I need a plan for running this size of session in future
• The plan needs to include elements which perhaps allow a parent to become involved without too much explanation required
• The kids did respond well to me talking to them about behaviour and I should probably have intervened a couple more times than I did
• It was enjoyable having full-ownership of the session, although it was incredibly hard work
• In all it was a very useful experience

There are elements I need to improve as a coach; the warm-up needs to be better and avoid dribbling in straight lines and with better planning I could have avoided the need to move straight in to a game so I’m glad I had this experience to acknowledge these and write this post.

Finally, based on what I’ve written above I’d love to hear from other coaches, especially those who’ve worked with similar age groups and to be challenged on some of the above, e.g. what sounds good, what looks strange, is there anything you strongly disagree with?

Half-term: A chance to take stock

We had a week off from training last week as it was half-term and it gave me a chance to have a quick recap and think about how the first part of the season had gone from a coaching perspective.

When we returned to training at the end of August I’d decided that I’d put my focus in to helping to develop the players technique and comfort on the ball whilst ensuring any session I put on was both fun, engaging and relevant. There’s also a desire on my part to experiment and try different sessions to see what works & what doesn’t – the risk is always that you feel the session wasn’t a particularly good one but I feel a trial & error approach is important to a developing coach.

So, to summarise some of the areas I’ve covered so far this season:

• 1v1 – providing players with lots of opportunities to try to beat a player, understanding what does/doesn’t work
• Unopposed skills practice – allowing players to try new tricks & skills in a no-pressure situation (could range from a heel-flick to a step-over or simple turn)
• SSGs – 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4 and a range of variants in between (1v2 etc). Allowing players just to play in these situations but sometimes stepping in to reward a player’s ability to beat another with a trick, or a team who score a goal having ensured each player passed it.
• Dribbling & Turning – using different feet & using different parts of the foot to turn (inside step, outside of foot, sole of foot)

Week-on-week it can feel like not much is changing but when you take a minute to reflect you start to realise how much you’re covering with the players and the only real shame is that we only get 1 hour a week with the kids. In addition to covering the above areas we’ve always ensured that a player always has a ball and that we avoid drills and lines of players queueing up to partake in a game, so I think we’re doing a lot of things right.

As we return to training this week we move on to an all-weather surface and so it’s even more of an opportunity to work on the player’s ball work as it’s a great surface – the real challenge is ensuring that the sessions remain engaging and that the boys just feel that they’re playing football, rather than training.

Finally, for me as a coach I’m continuing to do the following:

• Ensure I plan sessions which cover key points whilst being engaging, fun and relevant
• Using resources (Blogs, Twitter, Academy visits & other coaches etc) to develop my understanding of what good coaching looks like and to provide ideas for sessions
• Review sessions to learn from both the positives & negatives

Coaching 8 year olds is a lot about providing them the freedom to play and learn but there are other factors such as dealing with bad behaviour, ensuring fairness and comforting upset players  and the latter certainly remains as much of a learning experience as the former!

Coaching Day 20: Managing physical limitations

Last week’s session was one of those where as a coach you don’t feel it went very well but you know this means there are things you can learn from and improve on in future sessions.

Our session took it’s usual recent format – Warm-up, “training” and the we finish with a match. Within the warm up all of our players will have a football and whilst our main focus is to get the players warm (when the weathers cold!) we also focus on ball-work as we get the players to experiment with turns and also do a lot of dribbling. It was here where I found last week that I was trying to teach the players a turn which they perhaps weren’t physically capable of doing.

In recent weeks we’ve been working on different turns using different surfaces of the foot so last week we demonstrated the Cryuff turn, a turn which seems easy to an adult but I soon noticed that some of our under 8s players struggled with the movement required by the non-standing foot when trying to perform the turn. As the players tried to do the turn some were able to do it but others couldn’t and instead reverted to using the sole of their foot.

Having demonstrated the turn the players would then practice it by running 10yards with the ball, trying the turn and then running back to where they came from. Those who were mastering it would shout to me to watch, some would ask me to demonstrate it again whilst others would do something different which worked for them. It was the latter players who appeared to struggle with the basic movement and therefore it was those who I allowed to continue without wanting to push them to do something which they were clearly struggling with.

There is a judgement call required when working on this type of exercise with young players – do you feel they’re physically capable of doing it and require help or do you acknowledge they’re not ready to do it and avoid applying any pressure which could impact their self-esteem.

Is this something which you as a coach experience regularly and if so, how have you handed it?

Coaching Day 19: The numbers game v2

In our session last week I asked the kids what they wanted to do. I haven’t done this often before but I’m aware other coaches use this approach so thought I’d give it a go and wasn’t particularly surprised when they answered “the numbers game”, a game we’d played in the previous week and which they’d played at school.

It’s evident the kids enjoy it because it changes frequently, there’s an element of suspense to the game and it’s competitive so I was happy to agree to their request because I also think this game has real benefits for young players. Fortunately, I’d been giving this game some thought in between the two sessions and I’d already decided that I was going to modify the game if we used it again.

Having watched the session previously, I felt the game had benefits when at 1v1 and 2v2 but when it went to 3v3 or 4v4 the players became rather bunched and it had only been the inclusion of the rule “5 points if every player touches it” which had forced an element of football.

So, instead of using the normal game I made two alterations.

Alteration number 1

I set-up the pitch with two goals at each end and, using poles, ensured that the goals at opposing ends of the pitch were the same colour. That is, each end had one “blue” goal and one “red” goal.

Alteration number 2

I then picked up two cones, one red & one blue, and held them in my hands. I informed the players that there were some new rules. If I called a number out and wasn’t holding a cone in the air they could score in any goal, if I held up a blue cone then they could only score in the blue goal and if I held up a red cone they could only score in the red goal. To add an element of thought I made sure the same colour goals were diagonally opposite, rather than directly opposite each other.

I wanted this to get the players looking up whilst also focusing on the game and I think it worked. The players were having to check what cone I was holding up, if any, when going to the ball or when running with the ball. I made a change which meant I could change the colour cone I was holding during play – this avoided the players having a quick glimpse before collecting the ball and then going straight for goal. This was especially effective when they were playing 3v3 or 4v4 as it meant the players had to communicate the changes in cone colour as and when I chose to do so.

It was, I guess, a very small change to a very basic game but I think it was a change which provided the challenges I wanted the players to face and it’s a game I’ll use again.

Coaching Day 18: The numbers game

I wanted to continue with the theme of developing the players to give them confidence in 1v1 and 2v2 situations so tonight I used the numbers game in order to achieve this.

The session as usual started with a warm-up which usually starts with the players dribbling across the pitch, doing right-foot only, left-foot only and then combining to dribble whilst moving the ball from one foot to another. In addition to this we also work on their turning by getting them to turn with the ball on the blow of a whistle and then progress in to a fun game (we used bulldog tonight).

When the session moves on we split the players in to groups of two or three and work with anything from 6-10 players each. I had a group of 6 and then 7 players with which to play the numbers game tonight and I found it worked really well.

I’d marked out a pitch and then explained the game to the players, then session then progressed as follows:

• Began with just 1v1, ensuring each player had an equal number of goes
• Encouraged players to take on their opponent rather than just blast the ball at the first opportunity
• Awarded double points (to much excitement) if a piece of skill or trick was used to beat a player
• Increased players by calling out 2v2 or 3v3 situations
• Threatened to deduct points if they kept moving the poles which were being used as goalposts!
• Then offered 5 points (to much excitement) if all players touched the ball and a goal was scored when it was 3v3

Whilst the game isn’t complex it certainly works well for players at an under 8 age-group. It keeps them engaged and entertained, they get excited by the small changes to the rules (progressions) and it helps develop their dribbling & ball skills. The two increases in points (for skill & each player touching it) saw a very positive change in their approach to the game. The offer of 2 points if they used a skill or trick saw them trying to do this regularly whereas prior to this they’d been largely trying to outpace the other player.

The 3v3 games had seen players being quite selfish before the introduction of 5 points if each player touched the ball. Once I changed the rules the teams were working very hard to get each player to touch the ball before scoring, and they were doing it to good effect. I also cast my mind back to this time last year when I ran a small sided game and dictated “each player must touch the ball to score” which didn’t get a positive response – change this to “if each player touches the ball you get 5 points” and you get a much more positive reaction!

So, a simple game tonight but it worked well, the players enjoyed it and it helped develop their ability in 1v1, 2v2 & 3v3 situations.

Coaching Day 17: Skills corridor with goals

Tonight’s session

• Energy levels: Medium
• Concentration levels: Moderate
• Behaviour: Poor

Joke’s aside – tonight was one of those sessions where an influential minority have the ability to bring down the group – and by bring down I mean influence the group to misbehave. Generally our squad of players are pretty good but tonight, for some reason, we had one of those nights where a higher than average number of players seemed either tired & grotty, fed-up or intent on mis-behaving and as a coach this provides you with challenges.

 

It’s a challenge to keep the group’s attention when you’re trying to explain the next game, it’s a challenge when you have to spend time encouraging or paying attention to players who’re mis-behaving (rather than helping to improve those who are paying attention) and it’s a challenge to try and prevent the player(s) from adversely influencing the rest of the group.

 

I’ve found that ignoring a player who’s mis-behaving works quite well in terms of stopping the other kids from being influenced by it. If that doesn’t work then I’ll try to find the trigger which snaps them out of it but if they aren’t listening then it’s off to sit on the side of the pitch (if behaving badly).

 

Anyway, to tonight’s session. Having worked on 1v1 last week I wanted to focus on ball work and skill development tonight so I’d been thinking about different sessions which I could try – using YouTube and blogs to also provide inspiration. In the end I decided to amend the skills corridor game from the Youth Award Module 1 and use that.

Following our usual warm-up routine we split the players in to two groups and I had a group of 8 to work with.

 

Setup (apologies for quality of image!)

 

• The white cones set out the perimeter of the skills corridor
• The players started behind the goal and would dribble in to the corridor (1)
• I asked the player to try a trick or skill in the corridor (2) and then demonstrated a turn for them to try when they reached the third cone (3)
• Once they’d performed a turn I asked them to try another skill or trick on the way back (4)  before shooting in to the goal
• I then progressed the session by adding two cones (light blue) and asked them to try and skill and take it round those cones before shooting
• Finally,  I added a defender (5) to operate in the area and asked the players to beat the defender with a skill before shooting

It worked quite well and the players were trying a number of different tricks and skills whilst in the corridor. Some points I made/observed during the session:

• I encouraged and praised the skill or trick attempted, no matter how adventurous
• Without thinking about it, the session progressed from unopposed to semi-opposed and opposed which felt quite natural
• As some of the players started becoming a bit bored I added challenges and awarded double-points for completing the challenge. For example, I demonstrated moving the ball past a cone by rolling their foot over the ball and said they’d get double points if they could score a goal doing it. This meant they all wanted to score double points and reinvigorated the session.

The players surprised me with their inventiveness during the session and despite the usual requests of “when are we having a game” I felt it was a worthwhile exercise as you could the players improving as they progressed during the session. That is, for some player simple turns were becoming more effective whilst others were doing turns with more speed.

 

I’ll continue to focus on 1v1 and ball mastery in the coming weeks but would welcome any ideas or suggestions for sessions which cover these competencies at this age-group (under 8).

Coaching Day 16: 1v1s

We returned to training last week with our players a year older, the coaches a year wiser and both appeared energised from a summer break. We have a fixture list this season as we’re now at the under 8 age-group and I had thought that might mean we’d have a squad of 14-16 players but we actually ended up with our usual 20-21 players.

As mentioned in a previous blog I’m planning to do a lot more 1v1, 2v2 and ball mastery this season having had last year to get used to the players, settle as a coach and learn a bit more about coaching this age group. I therefore used this as the basis for the session last Wednesday and our session ran like this:

Warm-up

• The players lined up along the side of our mini-soccer pitch with a ball each
• They dribble across the pitch with no conditions
• They they dribble across the pitch under the following conditions:
• Right foot only
• Left foot only
• Both feet (e.g. dribbling by moving the ball from left foot to right foot and back to left foot)
• We then introduce a defender and the players dribble across the pitch, trying to avoid the defender. If the defender makes a tackle the tackled player becomes a defender. This continues until only 1 player is left and we repeat 2-3 times.

We then split the groups in half with each coach taking one set of players. As I wanted to start using 1v1 games to develop dribbling, turning & comfort on the ball I used the following game…

• I had a mini-goal set up with 1 player in goal
• I had 7 outfield players who I rotated between being either a defender or attacker
• Coaching points:
• Encouraged the defending player to make sure they played a good pass to the striker
• Encouraged the attacker to take the defender on
• Encouraged the defender to keep their eye on the ball (otherwise they have a tendency to hack at U8!)

The game worked well. I took brief time-outs so I could have a quick chat with the attacking team and got them to think about how they could beat the player and also spoke to the defending team to emphasise the importance of a good pass and to get them ensuring they watched the ball.

The only downside was that there were times where the inactive players lost concentration and this is something which is difficult to avoid unless each player is actively taking part in the session. I kept the rotation happening quickly to keep any waiting to a minimum.

 

I also had an interesting occurrence whereby a player started to cry when it was his turn. “What’s wrong XXXX?”, I asked. “Why do I always have to play against YYYY?”, he said. Player YYYY is quite a good player, both technically & physically and I hadn’t noticed that player XXXX had been paired with him each time and had no doubt not had much success which caused this frustration. I changed it around so he had a different partner and he was happy to continue but this was yet another reminder of the importance of fairness to players of this age and the need for me as a coach to be aware of who is/isn’t having success during a game.

 

Whilst we were doing this the other half of the players were playing a 4v4 game which allowed them the obvious benefits which come with an SSG, such as lots of touches & dribbling/passing/shooting opportunities. It was just a shame I couldn’t observe the two groups to see if there was any difference between the group who played the SSG before 1v1 and those who played after, i.e. did the group after attempt more dribbles or have more success?

 

We then ended with a game which we always use as an opportunity to coach & encourage the players within a match situation.