Coaching Tool - Soccer Tactics

Now this tool is not your scientific data processing or template type tool. It's a "let's get back to basics" tool.

I was researching some more soccer game tactics and was reading about how pro teams develop and practice tactics today. They talk about breaking up the field into spaces, assignments of each players within these spaces. Differences between how to act and react depending on which team has possession. Then there is the synchronization of running patterns between players, timing of passes, etc. That is all great for professional teams. And then I thought about how to apply all this to kids and youth teams.

I reflected back on how we were taught tactics and game strategy when we were youngsters. The surprising answer was: WE WERE NOT!! Our coach's (at a competitive level) tactical training consisted of telling us how many defenders, midfielders and forwards we would play with and which players would occupy which positions. And somehow, when we got to play the game, we knew what to do. We knew where to run to, we knew when to pass, we knew the pace of the ball required. We moved the ball up the field and scored goals and we knew to defend against the other team. The game flowed. How was that possible without specific and detailed tactical training???? Magic????

NO MAGIC. We simply used the basic tools most humans are given:

Eyes - Voice - Ears

We saw and recognized the game situation as it happened. We recognized the spaces available and we knew that if we played a pass into space someone would be there. We also read body signals of players physical movements and saw their intended moves before they happened (anticipation). If the ball carrier didn't see the play develop, we used our voices to tell them. If the players without ball didn't seem to be moving to the right spots, the ball carrier would tell them. And of course, we had to be attentive to hearing the verbal instructions.

We knew that we had to get somewhere inside the penalty box to get a decent scoring chance and we knew to keep the other team out of our box.

How did this all develop?

It develop through playing lots and lots and lots of soccer. Today it would be called "small group games". We also played full field pick up games. As with other activities, the key to success was REPETITION.

What did our coach do during practice? Skill finetuning - general skills for everyone and some specific positional skill. Then came some fitness work and then lots of scrimmages.

So I would encourage coaches of youngsters to get their players to use the tools of

EYES - VOICE -EARS.