I am the head coach of a girls U10 7V7 town travel soccer team. We start practices next week and I am getting my notes ready for the girls - these are season long talking points when discussing our formation and positioning. Please share any feedback - things to add and things to remove.

Building from the back: on goal kicks, LD and RD position themselves at the top of 12 yd box on the corners. Goalie plays it into them and they make a run and push the ball up to the midfielders. This makes it easier to get the ball into play. In the spring, we worked on this as a number of my girls were taught that the goalie should make a long pass 5 yards or so before midfield to one of the midfielders. This can create issues as the other team can easily intercept if it's a pass off target or too slow and it puts immediate pressure on the receiver.

*In our league, the opposing team must retreat to midfield before a goal kick. Once the goalie touches the ball on the ref's motion, they can push forward.

Defending: Focus is on defending inside out - forcing attackers to go outside. Midfields, especially CM, need to be true 2-way players and come back and support on defense. Clear outside and up. No passes across the middle under pressure in our half of the field. Body positions at an angle/low center and try to force attackers to the outside. All throw-ins in our half go down the line away from our goal. After saves, goalies send the ball outside and work both sides of the box to find the best lane. If necessary, they will punt up field. I have one girl who can hit almost midfield.

*8/10 goals we gave up in the spring were due to bad positioning and the other team have 2v1 or 3v1 attacks. Goalies at this age are still learning and when they have odd man rushes, it makes their job even more difficult.

Offense: Stay spread and do not bunch. If you do not have the ball, move to space to make yourself a pass option and to draw defenders. Never be directly behind or in front of your teammate that has the ball. If one side is too crowded, look to switch the field. I like to ask "are you in a position to give the ballcarrier a pass option?" or "are you in space where one of your teammates already is?" I also emphasize that if you have a shot, take it! Too many times I have some girls who take 1-4 touches too many and wait until they are under 6 feet from goal to shoot. 2 defenders move to the center circle to send back in any clearing attempts.

Good morning everyone I'm 39 years old and from next week I'll start as a football coach for 5/6-year-olds.

What do you recommend to keep my attention high.

What kind of exercises do you propose?

thanks in advance

Haven’t played soccer in yeeeeeaaaaaarrrrrs. Like two decades worth of years at least. I don’t remember much. But here I am! Coaching U8 soccer for my son’s team…..

I think I can figure out most but subbing in while still allowing them all equal playtime is something I’m struggling with.

I have 11 players on my team and it’s 6v6 (goalie included).
Parks and Rec says no subbing unless the ball is dead.
It’s two 20 minute halves.

How would you work a rotation so all kids get equal opportunities?

I'm starting my fourth season and now my kid is in the U9 category. We're moving beyond the bumblebee realm of play and we are now 7v7 w/ goalies. I never played soccer growing up and have watched a minimal amount while I grew up playing all the baseball and watching American Football. When I was growing up, I loved watching Ron Jaworski and Merrill Hodge breakdown football games on NFL Matchup. I've never seen any sort of soccer commentator explain soccer they way they were able to make me understand football and what the players and coaches on the field were seeing.

Sooo, is there any sort of analysis show (in English!) that does anything similar? I would even settle for regular commentary of a game with an "all 11" view point that shows how players move fill space from far overhead. I just want to better understand what the players are thinking and why so I can help coach these kids on how to fill space, or explode into space.

Looking for advice. I am a volunteer coach for my son’s 4th and 5th grade co ed YMCA rec team. We have an upcoming meet and greet to kick the season off the Sat before our first scheduled practice. How I think it will go is the kids will show up and we will do a meet and greet while sharing the field with another team. We get half they get half. If our two teams agree we can do a scrimmage that day.

I have 14 kids on my team and will probably only have about 20-30 minutes to warm up before finishing with a scrimmage. Games will be played in a 9v9 format that’s including the goalie. I am thinking of doing 3 defenders, 3 midfielders and 2 strikers.

However I won’t have enough time that day to show everyone every position. I also will have a short amount of time to warm up and do drills before the scrimmage.

Looking for suggesting on quick warm up drills and what not to get the kids the most touches on the ball and less time in lines with the short time we will have.

Hopefully this will not be an issue but I wanted to get some ideas in my back pocket in case it does. I coach ice hockey and hope you soccer coaches will forgive me for stepping onto your turf for a few minutes, but I suspect you will have far better ideas than random parents in other subs.

My son started high school this fall and is playing on the JV team (his school has varsity, jv, and freshman teams). I do not specifically have an issues with him playing JV but I am seeing frustrated comments from him. He plays MLSN AD for his club team and is pretty good (ECNL teams have offered spots, if that has any relevance). The daily hour of thumping of a ball in the basement drives my wife nuts but it is only 1-2x/week that he can get friends to go to the field by our house with him to play outside. He is also a tiny freshman at 5'2" (abet with tree trunk legs) and while fast for his size he just cannot keep up on speed with kids 4 years older and a foot taller. The next shortest kid on JV or varsity is probably 3-4" taller than him.

4 games in he is tied for the most minutes, with the goalkeeper, and no one else comes close. While I suspect he will get subbed eventually it hasn't happened yet even with their 23 kid roster. The coach has him at CB (the 5 specifically, can be somewhat amusing to watch him line up next to drastically taller strikers) which aside from corners/crosses (and even those not much since it is JV and the quality of delivery is underwhelming) hasn't been an issue for him.

I am a bit worried as he is starting to get frustrated with his teammates for not being able to control the ball, not working to get into position, etc. I played D1 hockey in university so I can at least recognize basic things like effort, speed of play, and movement - he isn't wrong about his teammates level. He came home last night worrying about getting worse by playing down in skill (in this case he said he has to take a lot of speed off passes so his teammates have a shot at controlling them).

How do you keep a kid motivated like this? I don't want to push him towards varsity as A) I am the dad/something like this should come from the kid/the placement is none of my business and B) at 5'2" I don't know how well he would handle the physicality. That said I suspect he would be more than fine playing the 3 from a skill standpoint (at least from what I have seen from the varsity games), at least until the other team puts a manchild winger in to chip and run every time.

I have tried to look at how I would handle this from a hockey coaching standpoint but as hockey is a smaller area and inflicting physical pain on opponents a legal (and encouraged) aspect of the game, I mentally haven't found something that translates that I would recommend. If you have a player who would likely be top 5 for skill on your varsity team but look small against all the kids on the freshman team, what would you do to keep him motivated? Any other random thoughts or suggestions?

Thank you!

I just have a list of names right now, so I don't know about skill levels. I really want to de-emphasize winning and work on personal development for the players. I plan to rotate my players through the goalie position. I would make one player the team captain and starting goalie for each game. Is this a good approach, or is there a better way to accomplish this? I'm also moving from 7v7 to 9v9, and I'm not as familiar with the larger formations. From the previous years, I expect to have a lot of new players and a couple of experienced players. What is a strong formation to get started? I know that we will be facing teams that do tournaments and play on school teams.

I am a huge fan of the NFL and college ball. I watched 2 of my boys play the past 16 years and I’ve watched the Chicago Bears religiously since I was born. My youngest LOVES soccer. I got talked into coaching when he was U10 and continued (it’s just an AYSO league) until now, where he’s moving up to U15. We live a large soccer community. My U12 spring team had a lot of talent, and since I’ve coached so long now I know a lot of kids on my roster. I’m just so nervous about the move up to U15. It becomes so much more serious and I feel I don’t have all the skills to help them grow. Any U15 coaches with advice about anything from practice drills, rules that might change at this group etc??