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I continuing to enjoy my summer break from the field. The summer doesn’t start for me until the team meetings are completed and that happened last weekend.
I’m using the extra free time to work on the Fall Technical Training Curriculum for our U8 through U12 teams. Talked about that back in episode 18 Creating a Technical Training Plan. If you want to know why we do this and how it’s put together you can listen to that episode.
I’ve been interested in the Confederations Cup since it’s the only international soccer that I’ve been able to see. The use of the Video Assistant Referee (VAR) is something new that’s being tried in this competition. I talk about the positives and negatives as well as my opinion on the use of this kind of technology in our game.
This week’s question is from Joe.
He’s asking about selecting players.
Joe says,
“Over the last few months I have noticed some coaches select players for what they are doing now, and not so much on what they are capable of. Players that are technical, smart, spatially aware and dedicated are getting passed up for players who are larger and faster at the time of Try-outs. What is your take on natural speed and size vs a smaller, maybe slower technical player. And do you think speed can be improved?”
Thanks for the question Joe.
This is the classic debate between athleticism an skill. It’s such a complicated subject. I share my thoughts but I have to apologize for rambling a bit. There’s just no clear cut answer and so many things to consider.
In This Episode
Today I’ll share my four favorite possession activities. I’ll also tell you why there are only four as well as why these are often the only possession activities I’ll use with my teams.
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Future Episodes
I’m taking next week off from the podcast for the 4th of July holiday but I’ll be back the following week with an episode looking at the trend toward playing with three in the back and how you might apply this to your own teams.
Would you normally run all of these drills in one session or is this something you would spread out over multiple sessions or even weeks?
I wouldn’t run these all in one session but use them progressively over a number of weeks.
I’m going to piggy-back on Robby’s question; how do you build a session around each of the activities if you don’t use them in the same session? I would have thought you start with the non-directional activity and then build your way through the session to end up with the 4v4+3 activity.
I would start the session with a passing and receiving activity, then play one of the possession games and then play a small-sided game to goal. There are times that I may use one non-directional possession game and one directional game before going to goal.
Hi Tom. Thank you for the podcasts. Not just the technical & tactical but especially your experience & wisdom dealing with these children.
Parisi says that “speed is a skill”. I agree. I know that some are born fast but everyone can be faster-some a great deal faster. I ran track at the University of Florida. My speed was average at best when I started running in the eighth grade. I take a very positive, encouraging attitude with those who were not born fast.