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0:01 well hello coaches welcome back coach KW here and today we're going to talk about 9v9 now I know I focus a lot of my attention on this channel in 7v7 and I
0:10 really do have a huge passion for it I really do believe the habits and the things that we can teach at 7v7 especially using that 231 formation will
0:20 set players up for the rest of their lives if done correctly it just does so many things for them but it's probably a poorly kept secret around here that I
0:29 have been coaching 9v9 this year in the fall and with my fifth grade team their first year transitioning out of 7v7 it has been a treat although it's been a
0:39 little bit of a interesting struggle we got placed in the too low of a division and uh had to get moved a couple games in because it just uh it was too easy uh
0:49 just the way it is but today what I want to do is I want to do a little survey of all the different 9v9 formations and then I'm going to talk about the couple
0:57 of ones that we settled on for our town and also what we settled on during the season that we realized we needed the change because you know it's an
1:06 important aspect to realize that you've made a mistake or you've learned something new in that time and we did throughout that fall season and so we did Implement for my team we implemented
1:17 a change both in formation and how we play that formation we're going to just kind of do a survey of the different formations that are out there talk a
1:25 little bit about them I'll talk about the ones that I did and then in a separate video I'll go into the details of how we used it why we used it and how
1:33 we made the changes after the fact because I think that's even more interesting is having that reflection to see what happened so like any good modern person nowadays uh I asked an AI
1:44 assistant to give us some of the most common 9v9 formations so you can see here on the side of the screen uh as it Scrolls up I
1:54 just basically asked most popular 9v9 I used uh deep seek which is that new lowcost alternative to chat GPT and Gemini that's shaken up the tech World
2:05 recently just uh as something new to try as you may remember or maybe you haven't caught on I did a video recently using chat GPT and Gemini to analyze my team
2:16 stats and see how an AI assistant at llm could maybe uncover some things that maybe you didn't notice uh if you haven't watched that video go back and
2:26 watch that one it's kind of fun but you can see here it's kind of spewed out a whole bunch of them here what I'm going to do is we're going to pop a bunch up
2:32 on the screen one after another we're going to take a look at them have a brief discussion about them and then like I said I'll talk about the ones
2:39 that uh we used and what we did when we changed it and the ones the one really now I've come to find is perhaps my favorite one for a lot of reasons so
2:49 let's take a look at some of these all right so I'm going to pop up some of these formations on the side here and they're not in any sort of order in
2:57 based on what was in that response from prompt from the uh AI bot there but more I wanted to save the last four because I feel like they're the most common and
3:07 they're the ones I saw the most or those are the ones we used and I want to talk about a little bit more but here we see
3:14 we have a 341 which gives us a nice solid Bank of three a bank midfielders across the middle there and a striker and I need to say this and it's far more
3:25 important to think about this in 9v9 and 11 v11 the coaches the formation the numbers that is just the starting point and the basic layout it doesn't really
3:36 explain how to play it and we'll take a look when we look at some of these other things but there are so many coaches that I've dealt with over many years and
3:44 it becomes more apparent in 9v9 and 11 v11 they see the number 433 for example and they just think a line of four a line of three in a line of three and if
3:56 you know anything about soccer or football you know that has almost nothing to do with how you play it the principles of play and your style of
4:04 play really dictate the relationships between those different players on the field so when you see a formation like this a 3 41 it's not necessarily a line
4:14 of three a line of four and a single person up top but it's more of here's a starting description of how this formation moves and what the
4:22 relationships are between different players and I want you to keep that in mind because if you're new to the game or new to coaching 9v9 or 11 v11 you
4:31 came from coaching 7v7 and hopefully used the 231 but perhaps you used a 33 it was very much 33 is very much two lines of three here we go and the field
4:43 is not so wide that the players don't get isolated etc etc as we look through some of these formations and then we talk about how they're used in real life
4:52 I hope to demonstrate to you that it's more than just those numbers and it's really important to know what sort of relationships systems you're going to have when you're play the 341 has some
5:03 advantages there we got a strong Midfield we've got those wide players we got a strong back end but I would say that perhaps there's a better way to
5:11 think about this and we'll look at that in a little bit now I mean not to make any fun or anything about anybody who Mario played this but we did if you look
5:18 at some of my 7b7 videos I talked about some of the formations I've seen out there and one of the ones I've seen out there is the 222 and if you go back and
5:26 you watch my what formation to do I kind of tear it apart and sorry not sorry but that's the case and this is the 242 which to me sometimes feels like they
5:37 just taken and bolted two wide players onto that 222 as you transition from 7v7 now again it's got a strong spine but like the 33 or the 222 it's very much a
5:49 bunch of boxes and squares and so depending on how you want to push your players around if you're looking for angles of support and things like that I
5:57 feel like this can be kind of complicated to get that across to your players and having three lines like that stacked up the middle does mean that
6:05 those wide players tend to be out on their own and if players start to shift back and forth I could see how this formation could split apart or get
6:11 pushed to one side or another again I'm judging but I'm not judging but that is how I look at something like this is it does seem to me this formation is a
6:20 little boxy and getting your players to be trained to create some of those angles of support without being in flat lines with flat passes Square passes going across I can see a challenge here
6:31 here's one that was on that list from the AI bought the 233 kind of interesting it uh basically said it was very uh offensive and I can see why
6:39 we've loaded the front there we've left out two center backs back there by their own and you've got uh two lines of three in front of you I can see how we could
6:47 twist this relationship for some of these it's almost a back four if you want with a center midfielder um I can see a different ways that we can play
6:55 that where we can have some of those relationships keep our width without our players is having to run a lot but you will see in many of these 9v9 formations
7:05 the Assumption and you saw it if you saw it scroll by in the uh chat bot uh prompt as it came by is they have this assumption that the Y players in 9v9 are
7:16 going to be able to run the field up and down like a premier league player and the honest fact is these fifth and sixth grade boys and girls at the Town level
7:25 and even at the many of the club level they do not have that sort of stand stamina and work rate to constantly chug up and down a full-size field which a
7:35 9v9 can be 75 yards long that's a long way to be running a lot of games so even with lots of Subs it wears those players down and if you look at some of the
7:45 descriptions of a lot of these 9v9 things they say these wide players have to be industrious and run a lot and do all these things it's not realistic for
7:53 most kids in most programs it's just not that being said this can I can see how this could be very comp and very offensive although it is leaving two
8:02 center backs back which could be a problem and it also it's very liny it's very three three and again I can find ways to make triangles in here and do
8:11 some things like that but kids being kids I would struggle I think for a lot of players to have some Nuance in how we might play this but it's an option
8:20 that's out there all right here's one that's a little bit more Avant guard and uh I just uh got a comment on uh in Reddit on one of my post that they
8:30 played this formation the 3131 and again I find this very interesting very um different thinking on this and as I read through some of the descriptions on how to play it the
8:42 only thing I kept thinking is it's very ambitious what it asks each of the players to do so again at a town level perhaps which is what we focus on here
8:50 at this channel playing practicing twice a week having a game on the weekends having a 8 to 10 week season in the fall and then having several months off and
8:59 then playing again I'm not sure that you could get all the nuances that from what I've read online about how you might play this across the players at that
9:10 level at a higher level at a club level sure maybe if you're practicing three days a week and it's a lot more committed and those players soccer is
9:17 their thing I could see how you could get some of the ideas across here but it really does require that six in the back to slide from left to right it means
9:26 that your fullbacks or your two wide center backs have to move up and down in constant and slide and the same with your wide players have to work in
9:35 conjunction with other players moving around so well I find it interesting it's got a strong spine it splits the field in half it's kind of a balance
9:44 four up four down sort of thing I'm going to say for folks at our level meaning the town level where we're coming from I think maybe this might be
9:53 a little too ambitious and a little interesting I also when I look at this I find hard I find it hard to make a parallel to what I might do then at 11v
10:02 11 now that's just me but I I have a hard time figuring out how I translate this to some of the more popular 11 v11 have I spent a lot of time with it no
10:12 but based on the research I have again I'm trying to make this so that if a volunteer coach if I'm trying to help them they need to be immediately be able
10:19 to grasp what's going on this one here I feel like might be a little bit of a struggle now we're going to get into the ones I believe I've seen the most played
10:27 against me uh or in other places and this is a very popular 431 and you can see why it's popular it's got a back four so it's very similar to what you
10:36 might see in any 11 v11 formation with the back four whether that's a 433 or 4242 or 424 you name it right back four very common to have that we've got that
10:46 Midfield three and really if you think about this it really is a 231 from our 77 days with the two and the three the two wide fullbacks added in so there is
10:56 some familiarity there I can see how this could a good transition element now instead of one set of wide players you have two sets of wide players and so I
11:05 could see how a team could set up to use those players to minimize some of the running because those twos and threes aren't the only width that have to be
11:13 there you've got that seven and 11 you can find a way to break the lines in terms of being flat and now if you push some things up you can create triangles
11:22 either with the six and the two center backs or the seven and the 11 tucking in to make a set of triangles there or a diamond with the nine so I can see how
11:30 that could work and I saw a lot of this in my fall season did teams play it correctly to do those things no they did not and they played once again a very
11:41 flat system back four there wasn't a lot of nuance and it was easy to pick apart for that reason it wasn't done right but it is one that is popular and it does
11:51 have a lot of transition moments that could make sense going to 11 v11 which for 9v9 that really should be our goal I have have a video all on that go take a
12:01 look here's another one that I saw a lot and that is the 332 and again this does seem to make some sense it's easy to grasp for a volunteer coach who maybe
12:10 isn't that experienced in soccer where it makes sense a bank of three a bank of three we were playing you know a lot of teams played in a 33 and 7v7 I would
12:21 never do that but plenty of teams did and then they take two new players they put them up top say here we go we got two Strikers the problem I have with the
12:29 this one again is naive coaches new coaches they play it as three sets of flat lines and what happens is either the play all condenses into the middle
12:40 because just like in a 33 on 7v7 they all come to the middle which leaves Acres of space on the outside or if they do maintain this positioning that poor
12:49 midfielder is outnumbered all the time any of those midfielders basically get attacked One V one which turns into 2v ons and 3v ones when somebody with a
12:58 different sensibility of how to play up and put their players in right places gets in the middle of this it's a lot of boxes again kind of like that 222 with
13:07 the two the 242 a lot of boxes Happening Here not a lot of diagonals so there are certainly ways to create more angles in this but again I feel like most of these
13:20 coaches who use this they're using it in a very sort of flat Manner and not giving that consideration of do I take the six who's in the middle of that back
13:28 line and push them forward pulling in my two my four and five pull them in and create that triangle there and then do I use that triangle behind that eight with
13:38 the two nines or do I do something else so it's looks like a y or do I F and keep my wide players wide there's some writeups about this that talk about
13:46 those wide players again pushing up lots of running I think you can avoid doing that on here and again this is popular and I can see why and there are
13:54 definitely ways you could turn this so that you had some stability and you built some angles in outside the cross you know the square passing um you do
14:05 have some triangles there at the top but I think there were better options out there now this one here maybe a little bit more Avant guard but this is one of
14:14 the two formations we gave to our 9v9 coaches uh as you may know I am the technical director playay development director I develop all the plans for all
14:24 the teams from 4v4 to 11 v11 to say this is our style of play in our town so we consistent way of going 9v9 was the next
14:31 one after 4v4 and 7v7 where this year was the year we started to introduce um after we had some experimentation from some other coaches last year to help me
14:40 put these together this is one of the ones we came up with if you take away the two center backs the four and the five it is our beloved 231 from
14:51 7b7 those two players we add just those two extra players as center backs and everything else stays basically the same from the 231 the two sixes now just like the two
15:03 center backs in 7v7 they just slide back and forth and move back and forth across the field and we're going to look more about that uh perhaps in the other video
15:12 about these formations where the difference from when they were both center backs where they just kind of slid back and forth is what we wanted them to do in this formation is double
15:20 pivot and this is where we were wanting to train those players in that double pivot where one pushes forward and one drops back to make a back three from one
15:29 side of the field to the other because our preferred formation in my town at 11v 11 is a modified 4231 putting the two center backs in the
15:39 back just meant hey do what you did in 7v7 now is the two center backs just slide back and forth and protect everybody else's relationship pretty much stayed the same and it was a great
15:49 transitional formation for teams who did not have a lot of time in the preseason or just needed something comfortable to get going once they started and to be
16:00 honest my team which is the the one team quote unquote the one team the fifth grade one team we actually started with this even though we had a full preseason
16:08 that preseason I had to coach all the fifth graders in a bunch because the two- team coach wasn't available and so we just focused on what's the easiest to
16:17 do when we don't have our own practice time to do it and so we started the season three games with this and I'll talk in another video about why we
16:26 switched we'll take a look at actual game video we love the Midfield triangle that wedge in the middle was super effective in keeping teams from getting in the middle and we outnumbered most of
16:36 them because in reality there's five in the Midfield but when I move to the next formation and we talk about how we handled it you'll see that we actually
16:44 just took that and literally turned it on its head and the formation we ended up with is the 323 again we saw a few of these against
16:52 us but what happened was teams played it very flat a flat line of three two in the middle and a flat line at the top so like I said when I said sometimes we had
17:03 three players up against my two center backs it was because they were doing this basically the two eights in the middle of the field and that six in the
17:12 middle of the back line is the same triangle that we just saw in this formation we've just flipped it on its head so instead of having one high and
17:23 two holding we flipped it around we have two pushed forward and one holding and that made all the difference in this formation is when we were in possession
17:32 that six step forward the two center backs dropped in and now we had six players in the attack with that six kind of hovering just below the circle kind
17:41 of where the nine is right now almost acting like a quarterback they can see the whole field if something was to go wrong on one side of the field another
17:48 they could recycle that ball back to the six if he had problems he could turn around and find his center backs or his keeper and restart but a lot of times
17:56 they'd get that ball back and then find another option on the other side of the field gave us tons of players in the middle you can see that diamond between
18:03 the six to two eights and the nine plus the seven to 11 so against practically every formation we came up against because of the way other teams played it
18:12 we had anywhere from three to five players in the Midfield teams could not play through the middle and once they get pushed to the outside we have the
18:21 structure and the numbers to keep them there any ball that came back into the middle we had plenty of bodies that turn that around and then go out the the side
18:29 find the opposite wide player from where the pressure was coming and move on and we'll look more at that on the tactics board in another video so there you have
18:37 it a very big basic overview of a bunch of the 9v9 formations if you got anything out of this a you saw that you know we can use some AI to generate some
18:48 ideas and get some descriptions about what's going on but also the limitation of that and B if you came away with anything it is that those numbers don't
18:57 mean lines of players and you stop there it there's much more to it especially at 9v9 and 11 v11 it's not the lines and the placement it's the interrelationship
19:08 of all the players to each other and how they react to the ball when we have the ball and when we don't have the ball I definitely have my favorite now the
19:17 232 using an inverted triangle in the middle which we'll go over in Far More depth in the next video is now our standard we love it it's easy to teach
19:26 the kids grasp on to quickly and it's very very successful against any level of competition so far that we've met until the next time we'll dive deep into
19:35 those two formations and how we changed and we'll look at some game footage so you can see what I saw so that you understand what we were looking at with
19:44 fifth grade boys their first few games of playing 9v9 and then their last game eight or nine games into the season I think it's really instructive to see the
19:54 difference and see how that works with kids so until next time I hope you're all well please like subscribe and share the subs subscriber count is really starting to
20:04 tick up trying to get to that thousand that would be super helpful we've got less than 200 to go I could use your help to get there until next time I'll
20:12 see you on the fields bye
