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hey coaches coach KW here again I hope you are all well uh excuse me if my voice is a little tired it was a long week this week uh I had the first two of
my in-person uh for my D license course it's a hybrid course where you have a couple of weeks online then you get together for two whole days then you go
back few more weeks hybrid and then you get together for two more days and then you finish up so I'll have more to talk about that process uh at the end of
March another four weeks or so when hopefully I finish the course and achieve my license it's been 5 years I've been trying to get into this course
and it finally fit my schedule it literally took me taking a new job and while it wasn't the first thing I thought of when I accepted the new job
it probably was the second so um it's been a long time coming for for reasons but part of that process is reflecting on your seasons and what you've done as
a coach and that got me thinking hey how was my season this year did my boys get better I have a fifth grade team it was their first year in 9v9 we played a u12
bracket so basically against fifth and sixth graders but we organize by grade in our town for that continuity so I've been with my boys now for you know this
is my third year with them and so reflecting back hey how did we do how did the boys individually do how did the team do and how did I do as a coach as I
went forward so I went back I have all but the second game recorded and on our private YouTube channel for my town to be able to for all coaches to look at
and I went through and watched Snippets of every game going forward and and I think it's an interesting exercise I'm going to bring you along with it so we
can see the growth see the difference from the very first kickoff for the first time they played competitive 9v9 for me to the last game and the first
weekend of November about 9 10 weeks from the start of the uh season and we could see the changes through the game and I think it's an interesting Journey
so let's take a look at that and we'll catch up at the end let's go oh and one more thing before we go if you could we're so close to the 1,000 I
think I'm seven away from a th000 Subs so if you've been watching this and you still hit haven't hit that subscribe button do me a favor hit the Subscribe
button if you like this content or any of my other content going way back have all sorts of 7v7 content as well this is 9b9 right now hit the share hit the
thumbs up it means a lot to me thanks okay so what we have here is kickoff before our first ever game at 9v9 so uh first time the boys are
playing a competitive match 9v9 uh with each other uh a bunch of them had played 9b9 in the fall uh for their Club but not all of
them and certainly not together here so uh couple of things here we're playing in our 2231 setup that we talked about in one of the other formation videos and
the second one is is that I suspected that we were placed into the wrong division uh we were in the second to last division where we probably should
have been in the middle division we were this a division 4 opponent and we probably should have been division 3 at least but there's a mix up with the
league it's going to get fixed but that being said one of the first things I asked my kids to do in the first 10 minutes or so was just try and possess
the ball and I had a couple of reasons for that first was I wanted them to just get used to game likee situations just trying to move the ball around and
trying to kind of feel out their positioning and second wanted to feel out like as I watched the warm-ups of the other team I thought to myself hm
this might be a mismatch so let's not go straight at it let's kind of work on a few things and feel things out before we stop moving forward so with that in mind
we're going to start this playing back I like to watch these in one and a half to 2x to watch the patterns so that's where we are 22 31 first game of the season
we're going to try and move the ball around and we'll skip through the the game uh a little bit as we go here so here we go first
kickoff looks like the the team is perhaps playing a 323 of some sort but you can see here we're just moving the ball around double pivot back to the
center back just try to get a feel for the field get a feel for the game get a feel for what's going on here so uh the
first uh N9 minutes or so really didn't have a lot of Forward Motion but already if you watch if you're if you're watching this with a critical eye you'll
notice that the game is very narrow I mean the ball is on the side right now but watch once the ball goes in back into the middle
um I'm yelling you can't hear that audio but I'm yelling out wide to get wide um and it's going to be a common theme because here we are basically both teams
are inside the width of the 18s I could have shaved 10 yards off of each side of the field for much of this game and nobody would have
mattered you can see here with the back four the back double pivot came back in the play but again even ear on we were noticing a couple of things here it was
narrow and when we went forward we lost uh that double pivot a number of times Bad Touch there good recovery there we go get it out of
there uh this should have been one nothing here but uh player first year with us uh little bit still figuring things out and you know that's what
happens right first attempt at the game but look how narrow the whole team is it's very uh it gets very clustered here I'm going to just freeze right here
for a second one of the things I even noticed early on in the season was my two center backs are incredibly spread out let's see if I can bring up the
drawing tools here I don't usually use it so here's one Center back here's the other Center back there's supposed to be a six in the double pivot somewhere in
the space instead one of them is way up here and I'm going to guess the other one is either here or here I'm not really sure and this is the common theme
so when the ball turns over if you look they basically got two players starting to advance and the ball here so these players might be 2v2 going forward which
wouldn't be a great situation players the two players that play in the six are relatively smart and they tracked back pretty well and got in the way but it's a common theme you're
going to see a good goal here good shot not great goal ending but good shot from my supposedly left Winger who again was in the half space if I'm being generous
on the left side of the field not the actual Left Channel to say the least so I just want to pick it up here uh before this next goal because this
next goal is actually a fantastic shot so I want to show that but you can see again we've got my two center backs hanging out here I'm not used to these
marking tools I'm sorry here's my two center backs and here was the other problem is this Winger should probably be way out here it's nice that he
hanging back out here but really not doing a heck of a lot and now my other wide player is is going to be right here but here's a six here's the other six
here's a striker here's the 10 so what was happening a lot of times is that we were flattening out on the top of the 18 and there was no depth through our
attack as well so not only are my two center backs basically right now 3v2 when this player has the ball and everybody's turning and running back maybe even 4v2 uh but the attack has no
width it has no depth it's basically a line of players up here and then a line of players in the back and that was another issue that we wanted to address
that we noticed pretty quick uh we just play this through because we're going to recover this ball eventually and there a fantastic goal scored so let's take a
look at that if the play didn't stumble on the ball perhaps but watch this play it takes one TI and then crossbar post and in really a great
goal so first game of the season they're figuring it out uh it end is a five nothing we have a rule in our league you can't win by more than seven
but I was mistaken thinking it was five so unfortunately in the second half we basically played keep away for 28 minutes it was kind of embarrassing honestly um I felt kind of bad but uh
what are you going to do uh it was a good exercise for my team because it really helped them figure out how to use the space so I guess you know you have
to make a positive out of a bad situation right this team was clearly not in the right division with us and so you know it was tough for us
to uh to do this you can see like we're breaking down here and my Winger is going to come down here and he's going to just turn around and play the ball
backwards like not even try and shoot uh at one point in this match in the second half uh my oldest son uh watched and clocked and it one point where the other
team didn't touch the ball for six and a half minutes that's kind of tough to watch I'm not going to lie uh but we could have scored the seven instead of the five and
it wouldn't have mattered uh for 28 minutes we scored the fifth goal two minutes into the second half and then that was it but you can see here we're
just knocking the ball around and the other team is giving up but the other coach didn't want us to take any players off or do anything like that so you know
we used it as an exercise it is what it is right um yeah this segment here is one of those segments where they really just didn't get close to the ball again
good for my players that like we worked on a whole bunch of things here but uh you know not exactly all that fun for the kids when you're told you can't
score a goal so anyways we'll move on to game okay so what we have here is now uh about a month later this is uh October 5
and we're still in this old formation uh to say the least when I sit here and I look at we set up with that double pivot uh but there's a little bit more to the
team we tried working on that uh this game uh was a 7-1 uh win this other team had some big boys like look at the size of that kid that kid he's playing
against at 74 versus my player that is not one of my smaller players that is one of my above average size players but couple of these kids on that other team
were just absolute meat hooks uh so uh that caused us a little bit of a problem in terms of like the bulldozing method of how they got along but we're still
playing kind of narrow was still playing in that sort of 22 31 sort of shape you can see the triangle in the Midfield there kind of a bigger side at the
bottom uh there's no defined six there's the double pivot but we've got a little bit more width to the game we move the ball from side to side a lot better we
uh certainly uh do a better job at defending but it's still when my center backs are out there they tend to be out there on an island or they're not
connected as well as they should be but we've got a little bit better in terms of where to be and what to do with the ball uh so
again good try so let's go ahead and take a look at some of the goals and where they come from here see what we got here four players on that side of
the ball oh yes this is one of my favorite plays here we're going to back up because this is where we started to see the potential of what we were going
to do in the future here so this throw in I don't believe it ends in a goal but it is indicative of the play we were hoping the stock to do here we were
starting to implement getting playing through the six here and so um it's actually my son who's in this position the six that take the throw in and this
is kind of indicative I'm going to slow this down a little bit we'll go to one and a half uh this is where we started to think like hey we need to do this
more often but in a more pronounced way so he's going to get this throw in here and turn play back to one of the center backs get into a position take it again
now move it to one of the other eights who now pushes it up to the other eight who then plays this ball out wide for the Winger coming in for the side and he
just misses it goes out for a goal kick um but it was that sort of play that we started to see like hey having somebody between the two center backs that can
dictate the play would really be something that could be uh beneficial for us and we've got the players that could do it so perhaps we need to think
about what we do differently here I'm going to let this run because they St trying to get trying to figure out how to get past out press because this team
is one of the teams that I highlighted in the uh if you don't learn to uh nice goal right there one of the video teams I highlighted in U10 at 7v7 they did the
same kickoff goal kick routine they put it on the corner and one of the big kids tried to lump it up the field but in 9v9 they try the same thing and the ball
doesn't even get close to halfway and it gets stuffed back down their throat starting to see principles is more width to this game obviously like players are
holding their width better look at that there playing in we've got lots of support around the ball things that are going well for there but again you can
see my center backs are kind of all by themselves back there uh unless a player kind of just stumbles their way backwards to help support them and we're
flattening out but using the width that we had going on it did open up this team more and that's why we were able to score seven goals uh we gave away a PK
that's how they scored their only goal so you can see here in this example we've got a lot more depth we move the ball around a lot more I back that up a
little bit more uh we have a lot ofc it's not perfect we're just starting uh this player right here is supposed to be my six in between the center backs and
is a little bit lost because again it's a new position and that's not necessarily his favorite place but you can see we've got some depth we're moving the ball back and forth from the
center back's wide area turn back back to another Center back puts the ball in ends up getting knocked out of play we win the throw in you can see now there's
a little bit more depth it's not completely flattened out onto the top of the box my players have more options than moving the ball from left to right
uh we got real close here you can see the interplay between the two eights there good shot on that decent save so we're starting to have that structure
come into play we're starting to keep the width going on either side uh but you know it's it's it's our first real game in this position and uh it's
starting to find its way let's jump further into the game he finally we have our last game of the season and this is where I believe you can really start to
see that structure come into play it's really become ingrained in the kids just take a look right now here we are going forward and while the ball just went out
of bounds way over here look where my wide Winger is they're keeping their width all across the field so that we're maintaining that big shape and as a
matter of fact he ends up getting this ball in the next phase of play relatively quickly from this throwin that comes in from the other team my Center back wins it back comes back
to one of my other center backs and he plays that ball out where he was in and tries to find the striker running into the middle so already there's more
structure there great attempt of the three ball and then we'll see here we've got this structure coming in we got the striker pressing the ball we've got the
wide player supporting them so there's my Striker there's my wide player here's one of my eights here's my Center back here's the six who's maybe a little bit
far forward and we uh shout out to him and he readjusts here's my other six but look how far across the field my other wide player is and if it's not in this
phase of play it's in a relative phase of play that player keeps staying way out there he ends up getting the ball and scoring the first goal because it
went from this near side he kept his width picks it up over here just takes a shot gets through a pair of legs and goes right into the bottom corner so
really the team is really starting to understand you know this partnership here between the two eights the partnership here between the six and the two center backs really starts to come
into play and you can see this all over this game uh it was really pleasing to see but let's uh we'll take a look at this first goal here we go ball Center
back out wide plays it across the middle but now that wide player that stayed out wide picks that finds that ball in that spot outside the six and scores a goal
so that ball literally went from one side to the other unfortunately pop that one right out but we end up winning this ball back it actually ends up being a
goal so we win the ball back we're on the far right side my left Winger is going to score this goal coming up so six comes in seter back plays it to my
Striker Striker turns around plays it out to one of the eights one of the eights plays it into the person that's playing wide he just basically takes
down to the goal line and Tucks it into fire net so again almost every player on the field had touched that ball from when we received it from the far right
side the far left side um and so really showed I think a strong understanding of how to support each other and how to move that ball looking for those
passes and we'll finish up with the last goal of the season with practically the last kick of the ball again a whole bunch of ball retriever ball comes up
and my Striker comes in who happened to be my son that's the only goal he scored all year I can make a highlight compilation of him crashing the bar the
post and everything but the back of the goal uh and we end up winning this game 6 to one so let's go back and review all this so I hope you found that useful I
think in the end of the day I feel pretty good about what my team did throughout the season and I feel pretty good about what I did as a coach
throughout the season I think there were some moments in games where I needed to perhaps be a little bit more dispassionate and not get caught up in
the moment maybe sometimes it's something my assistant coach was saying or whatever that affected me and I need to perhaps be a little bit more low-key uh that's just me I like to usually sit
on the bench with the subs for the most part um it's great that I have my son also helping as an assistant coach he's a brilliant player U6 MLS next player
and the kids just adore him and look up to him obviously for lots of reasons but he I let him kind of go with it when he's available to kind of talk to the
players I think it's fantastic for them and for me uh so I'll let that go but I think in the overall picture I think as a team we got better I think as players
my teams got better and I think as a coach I learned more so that coming into this new season I can come at it with fresh eyes with new inspiration from my
decour and the coaches that I'm taking with it some fantastic coaches in that group so if you found it useful Please Subscribe like share really helps the
channel especially if you enjoy seeing content like this I got 9b9 content I have an acre of 7v7 content and some big picture content out there too so nothing
much more say but thank you so much we'll see you on the field just soon and
