Auto-generated captions — may contain the odd mishearing. Click a time to jump there.
0:00 well hello coaches welcome back coach KW here again for another video I hope you're all well a huge thank you to everybody who's been helping this channel recently take off really
0:09 appreciate everything continue to hit that subscribe button if you're finding any value out of this and you're not subscribed it's an easy tap in another thing I'd like to ask is if you're
0:19 getting anything out of it hit that thumbs up button on the videos it helps other people find the video like it or not I have to play the YouTube game
0:25 algorithm game like everybody else so I'd really appreciate that as well as getting into the com I get a lot of lovely messages in lots of different
0:32 ways and I love that but again if we could get it in the comment section it would really help me out I appreciate it I answer every comment that comes in
0:40 today I want to look at what might might not be such a secret weapon in my Arsenal that I think every coach should be doing at least from 7v7 up although
0:49 you could do something like this in 4v4 maybe what second graders and that's what I like to call positional rondos if you're new to the game a Rondo is
0:56 basically a game of keep away if you see professional players you'll see clips of them where there's three four five six seven of them around in a circle or a
1:04 square one or two players in the middle of that Circle or Square and the players on the outside are knocking the ball around keeping possession away from the
1:12 two in the middle so the two in the middle are trying to get it it's a game of keep away for me positional rondos can be even one more layer in terms of
1:20 Effectiveness for your players I think traditional rondos have a place and I think it's a great place to have players start to work on that but as their
1:28 technical skills are not great they sometimes can find them challenging to be a consistent method where everybody gets something out of it positional rondos take that Rondo idea a game of
1:38 keep away and they put the players with the ball in possession in your structure or shape that you have for your game model of formation whether that's 7v7 to
1:47 11 v11 you put your players in the shape on the field and now they play keep away against players that you send into the mix to try and steal the ball so you
1:57 have the combination of that trying to play Keep way while having pressure come at it so we're going to take a look at some graphics as what the basic setups
2:05 are might look like different areas of the field we could do it and reasons we might do it and the things that perhaps sometimes I get some push back and
2:12 negative comment on that people don't understand it is such a valuable tool for teaching technical skills to our players while yet reinforcing these tactical Concepts that they really need
2:24 the help with as well so let's go take a look at those right now okay so here's some Graphics to kind of give you an overview so we're in our
2:32 half of the field we're playing 7v7 in this example and so since we're in our half of the field we've set up like a goal kick I have a keeper two center
2:39 backs my seven my eight and my 11 we've left out the striker in this circumstance if you've got enough players you can certainly add the striker in at the Top If you don't have
2:48 enough players maybe you replace yourself as the goalkeeper although I feel it's really important for kids to pass back to the keeper and be comfortable with a kid back there but it
2:57 might be helpful early on to be that keeper that encourage that because they have confidence in passing back to an adult and in this case I've got three
3:05 players set to press the ball but in these situations you can start with zero 1 two three whatever you want and the whole goal of the game here is keep away
3:15 but we're also in the structure and shape that we'd like to be in so I like to start with no pressure at all goalkeeper plays that first B pass out
3:23 to Center back and now we kind of do what's called Shadow play we pretend sometimes as a coach I'll say hey the pass will get out to the wide player and
3:31 go oh your block can't go this way what do you do and now it's for them to decide do I play back to my Center back do I play to my eight etc etc but you
3:39 basically just do the process with no pressure at all while they're learning their shape you're going to have to reset them because they're going to come towards the ball they're going to fall
3:48 out of practice the ball goes back to the keeper you may have to teach them the reset but again you rehearsing the movements and you're rehearsing where
3:56 their teammates might be for options then at a single player to say hey go steal the ball send them in let them try a couple times as they have more
4:07 confidence let's get a second player get in there try and steal the ball and so you can build that up to as many players and or assistant coaches that you have
4:15 until you find a limit that makes it challenging for your players and over time it'll go from one or even no players to three four and five I can
4:25 tell you in the preseason with the fifth grade boys this year I had all the teams mixed together together and we were teaching them the how to play out of the
4:32 back in this new format where there is no build out line because it's 9v9 and we started the same way and by the end I was sending seven and eight pressing
4:40 players at the eight or so players trying to play out of the back just to replicate absolute insane levels of pressure and you know what in those
4:49 three or four weeks they went from struggling with three or four players pressing to getting five or six passes together sending eight players at them which is not game realistic but it put a
4:59 tremendous amount of pressure on them and they learn it real quick so I'll just play the animation through here and you can see what this looks like in
5:07 terms of just an animation right so Ball's going to just start with the keeper and now whole idea is here comes the pressing team they're trying to play
5:14 after get after the ball and now you're just knocking the ball around your area there's no real Target there's no real goal there's no real hey after so many
5:22 passes you do X you certainly can add that but to begin with you're doing a non-directional Rondo meaning it has no end goal you're just trying to work on
5:32 keeping that shape now you can do this in the defensive area let's flip it now and take a look at another graphic so here this is 9v9 now we flipped around
5:40 to the offensive side of the field and you can do the same thing in the offensive half we've Now set up a little bit more of a defense including a
5:48 goalkeeper and we've got five players a back three and two Midfield and now and I've got a couple of coaches up at the halfway line that kind of replicate the
5:56 center backs in this particular formation of 99 and now we're going to do the exact same thing but now the focus is we're trying to move the ball
6:03 towards the goal and we're getting stopped by a decent defense we're trying to learn that patience around the goal and not just always take the first option and so it's the same concept you
6:13 can do the same thing in the offensive half you can do this in the middle of the field as well if you're trying to teach teams how to possess the ball and
6:19 control it in the Midfield which becomes more important in the 11 v11 game but you can start that in 7v7 and 9v9 so here we just play this video through
6:29 just so get a concept of what's going on and you can see here we're just moving the ball around to attacking areas we're not taking shots on net necessarily you
6:36 certainly can set some restrictions say hey you got to make five six seven eight whatever number of passes before you take a shot on goal you can enforce the
6:44 offside rule etc etc but again that's kind of the basic setup okay now that you've seen the basic setup let's talk about the what what this is good for and
6:53 maybe some of the misconceptions that go on with this so some of the push back I get when I send this out to folks in different forums that I hear back from
7:01 some coaches out there is that why are you trying to learn tactical principles with you know eight-year-olds niney olds and my reasoning is it's because it's part of the game they have to learn it
7:14 they don't necessarily know the idioms and concepts of the game because they don't watch it I have a whole I'm going to make another video where I'll I'm GNA
7:22 go off on a rant because I always do right about the fact that kids don't watch soccer enough to understand even these basic concept so you have to teach
7:31 them this so yes you are teaching some tactical components their spacing their structure support all those things and that is a good thing but at the younger
7:41 ages it becomes a tool to really focus in on the technical components when we watch some videos of real life players doing this what we're going to see is
7:50 all these technical skills and more scanning passing receiving their first touch their movement on and off of the ball their angles of support it's setting up One V ones 2 once 3v tws
8:00 every time the ball moves and perhaps least talked about but one of the important pieces they start to learn how to communicate with each other so that
8:09 you're not telling them it's man on or look left or look right they need to start to do this you can begin to marle it for them but now you can encourage it
8:17 in this format to help them do it so when you're in this position Orondo you're using this tool to while reinforcing your shape identify those technical skills that need Improvement
8:29 that will allow you to use that technical shape tactical shape to be successful in a game so you're going to see players when they struggle with their InStep pass or their first touch
8:38 or receiving on the back foot and now you're going to take those you're going to bring it to the bulk of your practices where you're working on your
8:45 technical ability because that really should be the bulk of your practices especially at U10 and even at u 11 and 12 you spend more time with that
8:55 reinforcing those things and isolation and starting to put pressure in and now you bring them back to that positional Rondo where now you can apply them in a
9:04 limited game-like environment where you can control how much pressure is put on the ball to now develop their ability to get better with pressure it's one thing
9:13 to have that technical skill and isolation it's a whole different thing to do it successfully in a game because it's chaotic and there's somebody trying to take the ball away from you and so
9:23 that pressure helps develop those skills and adds new challenges to a skill they might be able to do all by themselves and so it raises the level of that
9:32 technical skill as that happens you're going to find other deficiencies in technical areas which you can then go back to your technical practices work on those and bring it back again it becomes
9:42 a circle of improvement through the game because you're able to manage the pressure that happens with those technical skills so yes it does provide players with a framework and structure
9:55 to play in because that is part of the game they have to learn we play in a formation players have roles on the field these are the roles and these are
10:03 where you need to be and these are where you have to move to help your teammates it also helps decrease their mental performance overload in games it's a
10:13 chaotic and pressure-filled environment for these kids you got parents and siblings yelling from the sideline you've got another team that's yelling you hear the other coach and perhaps
10:21 that other coach is super aggressive and just screaming at his kids it is completely different than practice and so by re cursing these things you help minimize this panic and kick mentality
10:33 that you see a lot of players devolve to players that during a practice you've never seen it before now in a game ball comes to them they just want that thing
10:41 away from them because they don't know what to do with it so it allows your players to rehearse coming from a music background rehearse those skills over
10:52 and over again to hone them from a slower easier process to a harder process so that when they come into a game instead of thinking they have
11:00 infinite choices when the ball comes to them they're not thinking about 18 different things they have to do they're only thinking about 3 four five can I
11:08 dribble do can I pass and if I have to pass where's the people there to help me and so it helps maximize those developing technical skills because now
11:18 you've taken some of that load off of them they can focus on playing that side foot pass in the correct manner to the right place or receiving that ball
11:26 across their body to the far side of their body to open up to be able to see to do the next thing all those things you've rehearsed at with increasing
11:34 levels of pressure so that they can then take those Min limited skills and maximize their potential as they go forward if they do that they'll tend to
11:44 find success they'll enjoy it more they enjoy it more they're going to play more and if they play more they get better faster all right here we are uh this is
11:53 a preseason practice for my fifth graders but I didn't have enough players show up to do it in a n v9 formation so it's a good demonstration to show you
12:01 can do this with as many players as you have show up in this case I had far fewer players show uh so I'm playing basically the keeper role and my eldest
12:10 son is playing one of the center backs to help move this along but we've set this up basically in a 7v7 uh we'll take a look here so here's the uh keeper
12:19 position center back Center back wide player there's a wide player over here and a eight here and I've got three plus pressing players in red pennies and you
12:30 can see the uh area is set up uh you can see the outside cones so we've got a area that's about half of a 7b7 field set up so we'll just play this through
12:42 just so you get a sense of what this might look like uh you know so we're just playing basically we got three players trying to cover we're trying to
12:51 take out touches this is later in our practice we've already done stuff but you can see they're just moving around and knocking the all around they're playing through
13:01 again they're trying to make those red players move and of course coach takes a horrible touch and my eldest son definitely roasts me right there for sure but we get going again you can see
13:12 he's given Direction he's basically modeling for them like what he wants them to do and how he wants them to do it but you get a sense of what's going
13:18 on here but you can see through this whole process we've got receiving on the back foot scanning taking a touch taking a first touch controlling the ball you
13:28 see right there he takes two two players out one time scan play the ball all the things you want your players to work on they're doing it in a sort of game likee
13:38 situation where the pressure is limited again this is a preseason we sort of warming up the players are just trying things out so here's a little example of
13:46 that let's take a look at example of some younger players uh or these players honestly when they're even younger okay in this example this is real game I want to show you this I'm
13:56 going to show you two things that happened less than three minutes apart and this is why it's so important to do this and to be to stick to your guns
14:04 really in terms of playing out of the back honestly but what these positional Rondo is going to do we're going to look at two instances of goal kicks one ends
14:11 up in the back of our net less than three minutes later we have another goal kick what did my kids do they do exactly the same thing but this time have
14:21 success and that's if anything perhaps part of the process of this is getting them to instill that hey mistakes are going to happen but this is why we do it
14:29 can we fix them as we go along so let's just take a look at this clip I'm going to push it around one and a half times
14:35 just so you can see the go by a little quicker okay so you can see the time stamp stamp here 7:23 let's get the playback speed to one
14:44 and a half okay so we play try to play out wide player steps gets down here into the corner makes a good cross just couple of deflections
14:55 back of the net right unfortunate goal nobody's too happy with with that but it is what it is that's 7:47 let's scoot this forward you can see the time stamp
15:06 105 less than three minutes after that goal is scored let's see what happens now same setup same players on the field still nothing different oh we're going
15:18 to try the Central One play out wide look at each touch and now we're up and out and just happens to go let's just back that up again and we'll play it at
15:27 real time why watch not the structure but watch the technical skills that have been re reinforced over and over again here again this is uh I think this is
15:39 the spring of fourth grade just because I see some flowering on the trees right here that's the best I can uh guess on this one I don't know the date let's
15:46 just watch technical here what happens forward play it out first touch play with the back foot first touch drive forward try to find that pass so so again all those skills were
16:01 reinforced over and over again in those positional rondos so that they could do them in a game likee situation with less Panic with less panic and kick you've
16:12 seen so many teams where the pressure is coming at this player right here they've got some time and they just don't even look up they just go but because they
16:20 knew where a player was going to be they didn't feel the Panic they didn't worry about oh I'm just going to kick it forward and get it out of the way you've
16:28 reinforced forced where their teammates might be and that structure and it just decreases their mental load as they play the game so they can execute those technical components over and over and
16:39 over again again okay this might be my favorite example so this is from my uh video on how to play out of the back sort of the coaching I call it the
16:47 coaching Master Class not that I'm a master but it's a con it's a video that's meant for coaches not necessary for players I stacked into this video
16:56 just dozens probably two or dozens of key words phrases and Concepts because I was really coaching the coaches in this video but this is a team this fourth
17:06 grade girls team it is the fall so this is maybe their third or fourth practice of the year and they invited me in they've never done a positional Rondo
17:16 watch as we go through this at 2x how it progresses in less than 15 minutes from never doing it to what you see let's watch this is that 2x that playing
17:30 through we've got right now sort of light pressure with three players we got a little panic and kick right start it again they're playing right makes a
17:42 mistake playing some more oh another mistake but we get it back we're starting to get the concept here I give him a little H hint about playing two short passes instead of one
17:53 long pass here and now let's see what they do again this is less than 10 to 15 minutes it's messy it doesn't look great but now look we start to actually start
18:04 to get some of the concept the technical skill is not super high these are not Club type players right we're going to win the ball back we're going to press
18:12 it we're going to try and win it back we're going to try and get it back keeper and now we go again watch as they go it just gets better in less than 15
18:21 minutes of trying this in real time you got technical skills all over the place they got tactical movement we got players starting to understand when to move when not to
18:34 move we're starting to get some onetime passing we starting to get some consider look at that turn on that half turn another turn on the half turn we've not
18:43 talked to these players about turning on the half turn we've talked about receiving on the back foot and scanning before the ball comes to them but again not the highest technical level of
18:54 player you've ever seen right but look within 10 15 minutes the start to get the concepts they're starting to hold their shape they're starting to know where their teammates are it's such a
19:04 powerful video I wanted to share with you because it's such an important concept because it's working on all the different components all at once and you can ramp up this pressure as they go
19:14 forward you know and make it harder and harder imagine this team doing this 10 15 minutes maximum of practice if this is how good they got in the first 15
19:24 minutes you get a 9we session and even if you do it once a week I imagine how good they start to develop those skills where they start to factor in all the
19:33 things that you work on the rest of your practice time with them it's such a powerful tool so coaches I hope that you found this video useful and hopefully it
19:42 dispels some of the myths around when I recommend this to folks about it only being about the Tactical component it really is about the technical development of players within a tactical
19:53 framework because that is the game you have to teach both sometimes just focus on technical Tactical technical is so detrimental to our players they get to a
20:02 game and it they can't use their technical skills they don't enjoy the chaos and then it just makes them not want to continue to keep working on
20:10 those things because I don't see the benefit of it so I hope you found this useful share and like with your fellow coaches if you will because I think it's
20:17 such a valuable tool to use out there if you have any questions or comments please get them down in the comment section below other than that I hope you
20:25 found this useful I hope you're having a great start to your season if that's when you're watch watching this nothing more to say thank you so much bye-bye
