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0:01 well hello coaches uh coach KW back here again once again to do a follow-up video on the last one on Player Development we're going to take a deep dive into the
0:11 section that we glossed over last time on your structure and framework of your practices and your Seasons we're going to get into this one and give you kind
0:19 of a high level overview and then give you some uh suggested topics but again uh take everything with a grain of salt because you really have to meet your
0:27 kids where they are so perhaps you need to spend more time on some more Basics or perhaps you have you're lucky and you have an advanced crew and you can go
0:36 further along with some more complicated things but kind of give you a general outline to help you think about how you structure this because it can be
0:43 intimidating uh as a coach to think where do I start where do I begin how do I structure things um it can be daunting so let's take a look at that right
0:53 now okay so when we talk about the structure and framework what we're really trying to think about is the big picture here right you're hopefully going to be the coach of this team for
1:02 at least two years and so let's think about in that section we're at U10 right where that's what we're looking at 7v7 soccer so U10 is two years usually uh
1:12 grades three and four in the US uh however you might count it in other places in the world so you got to think about oh two years it's a lot of time
1:21 it's kind of nebulous too it's kind of hard to think about what you're going to do in two years so instead let's think about breaking this up a little bit so
1:28 the way I look at two years years it's really four quarters four semesters if you want you have a fall and a spring of your first year you have a fall and a
1:37 spring of your second year so now it's a little bit easier now we're looking at each section being anywhere from 8 to 12 weeks depending on where you are and how
1:47 your Seasons run whether or not you get a preseason which if you can sneaky sneak in even two or four extra practices before your season starts it really helps especially
2:00 the first year when they're just coming out of second grade it's a huge help to get them for a couple of weeks uh you know four six practices it really helps
2:08 kind of settle the nerves so they don't go into their first game kind of wet behind the ears and pretty scared about things because you've got time to work
2:15 on it so if you've got that usually a town travel team is going to practice or train twice a week and I like to try and break up my practices is one is techical
2:26 so we're working on individual skills or pair skills and then the next practice I like to take those technical skills and put them in a more tactical framework
2:36 putting the kids into a more game type shape if I can and using those skills within that um framework that we're going to play in so that really what I'm
2:46 trying to do is get them to understand that here's a skill and this is where and when you might apply it in the game with your teammates that's really what
2:54 we're trying to do now it doesn't always work out that way but again if you can break it up in your mind this this way it helps make it a lot easier as a coach
3:02 takes away the anxiety of what am I doing what am I doing this week what am I doing next week if you can think of it chunk down to this then it makes it a
3:10 little bit easier for you to plan out what you're going to do so that being said right we have 8 to 12 weeks with two trainings a week and if we want to
3:20 have some retention we're going to think that we're going to work on three maybe maximum four topics per season and you're going to have four to six
3:29 training sessions on that topic so now you've got it down to an even smaller unit where now you can say okay I really only need to have
3:36 three or four big main ideas now you could have an overarching one like especially in that first year or even the first year and a half you're still
3:45 working on playing out the back but there's lots of components you can put in there and you can work on things individually as you go through that so
3:52 that now you're down to four to six trainings that you're working on a topic so now when you're trying to come up with a session plan or you're looking
4:00 for session plans now you can really focus down to O I just need two or three things that I can work with maybe a a setup on the field that I can reuse in a
4:10 bunch of different ways maybe a concept um but some way that it can make it easier for you as a coach and for your kids to understand like hey for the next
4:18 two or three weeks we're going to be doing something similar so when they show up for the second or third or the fourth practice and they seem the say
4:24 layout on the field they immediately go Oh we're working within this sort of structure so here we are we've have about two trainings a week we have one
4:32 that technical we one that has tactical and now we have four to six training sessions per topic so what does that look like in reality so let's pick a top
4:42 point we're thinking about we're playing out of the back maybe that's our first pro big big topic we're looking at but now we're going to look down into the
4:49 pieces so what do we need to be able to do to play out of the back what we need to be able to pass the ball you need to
4:54 be able to receive the ball and if you're standing on the field you want to make sure your players have the right body shape meaning what's how are they
5:02 standing in relative positions to each other and the field so that they can receive a pass and see the field and see their teammates and the pressure coming
5:11 at them so then how are they going to do that they're going to be scanning and then ideally we'd hope that when they don't have the ball they can help their
5:21 teammates by working on communication so now we have a bunch of technical skills and now we can go off and find some drills or exercises to work on we can
5:31 find plenty of ways to work on passing and receiving we have ways that you can look at how to receive using body shape opening up using your back foot letting
5:39 the ball roll across you so you can look up the field you can play different games where the players have to make a decision by scanning because you're
5:47 holding different color pennies up you can find lots of examples of things out there and we'll show you I'll show you some later as well um so now there you
5:54 go you've got a whole bunch of technical Concepts that you can work on and it's already related out of playing the back then you're going to develop those
6:03 sessions around those and then the second day now you play some perhaps in their shape you put your goalkeeper your two center backs your three across the
6:12 middle and your Striker and now you're going to use those skills we're going to play the ball out to the left and the right now your center backs have to play
6:20 with the right body shape to receive that ball on their back foot their outside foot so that some when they receive the ball they're looking up the
6:26 field and now they can play to their Center mid or play out wide to the other player they can communicate again you can now put all those skills passing
6:36 receiving scanning body shape all that into practice in a shape in a tactical situation where your players are now learning the Tactical part of the game because that's going to be S severely
6:48 lacking uh for kids especially in America um sorry go back and watch my USA versus the world video if you don't know what I mean there um so now you can
6:57 do that and then lastly you start with these sorts of things unopposed you want them to work on mastering those technical Concepts without panicking that somebody's going to take the ball
7:08 away from them but then you need to make it more game likee so now maybe if you're now playing out of the back and you're working on those skills and
7:15 you've got some extra players now maybe those extra players are now put onto the field to now try and press and rush and get the ball again we talked about in
7:24 the last video you always want to just coach one side of the ball so if you're coaching the player is playing out of the back just give some general
7:32 instructions to those kids that you want pressing the ball but don't sit there and now make it a session about how to press and where to press you'll do that
7:39 later you're still working with those kids passing receiving and playing out of the back focus on that because even the kids who are pressing are going to
7:47 hear those directions so when you swap kids around they're not confused with oh wait a second ago he was talking to me about pressing and how to run at an
7:54 angle and a curved run don't confuse them just let them run about they'll figure it out so here's the big question what is it you're going to work on in your two
8:03 years with them so again you're going to meet your kids where they are they may be more advanced they may be need more assistance at the basics but here's a
8:12 here's my general overall thought of what one can work on in U1 soccer so you're going to work on the principles of Defending 1 V one defending 2v2 3v3
8:24 you got pressure and cover Pressure cover and balance got those Concepts then you have odd number defending one versus 2 2v3 3v4 all those things you can work on those technical skills you
8:36 can work on the technical skills and look up the technical skills of body shape defending how to work in a pair how to work as a three but again you're
8:45 down to individual defending and all those sorts of things communication scanning when you're working on defending you're only working with the Defenders right coach one side of the
8:54 ball same now we flip it to the attacking principles attacking 1 V one two 2 V1 3v2 4 V3 right trying to exploit overloads we have two attackers
9:05 or more than attack more attackers than Defenders and working on those skills of passing movement on and off the ball all those things you can work on those
9:13 technical skills dribbling on V1 attacking dribbling taking a player on all those sorts of things and then on the attacking up front I think for U10 you can teach two or three basic
9:27 concepts on attacking move moves with partners and that's a wall pass or a onew where you'd have two players to play around the single player again when
9:35 you're coaching uh 1 V2 or 2V1 attacking sometimes a wall pass is a great way to do it when you've outnumbered your opponent you can teach up back and
9:45 through where a play a ball goes up it comes back and then the pass goes forward so you're playing backwards to go forwards is another phrase that I
9:52 like to use and you can do that with both two players and then more importantly you can use it with three players sometimes called the third man
9:59 run where the play comes up it comes back down and the third player that wasn't involved with the play is making that run to receive the ball back
10:08 forward that up back and through and lastly if you have time and you may not um in your two-year cycle you can work on the overlap when a player from one
10:18 position overlaps or underlaps but goes past a player in a in front of them the line so a Defender may go past a Winger they go and overlap them to make an odd
10:31 man rush like trying again to make an overload where you're now trying to isolate a Defender and you're trying to get two of your players against one of
10:38 them so overlaps or underlaps is the last piece but you may or may not get to it um with your kids uh just because there's lots of other things the big
10:48 thing I think it's super important at ut10 is working on the building out of the back so you have your team shape you have your support and angle so players
10:55 starting to understand how they move in relationship to each other and that's going to take two years to get right and even then they'll still be struggling
11:02 with it body shape as we talked about being able to receive the ball being being being able to be open for passes and being able to drive or protect the
11:11 ball depending on what's happening around them uh again and there we talk about passing receiving and scanning and all the things we talked about before and the last piece I like to work on I
11:20 think is important to work on at U10 is possession um possession is hard at U10 because the field is small um but it's really valuable if they if if they can
11:33 learn to possess the ball in that smaller tighter space with less time when they move on to 9v9 they're going to find it infinitely easier because the
11:41 field size is going to double and it's going to be really valuable to your team when you go to 9v9 where you can't kind of play basketball style soccer where
11:51 you're just going up and down the field which 7v7 soccer unfortunately turns into most of the time just because as the kids get bigger fourth grade their
12:00 final quarter of play that field is relatively tiny for them they can run up and down that field back and forth all the time it comes a track meet sometimes
12:08 it's hard to possess but if you can get players to do that and the way that I really strongly do this is I put my players in the shape of the one two 31
12:18 and I do it both from the defensive half which is reinforcement of playing out of the back because they can play in all different directions but I also take
12:26 that same shape and put it in the attacking half of the field and now work on that possessing the ball moving the ball back all the way to the keeper
12:35 sometimes who's standing outside of the 18 being that last sweeper and moving the ball around and trying to move the ball around and own the ball when you're
12:44 attacking to again move the Defenders around you move the ball to move the defense around to find a gap if you can get that done at U10 and are successful
12:54 with it you know maybe you can only string three four five passes together that's awesome just because that skill on a field that's double the size with
13:03 only two extra players per team now means you can own that ball move it around the field more effectively and run another team into the ground honestly on that 9v9 field uh especially
13:14 in the early sent so if you can get that to work with your kids that's a huge uh benefit um and it works really well both as in reinforcement to playing out of
13:24 the back and then being able to possess the ball when you're in the attacking half and can control the game you know it's a great time if you're up by a few
13:32 goals and it's kind of a lopsided game this is where this really can come in handy where you can really own that ball and move it around it'll make it uh it's
13:40 just a fantastic skill for the kids to have and lastly I say this all the time but from day one third grade on you've need to involve your keeper if a player
13:51 has a ball he has him back to the goal he wants to go in he's running toward your own keeper and he can make a simple back pass it's infinitely better than
14:01 that player trying to take that ball with somebody on his back and trying to turn while they're running towards their own goal I see it all the time as a
14:09 coach and as a ref the teams that just refuse to play the ball backwards when a ball goes over the top and the defender now has to turn their back and run after
14:18 it running at their own goal so many times one touch back to their keeper who's now facing the right way who can knock the ball and make a pass turns
14:27 into this one player definely afraid to play the ball back to their keeper and now they've got a attacker or two on their back and they're now caught facing
14:36 the wrong way and they don't know how to turn and get out of it and either they lose possession or goes out of bounds for a throw in or corner kick and your
14:42 end so you have to start early letting them know it's okay to play Backwards to your keeper and all these drills and all these possession exercises all reinforce
14:52 that don't be afraid so I hope this quick little video gives you some thought on how how you can set up your framework for your two years with a U10 team and even if you've
15:04 only have a year with them maybe you've joined in halfway or maybe you've already started hopefully this can give you some ideas of what to do for the
15:11 rest if you felt like you were floundering around and not quite sure of what your big direction is remember your ultimate goal at 7v7 is getting it
15:20 prepared for 9v9 and so everything you do should really be focused on that don't worry so much that these things might cause you to give up goals because
15:29 you're playing the ball backwards and you're doing some of these possession things that are hard on 7v7 it will be worth it in the long run because as soon
15:36 as that field size doubles at 9v9 the time practically doubles as well in terms of how much time they have on the ball because the space is not so
15:45 compressed um until really even the second year of 9v9 it really is going to help your players so that's what you're focusing on keep your eye on the big
15:54 prize which is getting them to 9v9 where you get to start all over again preparing them for 11 for1 I hope you're having a great season with your kids out
16:02 in the field and until the next video please like subscribe share with your other coaches the subscriber count is flying up and it's very pleasing because it really means that your sharing and
16:15 other coaches are finding this info useful because again what we're trying to do here is make sure our kids get the best coaching we can and that means you
16:23 guys as coaches get educated and start to learn a little bit more while maintaining and understanding that you're mostly a volunteer coach just trying to figure it out like the rest of
16:33 us so until next time have a great time on the field bye
