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Well, hello coaches. Welcome back. It's been a It's been a 10 12 days since I've had a chance to sit down. Incredibly busy time of the year. It's the end of
the season. Got one more game tomorrow.
Uh I coordinate tryyouts for my town.
So, it's been five nights across five different age groups. Um just a lot a lot of time taken up with that. I think we have a pretty great way how we do
tryyouts here in our town. And if you're interested, perhaps I'll put a video together. Um just because I feel like we have a very player centered way of doing
things. Um short end of this is coaches don't pick their own teams and that has all sorts of ramifications that we think in a positive light and you know it's
something that might interest you. Uh let me know. Today I'm going to talk a little bit about a possession type game.
Uh recently on my soccer coaches subreddit I'll put a link or put picture right here on the screen. I've had to type it out a couple of times because
it's come up as what are some good training tools, games that you do with your teams to work on things and I've had to type it a bunch of times and I
just felt like you know what I might as well just make a video about it. I have video of my team doing it because we do it a lot and there are lots of different
variations you can do with it. So very much like my 13 welcome games/s smallsided games video that I have. It's one basic setup and then you could do
lots and lots of different things with it. So, we're going to look at some graphics, then we'll look at some live action and talk about why I think this
type of game is a valuable sort of thing to use with almost any age group, honestly. Uh, U8 could even pull off some of this, but it gets better and
better as you go along. And even the pros do it. So, it's one of those universal sort of games slash I don't know what else to call it. Uh, it's not
a drill necessarily. It's just a possession game that we can play and you can do lots of different things. Before I go too far, another huge thank you to
everybody. Subscriber counts have been climbing and climbing. Uh I'm finding a, you know, it's great that we finding a bigger and bigger audience because really I have a background in teaching.
I just like teaching people and helping people learn to do new things because I just feel like the more coaches that can do this right just helps our kids get
better. And that's in the end I think the teacher inside of me that always comes out. So thank you for the likes, the subscribes, the shares. If you've
learned something from me and you haven't subscribed, please hit the button, uh, it just means a lot to me and it helps the channel grow. So, let's
go look at some graphics for the setups and see a whole bunch of different variations. And then we'll watch some video and talk about it and talk about
all the things that this does perhaps a little bit differently than just playing small side of games where you have goals to go to as targets because I feel like
they both have a very valuable point to be in your training area, but they have different outcomes in some regards. So, we'll talk about that. So, let's go look
at the graphics now. Okay, so what we have here on the screen is the basic setup. So we have a rectangle of some sort. And really it's
dependent on the age of your players, the number of your players, and the ability of your players. If your players are still learning and they're struggling with this, making the space
bigger means that they have more time to make decisions. As they get better, you can start to compress the space to make it harder for them because now they have
to do things with a faster process. They have to think faster. They have to scan faster, etc., etc. So also the number of players here it's basically the setup is
we have two neutrals on either end as almost like target players that the team in possession can play the ball to. It doesn't matter. So whoever last touched
the ball, the player on the end plays it back to that team. And here you can see I have it as 3v3. You certainly can make it 4v4 as we have here. But the concept
is similar. You have a grid sized appropriately for your kids. You have a ball. You have two teams and you have two neutral players. And the idea here
is whatever team has the ball, the idea is they need to string passes together, maintain possession. You can make limits to say every five passes is a point or
whatever else. You can say you have to get from one end of the grid to the other end of the grid and two players have to touch the ball or every player
has to touch the ball or whatever you want. But the whole idea here is you're working possession within a grid, trying to move the ball back and forth and
using those bumper players who can move along those lines as an extra player to create those overloads so that your team begins to understand how to control the
ball in small spaces. In this variation, we've now tipped it so now the field is wider than it is long and the bumpers are on the side. So again, you can mess
with the configuration to work on things. If you want your team to work on using the width a little bit more, then make your field wider than it is long
and move your bumpers so that it encourages that sort of play that you want them to do. Here in this version, we have four bumpers cuz we have more
players. So now it's almost like you have wingers locked to the outside and two players on the target on either end.
And then again, you can set restrictions that you can't go from one end to the other without using the wide players.
You can't use the wide players directly.
So a neutral can't play a ball to a neutral directly. You can do all sorts of things. Or if you're working on defensive things, you can say, "Hey, the
neutrals can play straight across to each other, which then forces your teams to do a better job at com being compact and not allowing passes to go through."
So you can use this to do a lot of different things. If you've got an odd number of players, then you can put a neutral in the middle of the field. So
now this player plays for whatever team has last touched the ball. And you'll see in the live action video, uh, my oldest son, you'll see him in a yellow
penny. He's doing that role. He's playing as a neutral to help the players on my team maintain a little bit more possession by having extra numbers no
matter who has the ball. Now, you can start to add new constraints to your layout to create new opportunities. So, here we've put a box in the middle of
the field. So, in this example, you can either say the ball cannot go through the box, so you're trying to force play to go around and outside and back in.
You could say the ball must travel through the box. So now you're playing centrally and you're trying to get passes to cut through that area both diagonally and vertically at the same
time. You could say that only one player at a time can enter that box and if there's a player in there, the other team can't come in. So again, lots of
different variations you can put on this. You can see here we've tossed a neutral inside that box. So now that box player is now playing for both teams and
they're playing like that central pivot playmaker in the field. So lots and lots of touches, turning, all those sorts of things. So a great way to train that.
You could even be, it's a lot more confusing, but if you did this without a neutral, if a player is in the box, once they've played, they have to exit and
the player that played them the past now takes their place. So again, lots of different different ways that you can come up with to use this example. In
this variation, we've locked two players into the grid from one from each team.
So now there's a little bit more challenge there because there's somebody there to mark them. And you can say in the box, either the two of you can mark
each other and fight for the ball, or you can say, you know what, neither one of you can interfere with each other once they have the ball. So, you can get
in the way to try to block a pass, but you can't steal it. Again, lots of different rules. And as we just said before, you can have it so if red plays
to that red player in the middle, that red player comes out after he plays the pass and somebody else goes back in.
Again, another variation you can put on this game. All right, so here you can see the setup in action. So, in this setup, we've got two end players as
neutral, and then my older son in the yellow bib is the neutral in the field, and we've got 4v4 here. Four red shirts or pennies versus four non-pinnies, if
you will. And the idea here now is they're trying to play the ball from one side, the other while maintaining possession. And again, there are no real
like we've talked about in this version like you know, can we get through from one end to the other to get a point if you will, but the idea is the point
doesn't matter. It's all about the process. And what we see when we do this is tons and tons of action around the ball. We have passing, we have
receiving, we have scanning, we have first touch, we have movement off the ball, we have defensive positions, communication, asking for the ball, moving on and off the ball. So many
things are happening in this one drill over and over and over again that it really starts to ramp up the number of repetitions for all these skills.
Whereas if we introduce goals to either end, the goal sometimes corrupts the exercise because it becomes that magnet that that's the only thing they can think of. And so instead of working on
some of those other pieces of the game that they need more technical practice with, if they have an opportunity to take a shot from halfway because they
think they can make it and then they miss the net, the whole thing breaks down. It stops and nobody's really got that much out of it. Not to say that
scrimmaging is not valuable. I'm just saying that when you want to ramp up your technical practice, this might be a tool that's more effective than many other things that you can do when you
want to work on those concepts. And so here you can focus on all sorts of different things. Whether that's movement and interplay, combinations, one, two, up, back, and through,
dragging players, giving them that concept of if you move and it pulls a defensive person out of the way, it might make space for your teammates, or
all the technical things, making a good pass, having a good first touch in the direction you want to go, scanning before the ball gets to you so you know
what to do before the ball gets there, so you can make your next action. moving into positions to support your teammates. All those technical actions happen in this and they happen over and
over and over and over and over again in a high rate of speed and everybody whether or not they have a ball at their feet is working on some component of the
game. And that's why I think this is such an effective tool to use with your teams. So there we have it. Here's another sort of game setup that takes
one quick setup. Some sort of rectangle to square area on the field. You don't need anything fancy but four markers, four cones, and you need some players
and maybe some uh maybe some bibs, some pennies, but however you do it, but it's a tool that you can use with all sorts of age groups with almost every level of
player from beginner to pro. And it brings value to every player that's on the field with and without the ball because it's working on so many technical components as well as tactical
components of the game. but really high level of repetition of all these skills that you want our players to use. I hope this is valuable to you. I hope you can
find new ways to do it. If you have different variations, I'd love to hear about it. But, you know, I think we've given you enough examples here that it
hopefully it inspires you to think of new ways to do things with this. So, nothing more to say. Really appreciate all your time and effort out there in
the field for the kids. Thank you for all your likes, your shares, your comments, your thumbs up, and your subscriptions. And until next time, we'll see you on the fields. Thank you
so much. Bye-bye.
