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0:01 well hello coaches coach KW here it's been a couple of weeks my season has started so it's been a little bit busy between uh coaching and refereeing so uh
0:10 haven't had a ton of time unfortunately to make some content but uh I think I have something different for you today so uh I refereed uh I love the referee
0:18 U10 games uh they're my favorite to referee because it's more of coaching and educating more than you know handing out yellows and reds and yelling at coaches and parents uh you tend
0:30 most of the time is a little bit more tame um maybe I just have a little bit more skill with dealing with that but I do enjoy it the most so I refereed a U10
0:40 game I was lucky enough to referee a U1 game where is the first game of the season uh for a group of third graders so their first time playing U10 against
0:49 a team that was made up of third and fourth graders as far as I know I don't know the makeup of the away team as well as I did the home team so what we're
0:57 going to do is we're going to watch this game we're to chop it up we won't watch the whole thing but I'll watch it through and we'll make some comments
1:04 we'll do some markups on the video we'll just take a look at and compare and contrast the two different teams and where their structures are where their
1:11 level of coaching is what's happening on the field and how you can you know notice what's happening based on the game what one coach perhaps has or
1:19 hasn't done uh as go forward so let's pop into this game uh we'll chop it up we won't watch all 50 minutes of it that would be painful I think but I will
1:29 highlight some key areas and we'll wrap up at the end let's go okay here we are at the start as I mentioned uh the green is a fully third
1:39 grade team versus a U10 team I don't know the age breakdown of the opposing team I happen to be the referee in this game uh so I got a firsthand view of
1:48 what's going on I know the green team coach he's an excellent coach but these are third graders and their very first game as I said in the intro uh straight
1:58 out of you eight soccer if you will with just a few practices under the belt so we're going to see that tendency but we're going to compare and contrast
2:05 these two teams and I'll also tell you what I've heard and saw at first person obviously what was going on in the game so here right away we're going to play this a little
2:15 bit faster than normal clip right away obviously blue team doesn't know how to kick off uh so that's something I always say to my coaches is don't don't let
2:26 your kids not know how to do something on their first game even if you spend minutes on this is how we kick off this is how we restart on a throwin a goal
2:34 kick a corner kick you don't have to spend a lot of time on it but just enough so they feel like they have a sense of what's going on um but you know
2:43 you can see here a couple of things we're going to pause it right here for a second first thing to note these two players right here have not moved they
2:52 are absolute statue so clearly somebody has told them you stand here that's what you do as a Defender so clearly uh as as you'll see as this goes along you'll see
3:01 lots of things not to do from the blue side uh and now in compare and contrast on the green side these two players have been moving around with the play they've
3:11 been uh engaged not had anything much to do but keep an eye on them in this first half as things go along you'll see that there's the beginnings of understanding
3:20 what it is that needs to go on and then again we are 10 seconds into their first ever game that is basically you8 soccer right there in a nutshell right around
3:30 the ball it does get better as the game goes along but if you expect your players on their first game as third graders to look much different than this
3:39 um you're going to be sorely disappointed if they are much better than this you've either had more time with them or you've inherited a fantastically talented crew it's
3:47 probably going to look like this so just lower your expectations this is what U10 soccer looks like in the first day the first game of the first year let's uh
3:55 pop along and keep playing here for a little bit The Blue Team had one player that boy that just sh the ball who is more talented than the rest of the blue
4:02 team combined um excellent Foot Skills but maybe not so much teamwork but here we go we our first goal kick so let's take a look at this right we've got a
4:11 little uh wandering going on coaches giving some direction will'll freeze us here so here we go so we have the beginnings of the structure that we talk
4:19 about right if I was to critique this obviously I would say these two center backs need to come down in this range here this wide player needs to get out
4:29 wide there this wide player is in perfect position I would move my six I'd move him right there and then my nine um sorry 6 8 10 let's call that an eight um
4:41 the nine here he needs to find a pocket of space up further up the field like I might even tell them hey these two are never moving you could literally stand
4:50 here or maybe over here and won't be offside play this along all right first touch a little rough there but concept is starting to go there um green players
5:04 all get sucked to the ball we see our Center back there our big Center back on the right giv some Direction so there is some structure there right they're
5:11 trying they're trying to spread out what happens is the play goes along every time everybody gets pulled to the ball magnetically and then they reset themselves a little bit and realize oh
5:22 I'm supposed to be wider out I'm supposed to be in different places and so you'll see it kind of flex between being uh u8 sort of cluster soccer and
5:31 starting to approach a few things here we've got uh the green team is really kind of holding on to the ball down here but what you also notice here is
5:39 everybody's eager to make a pass unfortunately every pass is two feet away to a teammate standing right next to them but they're trying right they're not trying to take the ball the whole
5:49 way uh unlike this kid you'll see this kid multiple times trying to take it but you can see we've kind of got a cluster we see our two defensive pairs
5:57 there kids going to pop over to the side but nothing really unexpected uh in their first five minutes of a game um I do believe we have a a goal coming up but if not uh
6:13 I'll fast forward in yep there it is there's our goal and lots of excitement which is awesome to see right it's their first goal their first game of the first
6:21 season playing travel that's just super brilliant for them so good on them green team as you could probably expect even based on this first five minutes of
6:31 watching the two teams uh wins this game and wins it pretty comfortably uh in the end okay so what we have here now is our first corner kick of the game um good
6:43 idea not trying to go too wide too long almost worked out so clearly uh some good ideas there from the team we've got uh that Center back holding position and
6:54 the other Center back involved in the play does what they need to do they try to recycle the ball in just problem this is everybody's all right in the middle
7:02 of the field all in the cluster but we're now starting to see some of the players start to do a few more good things you can see this player
7:11 out here has kept his withd and he's running along the back post once again we've got our two center backs which are staggered and are watching the players
7:18 that go forward and then this is starting to break up a little bit for the Green Team they're starting to open up a little bit more space um as the game goes along
7:28 they start to spread out more and more we'll see that in the second half so here I'm just going to stop it and we'll play for a little bit in a minute but
7:35 what's interesting to see here is clearly we've got a couple players that are starting to figure out where they need to be and where they more importantly don't need to be uh this
7:46 player right here keeps pushing himself out wider and wider he realizes when he's getting too close to the ball and he's pulling himself away so there's some self-awareness that's happening
7:55 with that player which is great to see and we see starting to see a little bit more space between the bodies as the play goes along which uh is obviously
8:03 going to be an advantage for the green team as they continue in this game uh also I'll say for The Blue Team the common refrain from the left side of the
8:12 screen from the parents were basically booted hard kick it hard kick it up there as far as you can that's pretty much what I heard the entire entire game
8:21 from that sideline you can see this kid has some great Foot Skills and some great Concepts um but unfortunately he's surrounded by some players that don't know quite what's going on so here we
8:33 can see again we've got a restart and you can clearly see that the green team has at least been trained in what to do now obviously they're not quite aligned
8:42 for where they are on the field with the keeper having the ball but again you're starting to see a little bit of a structure of hey let's all get open and
8:51 compare and contrast that to the green to the blue team right so we've got a player here a player here a player here two here which is a little um a little
9:01 weird this player here was running across trying to get in position and then if we look at the Blue Team there they are the entire Team 1 2 3 four five
9:09 six players so all the Outfield players within their half of the center circle um so clearly uh we can compare and contrast what we're looking for when
9:20 we're playing uh even early on in the season a good attempt on goal so let's take a look blue has a goal kick let's see what happens with this goal kick um
9:31 we again we're comparing and contrasting two different teams I'm not trying to make fun of anybody here obviously it's just more of it's instructional to see where coaching is and what's going on
9:42 with them and compare and contrast two teams and see what um is working and what isn't working and what's going on I'm explaining to the keeper right now
9:53 where he could place the ball because he had questions and as a referee especially at this level I feel it's important to educate as much as possible
10:01 I'm not there to coach uh but clearly knowing the rules as their first game they're not going to know the rules so let's take a look here so what's
10:10 interesting is let's look at the Green Team first because this is actually interesting green team is set up kind of like they had possession of the ball
10:19 almost right um and that's pretty typical of a ut10 team early on because if you've worked playing out of the back you probably haven't had time to really
10:29 talk about about how to press and I do have a video on pressing and giving them that structure but they're probably not focused on that for another couple of
10:36 weeks and rightly so but you can see they've got that structure of almost if they were playing out of the back we've got our two center backs our Center mids
10:44 a little bit off center we got our Striker and then our Winger is a super wide and usually that would be good if the blue team was set up correctly to
10:54 have wide players because what we would tell my our wide players is you want to Mark those players you want to you know the Wingers need to mark their Wingers
11:03 but instead what we got with the blue team is we've got our Center back statues as we'll start to call them and then within the circle right there's all
11:11 four of the rest of the field players so they're all basically clustered within the width of the center circle there's no width to this game uh for this pass
11:20 to go to and let's see what happens here kind of Loops it up and then we get pressure on the ball immediately again uh green team is still kind of
11:34 running on top of each other but they're starting to get the idea here you can see there's been there was a lot of um there's a lot of if they were going the
11:40 wrong way a lot of the sort of pull back and turn around they haven't quite got to the point where they are comfortable playing the pass backwards but that will
11:50 come we had another Shard on net there here's another gold distribution similar concept they keep passing in the middle and all I can hear is the other coach
11:58 yelling at them them and it turns into a goal for the Green Team uh again the structure that the green team has um is clearly beginning to help them uh the
12:09 blue team has some talented players including that tall kid he's probably the best player on the field by a fair margin and if he was surrounded with a
12:17 little bit more of a structure they probably would give this green team a little bit more of a problem but he's really eventually he goes 1 V6 uh um he
12:26 does score a great goal because he can but you can see as an example of his foot skills they're great Foot Skills but they're not to any means they're
12:33 just a foot skill because that's what he's learned to do not that there's anything wrong with that they're young they need to learn when to apply those
12:40 feet skills Foot Skills the structure of the green team is doing nothing but helping them eventually um as the game goes on because they start to find see open man
12:51 Open Spaces K goes down hard we're just checking um coach comes running on I kind of had to give her a little bit of a word uh word to coaches let the
13:01 referee call you out because otherwise technically I'm supposed to make that player go off the field but again being the first game uh I kind of let that one
13:10 go because the kid popped up he was just more scared than anything else and the coach came running out for no good reason we're got to drop ball restart
13:17 and away we go this we're almost to the end of the first half and now you can start to see that the green team is really starting to come into their own
13:27 in terms of spacing right we've got players these two were close to each other but it wasn't like the first three or four minutes remember we looked at
13:35 that we had basically eight players within a 7 foot circle and two players watching on either end so the green team is starting to spread out the blue team
13:43 is as well but they starting to chase the ball everywhere whereas the green team at least seems to be starting to figure out if I stay in a space I could
13:52 get a ball a lot easier than if I stand on top of the play with everybody else so halftime first 25 minutes in the books obviously a um chaotic sort of start they're young
14:07 first time playing on The Big Field for real against another team but you can see the Green Team definitely has a higher level of instruction going on
14:16 they have some sort of basis of the structure that starting to become apparent the longer the game goes into we're going to go into the second half
14:23 where now they're going to be coming towards the camera and you'll see that it really becomes a one-way cont contest to say the least so here we are about kickoff for
14:35 our Green Team and we can see we've got a little bit of structural uh changes here in terms of the Green Team starts to have a little bit more there's more
14:45 of what they started with obviously as you can see we've got our players out wide we've got a player there I'm not quite sure who's who whether these are
14:56 the two center backs and that's the midfielder or vice versa or if this is the eight I'm not really sure but you can see there's that structure and blue
15:05 once again is clearly they're defending and they're no wider than the width of the circle the entire uh team is in that middle and for a defensive setup I
15:16 suppose that isn't the worst thing in the world um it's a trend they all as we've seen in this game they all tend to be within the center circle or smaller
15:25 there is no WID to this blue team they have not been trained uh to use the whole pitch yet you can see they Green Team executed a really great
15:40 start that kid that's on the wing was one of the defenders in the first half and right away they have quite the uh scoring sequence but what I'd love to see is
15:52 unlike the blue team who just passed it to their neighbor that had immediate pressure the Green Team passed it backwards to the center back who then played out wide and again there's that
16:00 structure of how to play out of the back being used when it's time to play uh from other positions so starting starting a minute or so ago and we'll see continuing here
16:15 the green starts exert a ton of dominance and we're going to see why uh as the play goes along this starts to be a little bit more understanding about
16:24 width about staying away from each other they really are starting to to get the concepts here um they're defending in layers and then as they go forward no
16:35 longer do you see everybody running to the ball um instead they're running away from it and giving each other space um you can clearly see here while the
16:45 defense has probably pushed up more than I'd ever be comfortable with in some regards we've got three green players in the line here here and look at this
16:54 going to player maintaining that width but compare and contrast that to the first half when one point we had all the players within a circle that big um you
17:03 can clearly see that green has had a little halftime talk and reminded once the adrenaline is and the nerves have calmed down what it should look like and
17:15 in the end unfortunately it's an own goal but it's one of many because green is on is really starting to exert more pressure you can see coach is giving a
17:24 little uh you know information of running down the channels and keeping the with all that they're getting some great in-game Direction but not too much uh and you can clear clearly see it's
17:37 being effective he's not trying to joystick the players around constantly yelling to them he's letting them do things pulling them in or bringing them off for a sub to give them Direction and
17:46 then putting them back on reminding them of what they want to do and that's really kind of the most effective way you can't the kids really are tuning you
17:55 out when on the field when the game is going on it's very much tunnel vision for them it's tunnel hearing for them as well um so pretty effective on what's going on
18:07 there that player there no chance that he was going to be offside because once again we have the blue statues that are standing down at the edge of the box now
18:15 they're standing at the top of the six they don't even come to the top of the 18 um so things have gone bad to worse uh you can see here green is a little
18:25 bit clustered but there is still a little bit of an idea of like let's get wide let's get deep um it's a little bit too tight but uh it works for them as
18:36 they figure it out and then as it's time for a goal kick there's no sort of formation or width of all with the blue team everybody's just standing in front
18:46 of the net and this goes on now for the next probably five to seven minutes of the Green Team maybe getting pushed back to halfway then retrieving the ball because
19:01 everybody's trying to go One V whatever and then they come down the field and start to assert dominance again great separation of the play right there and
19:12 that was a great goal we'll even back that up and we'll take a look at it they win the ball here let's set the playback speed to
19:20 normal speed here right they got they win the ball here it's a pass to that player a pass to that player he takes a shot misses it
19:29 pass to that player they try that pass there and then it might be the slowest goal on record but it's a goal but you can see the concept there is the boys
19:40 really did figure out hey I'm going to move the ball instead of trying to drag it around with my defense uh the defender is coming at me I'll just move
19:49 the ball get it around and Away the gun so again there's that structure you can see there they've been trained to move the ball into spaces and get away from
19:58 from each other and a market improvement from what we saw in the first three minutes of this game where even the green team was just surrounding the ball
20:05 the four forward players were in a cluster with the other four players right here I wanted to mention something I saw this earlier in the game but it's really uh this is kind of
20:19 exceptional in terms of this individual player and that is the striker for the Green Team you can see here that this Striker just stops when the ball starts
20:29 going way down there and has the has the mental ability to say my position is to wait up here so you'll see this is more than this I've seen
20:40 this at least once with this player when the player was all down the other end he's just standing up at the center circle clearly he has no worry about
20:48 being offside he could even go further back but this is good practice this is good mental training where he has gone to the center circle to the center line
20:57 saying there's not a chance I can could be offside not to mention our two sixy statues that we have down at the bottom here um and he's just really disciplin
21:06 that he stays here that's really hard the train I spend probably half of a game even at 9v9 now reminding my Striker would you just stay high you are
21:16 the person who needs to be the outlet this kid seems to clearly get that pretty quickly um it's fantastic let's see what happens with this play goes
21:25 along he's just standing there waiting he sees it's down there he's moving down a little bit he's in the middle of the field but he's not being pulled into the
21:34 play we got to throw in but he's still standing there right that ball is eventually going to come up here uh there he comes right pass to the
21:46 striker who's in the exact right position left foot shot he kept surprising them because he was a lefty um and a great goal so it's a great way to highlight why you want
21:57 your Striker to stay high because he gets that released ball and he's running at the back line and if the back line was pushed up of course they would offer
22:07 him more pressure and maybe he doesn't get quite that run at that those two players and have a free shot but it's more of just that structure being able
22:15 to um do that you can see here we're getting close to the end of the game uh I'm going to blow a full-time whistle pretty much anytime
22:23 now and there's our One V one player again really good player uh just you know no support couldn't really affect the game by himself cuz that's soccer right uh
22:39 it's it's a game of 7v7 here not 1 V7 and eventually you might get one or two goals that way but in the long term the rest of the team has to really be there
22:49 to help you and they weren't you can see we're still late in the game and the blue team is still chasing the ball everywhere good stop player green is
22:59 kind of sitting back now because they're up by five or six at this point and so the coach has pulled them back to say nope let's keep the score line down
23:11 there is a uh so you can see even the player has the wear withal to actually turn backwards and play the ball backwards and then that's the full-time
23:20 whistle so that was a fulltime whistle uh again I think the home team won six or seven to one in the end and what was really interesting I hope is for you is
23:30 the compare and contrast two different plays uh two different teams and the level of coaching that was going on I know as I said the home team coach very
23:39 well he and I will probably be going for ID licenses together this spring we meant to do with this fall and it just didn't happen um he's experienced coach
23:48 he's got players from this third grade uh he's got a player all the way to seventh grade that plays nnl so he knows what it looks like uh
23:57 when good training is going on and he does a great job with the boys so you could see the difference between that Green Team and The Blue Team the
24:04 structure was starting to be there that's what third grade soccer looks like in their first game if you think it looks like the diagrams I've been showing you um you're sadly mistaken or
24:14 Super Lucky uh one of the two um it's messy it's ugly but it's a great way to maybe sort of frame your own experience to go what did my team look like in the
24:24 first week or two did it look more like the blue team or more like the Green Team I'm Hing if you're watching these videos it looks more like the Green Team
24:31 and there's a start there but that's what it is it's a start it's a long process you have to keep in mind this is a two-year Journey for these players it
24:39 is not going to look like the diagrams on the Whiteboard are in your head for perhaps ever but clearly not within the first couple of weeks maybe by the end
24:48 of the Fall you start to see a little bit more of a structure if you're lucky enough to get a consistent two practices a weekend with rain outs and other
24:55 things going on but that's what you tend soccer looks like in the first week um it was great to see that structure uh being applied and you can see the
25:04 Nuggets of that uh I will probably referee this team a few more times and some other teams in my town so I'm hoping I'll have some more videos of
25:11 this if you like this sort of thing can you please let me know in the comments and you know let me know if there's something else you want to be
25:17 highlighted in a game video like this but I think it's instructional to see other teams at the beginning of their processes to understand what is it it
25:26 does what does it really look like like on the ground am I doing it right I is my team actually being better or worse uh I would say that third grade team is
25:35 slightly above average it's not our one team it's not um the number one team if you look at triy out rankings in our town for third graders that's actually
25:43 the two team um but again great coach uh some good players our our teams are very much uh used to be the the the skill level from top to bottom was a very
25:54 steep ramp and because of our work we've done and you eight using the New England revs resources to actually run our sessions that difference and ability has
26:06 flattened out somewhat there's always going to be a several exceptional players and there'll be a few players down at the bottom that maybe not as committed but instead of it being a
26:15 steep drop off you could see if that was the two team and they could play with that sort of structure you know it's probably a coin toss during a
26:23 try out that half those teams make the one team right that's just how it is uh as I like to say that U1 soccer especially the only thing that's
26:31 consistent is the inconsistency and that goes certainly to tryouts and games to games and practices at well so I hope you enjoyed this love to see some uh
26:39 comments out there like subscribe please share uh the subscriber numbers are kind of flattened out I get one or two or three a week but yet I see 20 and 30
26:48 shares a week so folks are enjoying what they're seeing um hit the Subscribe Buton it just helps other people find this um and it gives me a little
26:56 encouragement to keep going so I hope you're having a great star of the season if you're watching this during the fall and until next time I'll see you real
27:03 soon bye
