Developing Creativity Sessions (2014 LCC event)

Using my old laptop for the first time in months and came across loads of my notes from courses and other events. This is one of my favourites from a LCC event focused around developing creativity around 18 months ago.. Enjoy!

Developing Creative Games 

 SSG - Bib challenge game

The first session was taken by two of the local Tesco skills coaches, set up was as below; a standard SSG played with one team taking on the "challenges" and the other team just playing as normal.

The team who were undetaking the challenges were given 3 bibs each (3 different colours: Blue, Red and Yellow) and could put these on in any order.

The idea being that each bib corresponds to an individual challenge. For example:

Red = Play a 1 - 2 with a team mate to get forward.

Blue = Take on an opponent.

Yellow = Run the ball from one third to another.

Once you had completed the task you could take that colour bib off. However you could only take off the one on the top i.e. if blue was your top colour and you ran the ball from the mid to the end third you couldnt take off your yellow. The team which could take of the most bibs wins, makes sense right?

Some ideas on how this can be adapted...

• Let the players come up with their own tasks.
• Give bibs to players instead of getting them to take them off, this can be a sort of "reward"
• Use a white board or other scoring system if you don't have the bibs. 
• Ensure its game related! Scoring goals needs to remain the key objective. 
• Be creative with the tasks!! Adapt them depending on your team. For 6 year olds you may earn a bib for playing a pass forward, or doing a turn. For older ages it may be playing a ball from the defensive third to the end third etc...

More, less or the same

This was a game delivered by FA tutor Martin Dighton, who has delivered both my YM2 and YM3

 

The set up was as below with 3 different areas going on at once. 2 areas are 3v2 and the smaller one is a 1v1. With a diamond marked out in the middle of the 3 areas.

The yellow team (attackers) attempt to score in the goals on the edge of the area, the red team (defending) score by running a ball into the blue diamond. Attacking team cannot enter the diamond.

Add scores from the 3 pitches and then swap roles.

Progressions/adaptions:

• If odd number of players, introduce a floating player who can be used to help either attackers or defending team. 
• If a player scores a goal they then must move to one of the other areas (to create more of an overload etc) this can also be applied for defending team.
• Replace diamond with goals, or replace small goals to some sort of end zone.

Again adapt the game to suit your players, can be changed to suit more of less numbers. 

2 Man Target Game 

Set as below, with 2 neutral target players in each end zones and 3v3 in the middle. The neutral team plays to the team that passed into them. A team scores a point when successfully transferring ball from one end zone to the other. 

When ball is played into the red (neutral) players in the end zone, they immediately switch to the other player in their zone and then continue play.

A simple game that can be used to coach many different aspects such as; turning, support, movement off the ball, exploiting space, passing etc.

Progressions/adaptations:

• Cannot play back into reds once they have passed out to you. Must look to play positive (forward) every time.
• target players can only play with 1 or 2 touches, to increase tempo of game. 
• Target players switch with centre players after receiving. 

With this i came up with a slight variation of my own which i think could work well with the majority of age groups. Where each team has a target player in both end zones they look to play into as set up below.

 This gives some objective to the players in the end zone who must now try to use their movement to loose the marking player.

Again, can progress this to players switching roles once pass is played into target man. 

As stated these drills are not my own, but ones taken from an FA conference. If you have a chance to attend one of these conferences then i encourage you to book yourself onto one. Its a great day and can give you some fresh ideas to take back to your teams. 

Its important to bare in mind that these drills were done with adult players, you should look to adapt them to the players you coach! Ensure you know what your trying to get out of each game, defending or attacking work, passing or dribbling etc.

If you have any queries on any of the above drills please feel free to drop a comment or message me via twitter: @dwalsh_91 

These drills were made using the FA Coaches App, which is available to download via the app store.

Rotating Positions

Rotating positions in youth football - My thoughts.


Social media is awash with coaches of youth teams signing the praises of rotating positions for their players, swapping goal keepers etc. I'll be the first to admit that prior to this season it's not something I've really put into practice with any of the teams that I've coached. However in our last game we switched out most players positions every 10 minutes (we play 4 10 minute quarters). Now I automatically thought to myself "this is the best thing for their development blah blah blah" but is this because I hear and read how good it is to do and we must do it? Or do I actually buy into the idea?

Sunday was definitely the most I have swapped players positions around in a game, this was mainly due to not having a regular goal keeper. And it was probably one of our worst performances since I've been coaching them. Now I'm not saying that it was down to the rotations, it could have been a number of things, but I started to question after the game was rotating regularly good for the players? As a player I personally don't like changing positions in a game, it can take time to get into the game. So would my u8s have liked playing 2 or 3 different positions in a game? Probably something I'll have to ask them. Could it have been a reason that some of them struggled to get into the game?

Looking at our opponents; they won the game comfortably, kept the same player in goal who had little to do all game, kept their 3 strongest players on the field for the whole game and in the same positions. This is the case with pretty much every team we have played, I can't recall any team swapping their GK. I'm not having a go at them, they obviously want to play as well as they can and probably measure success on results to some extent, but this is u8 "non competitive" football. The fact we lost doesn't bother me at all, but it was disheartening to see us play way below our normal level.

So my question to everyone is do you rotate your players regularly? What are your thoughts? Is there a balance to it?

Personally I'm looking at the long term picture with our players, but sometimes feel parents really want to see results, trying to strike the balance!!


Below is an article by Nick Levett from a couple of seasons ago, clearly a good argument for rotating. 

 http://www.thefa.com/news/my-football/players/2013/dec/to-stick-or-twist-141213

Passing and Receiving games (Foundation Ages)

Ball mastery is usually the top priority for coaches who are involved in the early ages of the game. Teaching our players the fundamentals of passing and receiving is usually the base to move onto other topics. I thought it would be useful to share some ideas i have picked up and used over the past couple of years. I have been using the sessions below for u6-u8 but they can of course be adapted to suit. Got any ideas on how these can be progressed for your age group? Let me know!


Passing shapes 

Players working in groups of 3. Each player starts on a side and starts the practice by passing the ball to each other, emphasis on not letting the ball go miles outside of the square. I usually challenge players to get X number of "perfect passes" in, challenge them to do 10 as quick as they can etc.

Progression ideas

• Once you have passed you must move to the free side of the square.
• Ensure that the person on the ball has a player either side of them (support play).
• Play one touch passes when possible. 

 Can be used with different shapes to suit numbers.

Move onto making it opposed. 

Challenges now:

• Try not to let your first touch go back into the square. Why? Defender is in there! 
• If you don't have the ball, try to move so you are not "hiding" behind the defending player.
• Try to play passes away from defender.  

Wall passes

 Usually used as a warm up but can be a good game to begin a passing and receiving session. 4 players begin outside the area as "bounce players" the other players work in the middle with a ball each. Players look to use each player once/twice before finishing, usually make this a bit of a race for the younger players.

 A big emphasis to begin with will be communication; players will try and send 2 or 3 balls at the same bounce player. Must ensure bounce player is ready for our pass!

Challenge players to think about how they can get around quicker,perhaps pass and move into the next quarter.

Importance of bounce player return pass: do they want back to their feet or in space? What triggers can we use (movement of player).

Can we take our first touch toward the next bounce player we want to use?


Another version can be used that is slightly more geared toward support play (player either side of the ball).

Passing gate

A practice that is probably already in most coaches locker, but always an excellent game for players just starting out. Can start it off really simple by having a gate per pair and challenging them to pass through the gate. Move up to trying to get as many gates as you can in 1 minute etc. 

 Can progress to introducing gate guards. Now can the players find and use the free gates to get easy points. 

Other progressions:

• Wall passes: one player in the pair plays one touch if possible through the gates. 
•  Players dribble though gate then look to pass to partner (support play).

Dribble ball 

Inspired from the youth module 1; players in a group of 3 or 4 look to keep the ball away from a defender who must also dribble a ball around whilst trying to intercept passes.

This is a great game for younger players to practice keeping possession opposed but not fully as the defender will be slowed down. This slower pace of practice helps player to build decision making skills.

• First touch: can you take your first touch away from defender, protect the ball.
• Movement of players, help the player on the ball, try not to hide behind defender. 
• When might we need to think about passing?

You'll notice that these games are not directional. Theses games are used to give players plenty of repetition to help build technical skills. I personally combine these games with more directional "game like" practices.

These drills were made using the FA Coaches App, which is available to download via the app store.

Publishing Youth Results

Last night, @Thesecretcoach1 re-tweeted a number coaches and clubs who were posting results of junior games, a big no no in the eyes of the FA now. I’ve sorted of wanted to confront these tweets myself in the past (some from coaches I know!) but never bothered as it was an argument I just wasn’t willing to start. But someone with over 5,000 following coaches confronting it probably makes more of an impact. So I thought I would post up my views on the subject (not that many would be interested, but ah well) 

Ok, so coaches and clubs posting up results doesn’t really bother me at all. I would find no offence if someone published the result of my team on social media, although I can’t speak for parents etc. It doesn’t even bother that much that some coaches and clubs feel the need to highlight their triumphs and often won’t post poor results. It’s clear that some people judge themselves and their teams on results alone; fair enough that’s the nature of sport I was the same a few seasons ago for sure. 

What bothers me is that there are 17-0, 19-0 games happening across all ages and whats worrying is that these tweets of crushing wins are no one offs and seem to be an almost bi-weekly thing. I don’t want people to think that I’m one of these coaches who claims to not care about winning at all, I think it’s important to play to win, in my opinion we’re in danger bringing up players who don’t have the desire and hunger to win, I think there’s a balancing act to it (although that would be its own post entirely). My questions to these coaches would be; what are your team getting from winning 15-0? Obviously it’s probably not much fun for the other team and your players will of course enjoy getting the chance to score a handful of goals for their tally. Without being challenged and playing in competitive games I would personally find coaching a team that wins heavily every week a bit pointless, in fact this part of the reason I stepped down from coaching our “A” team (shouldn’t call it that) to coach our other team they were winning easily most weeks and I felt there was little motivation for the players to want to improve. It may be a case that when you play a team who can hold their own and attack you that your side struggles to deal with it, especially if you lose players to academies etc. 

So what can we do?

Well I know some who will say about taking some of their players off, which I don’t really agree with as they want to be playing! Letting the other team bring on their subs is a good idea and i’ve seen it happen. But one idea that still sticks out in my mind was when I was watching a u16 or u18 game down at St Teath and they were playing Newquay. The home side were a fairly well established team but the visitors were a different level and got to the 9-0 limit used in the league after about 30/35 minutes. Now most games usually carry on into crazy scores and just record the 9-0 or whatever but the Newquay coach (can’t recall his name) called to the ref after the 9th goal and came on to speak to him, they called the other coach on and all the players and began to mix the players up into 2 new teams. They played a couple of 30 minute halves swapping around more players between. The game was so much better to watch and clearly became more of benefit to everyone playing. For me as a coach its something that I still remember, I had so much respect for the Newquay coach for how he went about this, a lot more than if his team had won 20-0 or whatever. It was a touch of class, he was obviously an excellent coach but he had such an interest in making the game as beneficial as possible for everyone. I’ve heard of people doing this but this is the only time I’ve seen it. 

So my message if it’s worth anything is if you have a team that are clearly very strong and the game is completely one sided, do something! Make that Sunday morning worth it, a 20-0 isn’t much good for anyone involved. Personally I have only swapped players around in one game where we gave the other team (new to playing) some players at half time, it made the game more enjoyable for all the players and it’s something I would do again if appropriate. 

I’m lucky that our games have been pretty competitive, I’m hoping that it will benefit the team in the long term.