From The Touchline: Teams in Action

Great weekend for both my teams... Saturday saw my U11 Boys facing a tricky tie against a team that had beaten us earlier in the season. We had a lot of injuries that day so I was keen to see how we would do with more or less a full team.

Then I got a call to say my goalkeeper wasn't able to make the game. Hmmmph! Back to the drawing board and my three most likely players to do a half each and fill the goalkeeper void.

Training has been very good for the last couple of weeks, at the moment I am starting with position and possession based games. The same is true of my girls U13 Girls who train the same way.

We start with a 4v1 game where the positioning of the four players should make life more difficult for the defender and easier for the passer – when you have the ball, the goal is not to move the ball but to move the opponent by quick switches of position to find somewhere to pass the ball in order to give your side an advantage.

One of the benefits of positional play is that it creates space for the player in possession, giving him/her time to make a pass with the correct weight and timing, or dribble forward to create overloads in key areas of the pitch.

This is key to a possession-based playing style and so your training practice should develop players in the movement and support that is needed

It helps youth teams to play out from the back, keeping possession of the ball from back to front rather than hitting long hopeful balls upfield to clear the pressing of the opponent. (Of course there are times when both my teams must sometimes decide that putting their foot through the ball to clear danger is a crucial decision they should make but that's another story.)

Fantastic from the boys

The boys ran their game from start to finish. There was a little hiccup just before half time when having been 2-0 we gave away two soft goals – from 2-2 the reaction was immediate. No sooner had our opponents been high fiving at the score they found us hitting back with two goals in a minute. 4-2 at half time and that was the final score as we saw out the game with fabulous possession play creating a lot of chances on the way.

Superb from the girls

The girls play the same way but found the cold conditions were not comfortable – it was -2°C when we kicked off. They played well in patches but in the final quarter having been leading by 4-1 with 15 minutes to go they were suddenly 4-3 and were resorting to hoofing the ball anywhere. This is not how we play and the frustration was showing.

A couple of subs and another goal before the end settled them down and they ran out 5-3 winners. 

There were moments during the game when they stood still and watched the player on the ball almost like it was a free kick so that is something to work on at training.

And we had 7 or 8 corners and each time we tried to play short to a player on the edge of the box – we had been working on this at training – and they lost the ball every time. Mental note to talk about how things we work on at training do not always work on match day and they must recognise that.

Training paying off

I love seeing the work we put in at training paying off on the pitch. It is very pleasing when new and old players begin to gel and get a passing game going. Once or twice in both matches the moves were perfect and that certainly warmed up any problems the weather was causing!