Three weeks of smoke and mirrors..and what's in it for us

Its only natural to look for flaws in perfection because when we see perfection and it isn't us, then we are reminded that we are less than perfect. Spain's performance over the past three weeks has been over analysed and they have frustrated some, including me when they passed the ball back to their own keeper from an attacking corner in the 93rd minute against Portugal, but their second goal in the 4-0 humping of Italy was perfection, seldom seen but never forgotten.

The soccer intellectuals in the media will spend the next few weeks telling us all about Spain's method and style and their use of a 'false 9', and how Del Bosque has shown us a team without designated strikers, ignoring that fact that Roma and Manchester United did this in 07 and 08. The shape and movement of the Spanish is highly impressive and their invention and ball retention is of the highest quality, but in my opinion the keys to the castle are their superior technical ability.

There are two good bits of good news in this for soccer in Canada; first of all we don't have to play them in order to qualify for Brazil 2014 and secondly we can take something from Spain's methods and apply them to our game here in Canada.

We cant talk to our players about 'false 9's' or expect them to play in the sophisticated style that we see from Del Bosque's' team but we can make the technical part of the game our training priority. Spain are technically better than any other team at the moment. The difference between them and everyone else is not that great, but its great enough to make ALL the difference.

Spain's game is based on possession, and defending by keeping the ball away from the opponent, that's not a secret. They play a succession of 2v1, 3v2 and 4v3 situations and are equally comfortable in possession in even numbers or numbers down phases, because their technical ability is high and they are confident in their own ability to keep the ball. This encourages them to take up good supporting positions and circulate the ball, it also means that if you can manage to get the ball from them you have to be quick in transition as they are all around the ball. All of this is great for Spain but how can we take lessons learned and translate them to our practices.

More small sided exercises in our practices and more 3v1's 4v1's and 5v2's with the emphasis on keeping the ball moving and all players moving to give the player in possession more choice. The 4v1 exercise is simple to set up and a great session starter that gets the kids moving and keeps them challenged. the key to this is to motivate the defender to work hard in order to challenge the players on the outside of the box. With the right amount of encouragement, very quickly you can progress and make the area smaller and limit the touches. Once you get them into a 5v2 situation then the challenge is to find the split pass and if you can get them to a 4v2 situation and have some success then you are going in the right direction. The game is simple and effective and will provide positive results. We cant play like Spain because we aren't Spain, but we can strive to match their technical ability.

At the next coaches association meeting, in early September we will be looking at small sided exercises and ideas how to use them in our practices. In my next blog I will be talking about other ideas that will t improve the experience of our younger players in the Active Start, Fundamentals and Learning To Train Stages age groups. My belief is that if we make the experience better than "better learning" will take place Again I believe the key is coaching, improve the coaching and we will improve the players and on that topic here is a list of the coaching courses that we have set up in August and September:

Soccer for Life

August 25^th and 26^th hosted by the Lakehill Soccer Association

Learning to Train

August 18^th and 19^th hosted by Prospect Lake Soccer Club

Fundamentals

September 8^th hosted by Cowichan Valley Soccer Association

September 15^th hosted by Peninsula Soccer Association

September 22^nd hosted by Gorge Soccer Association

All of these courses are free to coaches in the LISA district, and we recently ran a Learning To Train course with support from the Juan de Fuca and Sooke clubs and the new material was well received by the coaches who took the course. I would like to encourage you all to make time to attend these course, if we get better then our players get better, its that simple.

The 2012 Euro's were on the whole a good tournament but not a great one, like the 2000 tournament, and they didn't produce a game that will live long in the memory. The tournament format of 16 teams means no easy games and every game counts, unfortunately in 4 years time the tournament will include 24 teams, this will bloat the tournament as there aren't 24 good teams in Europe. No matter, the French will still pout, the Dutch will implode, the Germans will be challenging, Spain will be passing and maybe England will complete a pass or two!

Champions League starts on Tuesday!!

Enjoy the summer.

Preliminary results on physical activity in U9 soccer...

As you may be aware, late last year I started taking a closer look at U9 soccer, specifically the number of ball touches per minute (TPM) that players were getting in the games. Along with help from Stu Hackett, the LISA treasurer, I was able to look at 10 games all played on the same day on the same field and with the same 6v6 format.

The results were in my mind surprising and a little disappointing when it came to touches on the ball in the game. To recap the results that we saw over the day we watched

•          89 players  play 250 minutes of soccer giving a total of 3,464 touches of the ball

When we collated the data we found that the most active player in terms of touches of the ball had 91 touches in the game which equated to a TPM of 1.82.

When we looked at he data as a whole we found that on average only 31% of players were getting more than 1TPM resulting in almost 70% of the players getting less that 1 touch of the ball per minute over the course of the game. The biggest surprise for me was that 30% of players were getting less than 25 touches of the ball during the course of a 50 minute game.

We are planning on some more research into TPM’s this year but for now I have turned my attention to the amount of physical activity that our players are getting on any given weekend soccer game in the U9 age group.

About a month ago I spent a Saturday morning with some U9 players and their parents. We strapped them up with accelerometers which measure the amount of physical activity over a period of time. The levels of activity are broken down into 4 categories, sedentary, light, moderate and vigorous. The physical activity guidelines call for 60 minutes per day of moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA).Before I share my findings with you its worth noting that a study from 2009 showed that fewer than 2% of Canadian children and youth get 90 minutes of MVPA on at least 6 days of the week and only 7% of Canadian children and youth are meeting the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines of at least 60 minutes of MVPA per day.

Well, I was disappointed with the TPM results in terms of developing technique in the game but I have to say that I am a little more pleased with the data that I got from the accelerometers. First of the numbers for the girls team and the boys team were almost identical. On the girl’s team the averages were:

28% 15.7 minutes in sedentary

10% 5.4 minutes in light activity

29% 16.3 minutes in moderate activity

33% 18.6 minutes in vigorous activity

On the boy’s side the averages were:

26% 14.1 minutes in sedentary

12% 6.2 minutes in light activity

28% 14.8 minutes in moderate activity

34% 17.9 minutes in vigorous activity

As you can see the figures are very similar and I will leave you to take your own conclusions from that.  Once I have more data I will make my own conclusions and give you my opinion. The key numbers from this exercise is the amount of time in moderate to vigorous physical activity (MVPA)

The girls spent 62% of the game which included half time in MVPA which equated to just less than 35 minutes and the boys also spent 62% of the game time in MVPA totalling just short of 33 minutes. When we tidy up the figures to remove half time our percentages will rise but the minutes in MVPA will probably stay consistent, of course when I get the cleaned up data I will get that out. As I mentioned previously the TPM numbers were disappointing but I find these numbers encouraging as it shows that the 6 a side game is doing a pretty reasonable job of providing a good level of physical activity for our players during the course of a game.

The key to these numbers though is the number of players on a SQUAD, not the team. This data is taken from two teams that had 8 players available for a 6 a side game. I have some data with a team of 7 and over the next month I will be working to get data on squads of 9 and 10 players to see what effect the number of subs has on the average time spent in MVPA. Once we have that data I am hopeful that we will be able to justify smaller squads and less players on the bench.  I understand that logistics can play a part in squad numbers when forming teams, but at some point we must put the needs of the children first and look at some different options when it comes to organising our programs.

I believe its time to take a long look at our small sided games program in Victoria and start investigating the options of spring and summer soccer. We have a good number of turf fields in our district and from personal experience I can tell you that watching soccer in short sleeves and a pair of shorts is much more fun that watching bundled up or from the front seat of a strategically positioned vehicle!

In closing…

I would like to pay a personal tribute to the greatest coach I ever met and the person who had the greatest effect on me as a coach. Roy Rees, who took the US U17 Men’s team to four World Cups and beat Brazil, Argentina and Italy along the way, passed away in November at his home in California. Roy, and his wife Anne, played a big part in my life and pushed me in the right direction whenever I was considering a wrong turn. Roy could be a hard person to work for but he always made me a better coach and in turn a better person and I owe more to Roy and Anne than I can put into words. What more can a person ask from another, than to simply make them better. Alongside his duties as national team coach he was kind enough to step in as best man at my wedding after the starting best man had to lay down 10 minutes before the kick off due to a previous injury from the night before. Both my wife Joanne and I will always be grateful for his performance that day!

Roy Rees, a great man, a great friend, and the greatest coach I ever met.

                                                                             

Transfers and boundaries.....

It’s an interesting time in the lower island district, and the reason for the interest revolves around the number of transfers that each club has per team. Since I arrived in Victoria in November of 2008 the transfer and boundary discussions have never been far from the surface and it doesn’t take too long for people to voice their opinion on the subject.

In this blog I would like to discuss the idea of unlimited transfers which equates to open boundaries, if you have as many transfers as you like then the boundaries cease to be relevant.

I would also like to make the point that this opinion is my PERSONAL opinion and not the opinion of the Lower Island Soccer Association.

From 1993 to 198 I worked in the United States where there are no boundaries or transfers. During my time there I saw many coaches work the system to recruit players for their teams in order to try and win a state championship.  In time the recruitment of players morphed into recruitment of coaches who then brought their whole team into a new club. I keep hearing that open boundaries and unlimited transfers give players choice and is the best system for ‘player development’. Its true that unlimited transfers give people more choice but there is no guarantee that it leads to ‘player development’

Here are a couple of examples of things that I have experienced as a coach during my time in the United States.

Neighbourhood FC run a responsible program and their technical director and technical committee recommend that coaches work with a team for a period of two years and then the team is reassigned to a different coach who has a skill set that is compatible with the age group. The coach of the U13 Neighbourhood FC boy’s team doesn’t want to ‘lose’ his team and ‘his’ players, after all the game is about him, not the players! He whips the players and parents up into frenzy, calls are made, emails are sent and meeting are attended. Neighbourhood FC stick to their guns and bring in a coach who can help the players continue to develop. The soon to be replaced coach meets with his team and presents them with an option. “We can move our team to Big Club FC and we can all stay together! Let’s go”. Mean while Neighbourhood FC have lost a whole team even though they have a responsible player first policy to coaching appointments! That’s player movement and choice but it’s probably not in the best interests of the players, and what happens to the players and families who at the last minute decided to stay with Neighbourhood FC, where do they play?

Things are not going so well at Big Club FC, the technical director and board are at war and the TD is looking to leave the club at the end of the season. He has been talking with key coaches and parents in his club and they have decided that its time for a change and they will all be moving to Biggest Club FC next season. Big Club FC will be losing 6 coaches and 8 teams in the summer and now the integrity of the club is threatened as many more individual players are looking to land elsewhere.

Big Club FC are now in turmoil, they cant make teams and a number of players are left without a team to play as all the other clubs are full. They need to hire a new TD; do they hire a good coach who can put together a long term plan or a used car salesman who can recruit players into the club?

Now, I am not suggesting for one minute that if we instituted unlimited transfers in the LISA boundaries, these scenarios would take place, but there is no guarantee that they won’t and in time I think we will see this type of behaviour in our district.

The major downside to unlimited transfers is the lack of club stability it provides. Even the bigger clubs are not immune to losing a chunk of players and the lack of certainty means that clubs are not able to make major plans as there is no guarantee of their numbers from year to year. How do you plan to build a turf field or clubhouse when you can’t honestly project your registrations and revenues from year to year?  What financial institution would lend money to a non for profit organisation with no real guarantee that the club can afford to make the repayments from year to year.

So, I don’t like the idea of unlimited transfers and I am not supportive of zero transfers as we do need to offer families a choice, and there is always the situation where a player and coach just don’t get on. My son Oliver is not involved in soccer as he had a poor coach and wasn’t able to move teams so restricting movement totally is not something that I, as a parent, could support.

We need to give players a choice, but at the same time preserve the structural integrity of all our clubs at this moment in time. If we lose a club, for whatever reason, then we will lose more players and we can’t afford to lose more players.  In the future if clubs choose to merge as Cordova Bay and Gordon Head did then so be it, but that is a better option than clubs ceasing to exist.

We should provide choice for our families but if we were to open the boundaries and that led to a loss of clubs then all we have done is restrict choice. An equal number of transfers per club is, in my opinion, the way to go. That number needs to allow players who have transferred in past seasons to be able to stay where they are so that they can continue to enjoy their soccer, which after all is all this should be about.

In closing, our next coaches association meeting is this coming Friday, Match 9^th at Braefoot. We will be looking at midfield shape in front on the back four and I hope to see as many people as possible. Remember to bring your boots!

Let England Shake....

I have stolen the title from PJ Harvey’s 2011 Mercury Prize winning album, if I could write songs like her I wouldn’t have to worry about the mess English football is in, but I can’t so I have to worry! More about Polly Jean later.

Only in England can we lose a coach who in his last game beat the reigning World and European Champions and see our odds slashed to win the European Championship this summer. Only in England can we lose the coach with highest winning percentage in our National team’s history and see this as good news.

Fabio Capello is one of his generation’s finest minds and it’s worth reminding ourselves of his achievements

7 Serie A title with three different clubs, Milan, Juventus and Roma

2 La Liga titles with Madrid

Champions League with Milan

3 Suppercoppa’s in Italy

So, not to labour the point, 9 league titles, with 4 different teams, in 2 countries, and European Footballs Holy Grail with Milan in 1994: 4-0 in the final against a team from Spain by the way. His spell at Milan in the early 90’s is unmatched and the team he produced during that time would be in anyone’s top 5 and the English FA lose him 4 months from the start of a major tournament

I am sure there are many reasons why he left the job and we can speculate all we like but as the cliché goes, ‘at the end of the day’ Capello had had enough. The “Cult of Personality” that has developed around the England team since the arrival of the so called golden generation speaks to a wider issue in the country itself.

A country that is struggling to find its identity in the world and at war with itself: The 21 miles from Dover to the mainland of Europe may as well be a million miles as England is not in Europe, culturally, financially or philosophically. The country still carries the scars of a war fought and won almost 70 years ago and that greatest generation would turn in their graves at the sad state of the country that they knew. England’s green and pleasant lands have been replaced by concrete jungles that are no go areas after dark; the England that I grew up in has gone for good.

Now back to the football…..

How do you replace Capello? The England team has long revolved around he players and the belief that the best players can just roll up and beat old Johnny Foreigner. The rest of the world figured out long ago that the game is a team game and England’s group of individuals have consistently failed at the international level, Linekar, Shearer, Gascoigne, Beckham, Gerrard, Lampard, Terry, Rooney, Cole were no match for Johnny Foreigner.  England’s superstar players showed the world what they were in South Africa in 2010, yet less that two year later Capello had started to make changes. The win against Spain, after being outplayed for large portions of the game, was a cause for optimism and for the first time in a long time there was a sense of England being more a team that a collection of pouty professionals. Capello declared that England couldn’t beat Spain at their own game and he was right. The problem for England is that they have been trying to beat everyone at their own game since 1966!

So where do England go now. The people’s choice Harry Redknapp, currently at Tottenham, well he’s won the FA Cup once but he’s English so he is in the frame. He also spent last week in court, a place that the former captain and role model John Terry will be seeing soon, interestingly enough Steven Gerrard who may take the armband from Terry knows what the inside of a court room looks like.  One wonders why a number of the current England team along with a good number of ex England players want Redknapp, the return of passion in the England team has everyone waiting with baited breath. Unfortunately the Passion they talk of is not a technically gifted midfielder that England desperately  needs, its that up and at em, backs to the wall, glorious failure, knees up mother brown bullsh*t  that you get tired of very quickly.

The Football Association of England overlooked Brian Clough, blacklisted Don Revie and didn’t do enough to keep Terry Venables. Harry Redknapp has done a great job at Tottenham but he isn’t in the same class as Clough, Venables or Revie, that’s how England has fallen.

Whoever inherits the poisoned chalice will have more than enough on his plate. He will take over a group of players with average technical ability and world class egos. He will have to deal with a press pack that is poorly educated with regard the game outside of the Premier League, and with one or two notable exceptions poorly educated in the finer points of the game. 

There is, however, a possible silver lining. The ‘golden generation’ should be all but finished by the end of the summer and a clean sweep is on the cards. If the new manager can dispense with the old guard and bring in players that are able to adapt to different tactical strategies then England will remain what they are: a decent team with a good qualification record and a good bet to get to the last eight of a major tournament, but you wouldn’t want to play them because sometimes that passion thing takes over.

So who should the FA choose. Of their last 5 appointments, Hoddle, Keegan, Eriksson, McLaren and Capello, only Eriksson and Capello have left the team better off than they found them. Hoddle, Keegan and McLaren were all disasters and their careers have never recovered, so why the clamour for an English coach? If I had to make the choice I would look to Marcelo Bielsa. He is doing a great job with Athletico Bilbao and had success at the international level with both Argentina and Chile. He knows how to deal with the press and his three hour press conferences should be enough to keep the English press busy. He introduced younger players into the Chilean team which is exactly what would be needed with England. He seems to me to be a great fit for England but there is just one problem…he isn’t English!

As promised a little more about Polly Jean Harvey. In musical terms she is more like Capello than Redknapp having won the Mercury Music Prize twice in 2001 and 2011. She won’t manage England but she has is qualified to, she was born in Dorset!

The Summer of 82

It’s been a sad week in the Latham household following the news of the unfortunate death of the great Socrates earlier this week. When I say the Latham household, I really mean Jake, our dog, and myself as I have been telling him this week on our walks about the greatest team I ever saw-Brazil’s 1982 World Cup team.

My first love is Sheffield Wednesday, I didn’t pick them: they picked me. My grandfathers were ‘Wednesday’ and so was my father so I became ‘Wednesday’. Those of you who follow real English football will be pleased to hear that I haven’t subjected my son Oliver to being ‘Wednesday’ I just couldn’t do it to him. They are my love supreme, but many times I have tried to leave them but as the Godfather puts it, “every time I think I am out they find a way to suck me in”. They are doing it right know as they are flirting with the top of League 1, it probably won’t last, but….

Anyway back to the summer of 82. Prior to this particular World Cup the high points of my football life were: a mammoth tussle between the love supreme and some kick and run mob called Arsenal in the 3^rd round of the FA Cup, when it was the best cup competition in the world. We took them to FOUR replays before they knocked us out.  They had Liam Brady, we had Brian Hornsby! An unbelievable night at Blackburn in 1980 when Ian Mellor brought 9,000 grown men and boys to tears, eyes filling now as I write this, with a diving header that set us on the road back to the promised land, and a historic 4-0 humping of our dearly beloved neighbours, Sheffield United, on Boxing Day 1979. Not a lot to show for 14 years.

That summer I was looking forward to the World Cup, every football man has a World Cup and this was going to be mine. It started slowly with Belgium beating Argentina and Italy boring the pants off the world but later that night my whole life changed. I didn’t see the full game as back in 1982 there were only 4 TV channels in the UK, but in the highlight reel of the Brazil Russia game, I saw two goals that set my world on fire. It wasn’t just the goals it was the pure joy and emotion of the event that took my breath away.  Socrates stepping around Russian’s and firing into the net was magnificent but Eder’s winner was a thing of beauty: Falcao lets the ball run through his legs, Eder flicks in up and volleys past the keeper whose body language tells it all. Do yourself a favour and get on you tube as word don’t do it justice. I was hooked and in love and I couldn’t wait for more. Scotland and New Zealand were brushed aside and Brazil was in the quarter finals. The team were magicians and beautiful to watch and the name still role of the tongue, Falcao, Leandro, Junior, Eder, some chap called Zico, Oscar, the great Socrates and the most un-Brazilian of players the striker Serginho, who may have struggled to get into the Sheffield Wednesday team!

They were drawn in a group with Italy, who had just woken up and the reigning world champions Argentina. Brazil destroyed Argentina and July 5^th I skipped out from a work experience placement to watch Brazil play Italy in the deciding game for a place in the semi finals. Italy needed a win and Brazil only a draw, but someone forgot to tell Brazil. In undoubtedly the World Cup’s greatest game Paolo Rossi was reborn and Italy beat Brazil 3-2 and broke my heart. In Brazil this game is still referred to as the “Sarrias Disaster”. Bill Shankly once said that football was more important than life and death, well its not, but I have no words for how I felt on that Monday night. 

Italy went through to face Poland and the other semi final pitted West Germany against France, a team that England had beaten in the opening round of the tournament. The Germany France game from 1982 is on par with the Brazil France game of 1986, if you saw it you remember exactly where you where during the game. Germany won on penalties and went on to face Italy who was rejuvenated by the goal scoring form of Paolo Rossi. Italy triumphed 3-1 and my lasting memory of the final was the pure ecstasy and tears of Marco Tardelli after he scored Italy’s second goal.

The 1982 World Cup was over, but I can still remember everything about my grandmother’s front room on the night I saw the Brazil Russia highlights, and I can remember the short cut I took to get home in time to see the Brazil Italy game and I remember exactly what I did after I saw Tardelli’s celebration which has its own entry on Wikipedia

In closing…

I was disappointed to see Colin Miller leave the Whitecaps, another Canadian coach out of the league. I hope it won’t be long before we see Colin back in the game at the highest level.

And finally, the last Lower Island Soccer Coaches meeting of 2011 takes place on Monday 12^th December at the Lakehill Soccer Associations Braefoot Turf field from 6pm to 7.30pm, our topic for the night is “Defending in 2v2 and 3v3 situations”. I hope to see as many of you there as possible and remember to bring your boots!

A cause for concern

As promised I have some results from my initial observations of some U9 6v6 soccer. I have shared some of the info with a few colleagues to get their input and on the whole they have been as surprised as I was at the findings.

To recap, I had been watching some games in this age group and I had some concerns over the general lack of movement and ball contacts for the average player. Anyone who has watched games at this age will have seen the familiar pattern of two or three strong players on each team playing against each other with a supporting cast who are involved to a lesser extent.

So far the sample that I have is still relatively small but the results are somewhat surprising. With the help of Stu Hackett I have analysed 5 games and 10 different teams which included 89 players. The games we watched took place on the same day and on the same field so we have some constants, field size, game time and playing conditions. The previous analysis I had was on different days and different fields and some of the formats were mixed so I decided to drop these numbers from my analysis.

As I previously mentioned I decided to divide a players total number of ball touches by the total number of minutes in the game for a couple of reasons; first of all I don’t have enough help yet to monitor the actual playing time of each player and secondly, the vast majority of 8 year olds don’t play soccer away from the organisation we provide and they certainly don’t play when they are off the field during a game: so what they get with us is basically all they get, but more of that later.

So to the numbers:

In the games that we analysed only 28 players averaged more that 1 touch of the ball per minute. The highest number of touches a player achieved during the day was 91, which equates to 1.82 touches per minute for the most active player! Now, back to the way we got our TPM number. This particular player played on a team that had 8 players active in the game. So, 6 players were always on the field and two of them were on the bench, so on this team its pretty safe to suggest that the most active player was on the field approximately 75% of the time, and it’s absolutely certain that he received more that 50% of the time available.

To keep the ‘sabremetricians’ happy even if we adjust the TPM number and be generous and double it, the most active player had less than 4 touches per minute during the game!

When I first saw this number I was shocked as I was expecting to see that the dominant players were all over the ball and I expected to see a smaller number of players getting very little exposure to the ball. Unfortunately that small group is much larger that I had expected.

We found that 26 players averaged less than .5 touches on the ball over the course of the game and that the remaining 35 players averaged between a .5 to .99 touches per minute on the ball during the game. So in conclusion 69% of the players that took part the games that we watched had less than 1 touch of the ball per minute.  

As coaches we are always looking for the late developer and we always tell the story of Michael Jordan being cut from his junior high basketball team as an example of what you can achieve if you stick with it. Well, if Jordan lived in Victoria and he played soccer he would most likely be in the group of players who are getting less that 1 TPM. How long would he stay with the game before he looked for another sport?

If our late developers are getting less that 1 touch a minute then how are they going to develop? No wonder that they are late developers!  I have always thought that we lose a whole group of potential national team players every year, before we even know they exist and now I am convinced of that. We put a lot of faith in small sided games and see them as a great development tool, less players on the field gives them more chance to see the ball, well maybe not!

However way you look at this the actual ball contact in the game is not sufficient to allow the players to develop their skills. I believe that every time they touch the ball there is the chance for a ‘teaching moment’, either correction or praise. The more teaching moments we can provide the better. If they aren’t getting the touches in the games then our practices are critical to the development of this next generation on Canadian soccer players. Another reason for mandating coach certification!

So what now?

When I set out to do this study, I wanted to see what was going on the small sided game. Along with the touches per minute we were able to find some other statistics that interested us. The number of touches in the games we watched ranged from 637 to 732 with 4 of the 5 games within 54 touches. The number of touches per team ranged from 280 to 425 with 6 teams within 63 touches.

Our next step is to look at some more games to see if our numbers hold up. This will also allow us to find the optimum number of touches in a game. Once we find that number we will investigate ways of increasing the active players TPM number by reducing the number of players on the field and increasing the amount of active time in the game. We will also take this opportunity to look at the amount of physical activity that players undertake during the game and see if there is a link between TPM and physical activity.

If this is something that you are interested in and want a few more figures, then drop me a line headcoach@lowerislandsoccer.com and I will email you a short summary.

In closing, the next Lower Island Soccer Coaches Association meeting will take place next Friday, the 18^th of November at Reynolds Park on Prestwood Drive from 6.15pm. Our topic will be ‘Defending in 1v1 and 2v2 situations’. I hope to see as many of you there as possible and remember to bring your boots!

Defining success in youth sports

Well, we have taken a few shots this past couple of weeks from some poorly informed journalists criticising the LTPD plan and suggesting that we don’t want the players to be competitive and that we wont keep scores etc….I am not going to waste my time or yours by raking the coals. This dialogue does open up a good debate, in my opinion, regarding how we measure success in youth sports. Keeping scores and league tables at the younger ages is no predictor of how a team or a group of players will fare in future. We have all seen the dominant U10 team, bigger and faster than everyone else slowly fall from grace as the rest of the players catch up in size and speed and their superior technique which they worked on instead of shelling the ball down the, field takes over.

So how do we know if we are having success with our younger teams? Before I go any further let me be clear on one thing; I think winning is important…but so is losing. Youth sport is so much more than the outcome of any game. Sport teaches life lessons that are invaluable to us as we mature. We learn how to win and much more importantly, we learn how to lose and how to deal with disappointment. No one gets everything they want all the time and learning to deal with a loss is maybe the greatest life lesson there is:  the harsh truth in life is that the vast majority of us have a few more losses than wins!

I have always believed that the goal of the coach of a U6 team is to get the players to come back the following year, and in turn the goal of the U7 coach is to get them to come back as U8 players and so on. Athletes aren’t developed over one year; it’s a long term project, with the emphasis being on the long term.

If we want to try to define success in youth sports we need to look at much more than results and performance.

Our short term goals and ones that we can aim for in every session are pretty straight forward.

Make it enjoyable and keep them active.

Get them engaged in the process and make them feel a part of their team, not yours.

Teach them a new move

If they leave your session with a smile on their face then the chances are you are succeeding with the players and there is a greater chance of them coming back for more. Our game doesn’t have a problem attracting new players but we do have issues when it comes to player retention.

Defining long term success is a little wider in its scope incorporating the short term measures and some ‘bigger picture’ elements.

Teach them fair play and a respect for their opponents, the rules of the game and the officials who enforce the rules

Encourage them to always give their best effort, let them know that their best is always good enough regardless of the result

Make sure that the players are given opportunities to take on leadership roles within the team

From a technical point of view as coaches these elements will lead to success for your players:

Create an environment that allows and encourages the players to make their own decisions on the field

 Expose them to the different roles and responsibilities of different positions on the field

 Keep them challenged and keep them learning, in my experience we lose players because they stop improving-they aren’t burned out, they are bored

 Make the training competitive, the competition will stimulate their development.

Success in youth sports is difficult to measure and so is identifying the future top class athletes, one thing is for sure; when young players leave our game then we don’t get a second chance. I have always believed that we lose a team full of top class athletes in both genders each year before they ever get the soccer bug. If this is the case then the key measureable for defining success in youth soccer has to be retention: are our players coming back and are they playing as adults and staying active for life which is a key element of Long Term Player Development.

In closing…in my next blog I will give you more information on the touches per minute (TPM) project that I started in October. I have had some interesting conversations with Gregor Young from Monday Morning Centreback and we are talking about some projects that we can take on to get some more information on the small sided games.

The next Lower Island Soccer Coaches Association meeting will take place on Friday 18^th November at Reynolds Park starting at 6.15pm. The topic for the session will be basic defending in 1v1 and 2v2 situations. I hope to see as many of you there as possible and remember to bring your boots