Sheffield in 1975 is a totally different animal to British Columbia in 2011, bring our team forward in a time machine and most of us would have quit after 3 games because we weren’t winning or being developed! The parents would have hunted our coaches down and replaced them with someone who knew what he was doing as how could they possibly be doing a good job if we were getting humped every week! In 1975 we had no other sports that we could play, none of us had play stations or Wii’s, we felt very lucky to be involved in organised sports and be on a team that had our own shirts that we didn’t have to wash ourselves. We paid 10p a week subs, which is less than 20 cents, and we enjoyed the games and the feeling of being on a team, however if we would have had some different options I am sure that most of us would have looked at them at some point. But the point is we didn’t have any other choices when it came to playing organised sports so we stuck with it.
This brings me back to the situation today: After watching some U8 and U10 games I have come to the realisation that our product, the game, is not as good as it could be. This is certainly not the fault of the volunteer coaches who are doing their best to keep the children active, its not the fault of the clubs or districts who are also doing their best to keep the teams playing and on the field and its not the fault of our governing bodies who are doing all they can to keep the game ticking over.
The fault, or blame, or whatever word you want to use to describe the deficiencies in our game, is, in my opinion…the game itself. Most games in these age groups revolve around two or three players on each team. They dominate the majority of the play and the other players are on the edge of the game and only get a kick of the ball when it comes near them. At this age the two things our players need from the game are, touches on the ball and exercise to keep them active. For two or three of them we are providing this, but for the rest of the players on the teams I think we are falling short. If they don’t get touches on the ball then they won’t improve as soccer players, if they don’t get the exercise or activity they need then the result of that can be much more serious. With a multitude of different sporting and activity options available to young children and families today it’s no surprise that we lose players from our sport as they don’t have to stick it out.
As I am watching these games I constantly ask myself, is our product good enough and if not how do we improve it so that we can retain more players. We aren’t developing future pro’s in these age groups, we are trying to keep them active and get them to choose soccer as their primary sport and as a life long sport, as in stage 7 of “Wellness To World Cup”. Once we lose a player to another sport they are pretty much gone for good, how many top class athletes do we lose every season because some other option proved to be a better one for them? Can we afford to keep losing these players to our rival sports?
The down side to having an opinion is that you have to be prepared for it to be wrong. Well, next season at Lower Island we will be monitoring a number of games in the U8 and U10 age groups in the hope that I am wrong. We will look at the number of times each player kicks the ball during a game and we will also be asking our customers, the players and their parents, what they like about the game and what they think would make it better, after all in the service industry the customer is always right!
When our research is completed we will share that information with other clubs and districts. If ,as I suspect, we find that the players are not seeing enough of the ball in the game or getting enough activity we will look at trialling some changes to our games program on the Island so that we can improve the product and keep more players playing.
Is it worth wasting all that time in the kid’s games on something we can introduce in the space of one week when they are a little older?
As promised, my Champions League prediction: Barcelona, but if it goes to penalties then I go for United as they have the best research on penalties in the game. Read Soccernomics if you get the chance as there is a great piece in the book on the penalty shoot out between United and Chelsea in Moscow in 2008
Excellent post. It rings true in every respect. I wonder if you might consider offering two different versions of the game at your club. Schedule teams to play under the current rules and then have another group that plays 4v4 (small goals no keepers) at U8 and 5v5 (4v4 plus goalkeepers) at U10. No standings and no referees. Obviously people would know the score during each match but after it was over the result would be irrelevant. You just need with coaching knowledge to observe the areas that need working on during practices. You could then compare the statistics from the two different footballing experiences at the end of the season. I would hope clubs from across Canada would be interested in knowing the results of a study like that.
ReplyDeleteInteresting perspective Andrew.
ReplyDeleteI agree with you that our objective at these young age groups should not be on developing future pro’s. But I also think that these ages are often the ages where kids can pick up the physical skills that can help them enjoy the game for a life time. So it is a difficult balance between formal training by skilled knowledgeable coaches, and babysitters who provide an enjoyable focus on fun. Really skilled coaches can do both.
Speaking from experience, I coached these young ages for many years (all 3 of my daughters) and most of the players on my teams came back year after year because the environment was fun. We won a few games and lost many, but we always had "good" teams. Many of these players still play today, so I'm relativley proud of the fact that I helped make the game enjoyable so they continue to play for (what I hope will be) a life time.
But the truth is I'm not a soccer player and I certainly could not demonstrate soccer skills. I did my best to teach them skills by bringing in guests who could, and by using the Technical Director at my Club. This worked to some degree, but I feel that many of my players missed out on enhancing their skills - so who knows if this failure on my part unknowningly prevented a true star from emerging.
We need to improve the product and we need look at different ways to do that. Good on you for looking at this!!
PS. I hope you were getting "thumped" every week, not "humped". :-)
Thought provoking post. I like the idea of talking to parents about how they feel things are going, and getting their input into ideas for improvement. I think I'll try counting touches on the ball one game, or getting a parent to do it, and see what I find. My first instinct with my team this year is that it's actually reasonably balanced even though we have some really strong players and several very new players--for example, we have had goals scored by some of the "weakest" players on our team in each of our matches so far. I'm not quite sure how to explain that success, except that we're really emphasizing positional play so that one or two players can't dominate the field but have to allow others to play their positions and therefore get an opportunity on the ball. I also think the size of the field helps - a few strong players just cannot dominate in all areas of the field when there is that much space to run around in.
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