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!