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.
Great stuff, Andrew. I would love to get a copy of the final report when you are done. Tallying the numbers and bringing them to the light of day is the only way to make it clear to people what actually happens in our training and competition formats. That is, we so often "think" we know what is happening, but the real numbers will frequently tell a different story, or reveal a deeper pattern. Our players need a lot more TPM -- not just for skills, but also for fun and engagement -- the level of fun is too frequently overlooked, even at a metro level training session.
ReplyDeleteGood stuff Andrew, a couple of thoughts spring to my mind. I think the number of touches players get is related to the style of play adopted. Taking the Swansea-Fulham game as an example, rather than the typical harkening to Barcelona as the only group that can pass teams right off the pitch, Brendan Rodger's boys dominated with passing and possession, thus also dominating in touches per game/minute or anything else. What I do wonder is within the 613 passes completed by Swansea, how many were directly back to the original passer and how many passes were backwards or sideways in order to maintain possession and/or move the defending team around to create space and chances? Mark Schwarzer stated that he felt more dominated by Swansea than he did during the 5-0 mauling by Man United. This speaks volumes to me, because in most of the games I play in or watch at various levels and age groups, the focus on scoring goals, as many and as quickly as possible, takes away from the organic beauty and rhythm of the game. Like a song that doesn't build to the chorus with a verse or two first, or a young man rushing to get the deed done, rather than enjoying the journey to get there, which is in truth the best part, too much emphasis is placed on scoring and winning rather than playing.
ReplyDeleteCheers, Kai Dowling
I agree with what Kai is getting at. I think we really need to change our entire attitude to youth soccer. The focus on winning is completely misplaced. Winning a U10 game means absolutely nothing, but losing (especially a heavy loss or string of losses) loses us players (and can alienate people from a sport they may enjoy yet not excel at).
ReplyDeleteI feel that we need to put in some hardline rules. Something like "if your team is up by three goals, you have to try and score with a header until the score is closer" or "If your team is three goals up, your team has to play two-touch." These rules would help keep the games closer in terms of score (which helps morale) and would generally serve to give the weaker players (on either team) more touches.
Excellent insight Andrew!
ReplyDeleteMy question is: this was on a u9 field of what dimension? if it was at Braefoot Park house league then it would be on 1/3 of a full field with the length of the field shortened..how would this compare to the typical u9 field played within the LISA u9 league?
I remember being told that the size of the pitch should not matter and questioned that thinking that the larger the pitch just meant the better athletes who could carry the ball would in fact get more touches at the price of the less athletic players standing around.
Making the pitch smaller probably meant everyone would get more touches but also possibly at the price of lowering the total touches for the more athletic players. So would the effect be less quality touches because the ball would be whacked out of bounds more frequently?
What would be interesting as a side bar would be to correlate the stats to the size of the pitch and the amount of times the ball went out of play also using a chess clock the amount of times a team had possession. How many passes were attempted and completed at the younger ages?....
Thanks for your comments chaps. I am plesaed to see you talk about the touches on the ball as that is relevant to the development of soccer players, however I would like to open up a bigger discussion about physical activity in the game. The total number of touches can be increased with less stoppages to the game and I will be looking at increasing this number in some trial games later this year. Increasing the TPM per player is just a matter of taking players off the field and playing 5v5.
ReplyDeleteWhen it comes to physical activity levels we need smaller squads and maybe a slight change in the dimensions. What would happen if the filed was longer and a little narrower? The game at the younger ages is very much a north south affair, maybe if they had a little further to run we may get them a little more active. Who knows until we try this?
Once again, thanks for your comments, we need to have more discussion about making the experience better for the players so we keep more players and families engaged for longer.