Playing for results and standings vs. teaching the game

Depends on the age. But top level academy teams (top 10 ish) definitely must also teach tactics in order to win. As in, if the field is going to be big we must condition and do switching, long passing, put top players on defense, etc. Whatever percentage of time is spent on these things necessarily takes at least some time away from individual skills training (foot skills, receiving, trapping, etc). Also, a team more focused on the win pretty much has to put kids into certain positions and leave them there. The top level of competition often demands this in order to be competitive. In addition, most top level player's parents feel the need to seek additional skills training besides regular practices. Also, if a coach can keep his team in the "limelight" with wins, he/she can also draw already skilled players from other club teams, requiring less skills training. It is what it is, I guess. If your kid is a top player on a top team and you don't mind doing additional skills work, then it works for you. And it is nice for kids to get to play with other top players. Now, if your kid is just a decent player on a top team but is not developing enough skills and/or not being allowed to make mistakes or try a new position because of the fear of losing then maybe you might make the choice to find (I'm talking academy here) a team where they can get more skills and have opportunities to try new things even though the team overall w/l record is not as good. Just depends on the kids and parents I'd say.

I guess what I am really asking is. Are their poor tactics being taught by coaches just to secure a result!

totalsoccer wrote:I guess what I am really asking is. Are their poor tactics being taught by coaches just to secure a result!

Now that's a howler!


You already know the answer to that one... OF COURSE THERE IS! But that's not limited to select. That permeates every level of soccer. Overzealous coaches want to win at all costs. They lose sight of what matters most, the kids love of the game.

For example... I didn't even know what "crease tending" was until I went to the BlueSky in The Colony to watch a U06 game on their mini field. I just went to watch but about 30 seconds into it I said to a parent standing next to me, "Why is that little girl standing with her heels on that line?" Then I got to watch that cute defenseless little girl stand there, stationed by her coach, take blast after blast into her shin guards, thighs and tummy. She eventually burst into tears and was carried off only to be replaced by that coach's next victim. All because that jackass coach wanted to win. (I still don't understand why that girl's parents didn't pull her off the field for her own safety. Maybe it was his own daughter. I don't know why but I do know that coach needs a good knock on the head.)

[quote="bigtex75081"]

totalsoccer wrote:I guess what I am really asking is. Are their poor tactics being taught by coaches just to secure a result!

Now that's a howler!


You already know the answer to that one... OF COURSE THERE IS! But that's not limited to select. That permeates every level of soccer. Overzealous coaches want to win at all costs. They lose sight of what matters most, the kids love of the game.

For example... I didn't even know what "crease tending" was until I went to the BlueSky in The Colony to watch a U06 game on their mini field. I just went to watch but about 30 seconds into it I said to a parent standing next to me, "Why is that little girl standing with her heels on that line?" Then I got to watch that cute defenseless little girl stand there, stationed by her coach, take blast after blast into her shin guards, thighs and tummy. She eventually burst into tears and was carried off only to be replaced by that coach's next victim. All because that jackass coach wanted to win. (I still don't understand why that girl's parents didn't pull her off the field for her own safety. Maybe it was his own daughter. I don't know why but I do know that coach needs a good knock on the head.)[/quo



Yes, yes, yes but I think we as NTX are guilty for promoting this through rankings and league play standings. There has to be a better system to develop even our select program players! I have just seen too many coaches running 10-1 systems for my liking and we as parents call that soccer!

totalsoccer wrote:I guess what I am really asking is. Are their poor tactics being taught by coaches just to secure a result!

Total - what did you see this weekend to set off a fishing expedition with all these rhetorical questions?

The perception of a team's tactics is relative.

We can feel robbed one week by a team that packed it in with negative tactics to get points we felt they shouldn't have gotten, but are we still sanctimonious about tactics when it's our team digging the bunkers?

No, just interested in everyone thoughts!

totalsoccer wrote:No, just interested in everyone thoughts!

What a loaded question...

How about you start then - Now that you are at blue with the fennigens - the question is - what are your thoughts?

C'mon - spit it out. You know you want to...

Winning v Development.....

In all my years in the competitive soccer world, I have yet to see development take priority over wins. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is the nature of the beast, "fair" or not.

Win (or stack the box to tie) at all costs: Does your employer keep you on staff because you "have potential" to be a good employee, or are they "results-driven"?

Prestige of the club: A Hyundai Equus is a very, very nice car....but people will buy a C-class (piece of crap) Mercedes for the same price because it's a Mercedes and not a Hyundai - and the owner gets to park the Mercedes logo attached to that piece of crap C-class in his/her driveway.

Some absolutely true statements about club soccer:
-Winning elevates the prestige of the club
-Winning enables recruiting, which makes the team better overall
-Winning gets you into showcase tournaments
-Showcase tournaments elevate the prestige of the club
-Showcase tournaments get players noticed/recruited by colleges/national teams
-College recruiting results have parents lining up with cash in hand
-Cash in hand creates nicer practice facilities
-Cash in hand employs "big-name" coaches
-"Big-Name" coaches on prestigious clubs can write letters to colleges/national teams
-Letters get players noticed and recruited - thus elevating the presige of the club

All of this comes full circle to: Doting parents lining up with cash in hand, ensuring club success and rich club owners. Welcome to America. If you have a product, you market it, sell it and as long as you deliver, you profit from it.

Take a hard look at the rosters of the prestigious clubs right now. Write them down. Then, when the kids are 15/16/17, compare the rosters. You will be amazed at how few players (if any) are still there. Truth is, players get "developed" by other coaches, then migrate (get recruited) to the prestigious clubs at those ages. Paying big bucks to wear a jersey at this age is actually backward.

Find a coach that "develops" your kid today. Don't focus on winning yet. Don't focus on the logo on the shirt. Don't focus on the standings. Focus on continuous improvement. Do this, and the "presigious" clubs will come calling in a few years - practically begging you to take the spot of the kid that has been with them since academy. Hard but true.

10sDad wrote:In all my years in the competitive soccer world, I have yet to see development take priority over wins. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is the nature of the beast, "fair" or not.

Win (or stack the box to tie) at all costs: Does your employer keep you on staff because you "have potential" to be a good employee, or are they "results-driven"?

Prestige of the club: A Hyundai Equus is a very, very nice car....but people will buy a C-class (piece of crap) Mercedes for the same price because it's a Mercedes and not a Hyundai - and the owner gets to park the Mercedes logo attached to that piece of crap C-class in his/her driveway.

Some absolutely true statements about club soccer:
-Winning elevates the prestige of the club
-Winning enables recruiting, which makes the team better overall
-Winning gets you into showcase tournaments
-Showcase tournaments elevate the prestige of the club
-Showcase tournaments get players noticed/recruited by colleges/national teams
-College recruiting results have parents lining up with cash in hand
-Cash in hand creates nicer practice facilities
-Cash in hand employs "big-name" coaches
-"Big-Name" coaches on prestigious clubs can write letters to colleges/national teams
-Letters get players noticed and recruited - thus elevating the presige of the club

All of this comes full circle to: Doting parents lining up with cash in hand, ensuring club success and rich club owners. Welcome to America. If you have a product, you market it, sell it and as long as you deliver, you profit from it.

Take a hard look at the rosters of the prestigious clubs right now. Write them down. Then, when the kids are 15/16/17, compare the rosters. You will be amazed at how few players (if any) are still there. Truth is, players get "developed" by other coaches, then migrate (get recruited) to the prestigious clubs at those ages. Paying big bucks to wear a jersey at this age is actually backward.

Find a coach that "develops" your kid today. Don't focus on winning yet. Don't focus on the logo on the shirt. Don't focus on the standings. Focus on continuous improvement. Do this, and the "presigious" clubs will come calling in a few years - practically begging you to take the spot of the kid that has been with them since academy. Hard but true.

Admin should sticky this post as a service to North Texas soccer parents.

[quote="4-4-2-Diamond"][quote="10sDad"]In all my years in the competitive soccer world, I have yet to see development take priority over wins. However, I have come to the conclusion that it is the nature of the beast, "fair" or not.

We have a true development coach and it is really hard right now to watch us get beat by the more tactical coached teams. Playing select with hardly any tactical soccer taught yet is tough. You loose many close games because players have not been taught the edge to win. I can tell you from watching the other teams that he is one of a only a few. I struggle with the close losses and keep telling myself that he is coaching for the long haul. It certainly is not to make the parents happy. Our team looks silly in some situations where he has not seen the need to spend time teaching tactical advantage.

The real question is where should my kid be playing at U8-U15 in order to be a top player at U16? (when colleges come calling) The answer of course is not 'the team that wins the most by watching videos and practicing tactics during practice'. It's the coach that focuses on individual skills and small sided games. If that happens to be a team that wins a lot - all the better. College coaches don't care what your team did at U12 (neither will you if dd can't play at U16), they want to see what technical level dd is playing at by soph yr in HS. They can and will teach her their college team's tactics, heck they will even move her to a new position.

my dd had a coach that flat out admitted to me:

"my only concern is to win games any way possible so I can keep my job"

Blah Blah Blah... this topic AGAIN...

It's very simple. The best coaches/teams work on both skills and tactics. The best way to get spotted by colleges is to play on a top team that colleges go watch play.

The best way to end up on one of those teams is to be on a top 1-10 team in acadmey and ride that horse into D1 Lake Highlands and possibly beyond.

The coaches who think ONLY short term will have a top team in one age group but as they get older they drop considerably. The best coaches in academy are the ones who have girls in top teams in each age group and going into select.

There you have it. Is this the only way... no.. .and late bloomers will have ample opportunity to try out on top teams later... but this is the most efficient and cleanest way IMO.

totalsoccer wrote:I don’t know maybe not keeping standings and decreasing the emphasis on league play and increasing emphasis on tournament and small sided might relieve some of the pressure of just gaining a result. What do you guys think?

Aren't you an academy coach, TS? Based on posts I've seen from you in the "Teams/Players Looking" section, I gather that you are an Andromeda academy coach. Nothing too wrong with Andromeda (except the price!), by the way; just another club trying to lure good players and paying parents its way so that grown men and women like yourself can make money coaching soccer. There's the 800 pound gorilla in the room.

But here's my question to you or any other club coach who wants to chime in: If development is the true goal, why cut a player who puts in the effort? You've done that a time or two, right? So does every other coach from your club including the DOC. Parents talk of development, yet most of them wouldn't recognize it because they've never played at a high level. They know what the coach tells them, what they read on this forum (God, help them), and how many step-over moves their precious Mia's do in a soccer game. But an academy or select coach, on the other hand, extolling longterm development, demonizing tactical training, but always keeping an eye out for better players who can replace his bottom third... It's hypocritical.

Clearly, a coach like yourself cuts players and recruits "better" replacements to WIN games. We are a society that likes to win. Players, parents, and coaches all strive to win. Yet winning is treated like an evil act on this forum by - wait for it - parents and coaches of losing teams. That's how they explain losses. "Our team doesn't win; our players are developed!" If a player comes along who can get more wins, the coach's little "development" project is looking for another team. Convenient.

Shelby427 wrote:Blah Blah Blah... this topic AGAIN...

It's very simple. The best coaches/teams work on both skills and tactics. The best way to get spotted by colleges is to play on a top team that colleges go watch play.

The best way to end up on one of those teams is to be on a top 1-10 team in acadmey and ride that horse into D1 Lake Highlands and possibly beyond.

The coaches who think ONLY short term will have a top team in one age group but as they get older they drop considerably. The best coaches in academy are the ones who have girls in top teams in each age group and going into select.

There you have it. Is this the only way... no.. .and late bloomers will have ample opportunity to try out on top teams later... but this is the most efficient and cleanest way IMO.

I think it's very simple too, but in a different way. The time you spend on tactics or sharing one ball with 21 other players at U11 or younger is time that you didn't spend learning technique and doing thousands of repetitions of basic skills. You might think that the skills are good enough anyway, and the evidence might be that the skills are as good as all the other kids in this system. But we should be comparing the players to a higher technical standard, not to the other kids in the age group or on the same team. And nearly all the players are far below the level that they could achieve if they spent more of the limited practice time on technique.

intrinsic wrote:

Shelby427 wrote:Blah Blah Blah... this topic AGAIN...

It's very simple. The best coaches/teams work on both skills and tactics. The best way to get spotted by colleges is to play on a top team that colleges go watch play.

The best way to end up on one of those teams is to be on a top 1-10 team in acadmey and ride that horse into D1 Lake Highlands and possibly beyond.

The coaches who think ONLY short term will have a top team in one age group but as they get older they drop considerably. The best coaches in academy are the ones who have girls in top teams in each age group and going into select.

There you have it. Is this the only way... no.. .and late bloomers will have ample opportunity to try out on top teams later... but this is the most efficient and cleanest way IMO.

I think it's very simple too, but in a different way. The time you spend on tactics or sharing one ball with 21 other players at U11 or younger is time that you didn't spend learning technique and doing thousands of repetitions of basic skills. You might think that the skills are good enough anyway, and the evidence might be that the skills are as good as all the other kids in this system. But we should be comparing the players to a higher technical standard, not to the other kids in the age group or on the same team. And nearly all the players are far below the level that they could achieve if they spent more of the limited practice time on technique.

By this logic why play the actual game of soccer at all? Just have soccer contest on shooting, passing, dribbling, heck play monkey in the middle and give points. Don't let kids play the game until they are 16 years old... I'm sure they will all pass on competing in volleyball, softball, track, and other sports so they can run drills in competition for 10 years.

Seriously, if you are expecting the 2-4 hours a week with your coach to be the meat for your skills sesions each week you are far behind. By the time kids are U11, they should be getting 80% of their skill work and nearly 90% of their conditioning on their own time at home. If done correctly, you can learn tacitcs and skills at the same time with your coaches that you pay money too. You can do all the skills practice at home for free.

Shelby427 wrote:

Don't let kids play the game until they are 16 years old...

Not really as far-fetched as this might sound. A couple of my friends who came up through the Sao Paolo system and had long and distinguished professional careers never played a competitive match until U14.

In the "skills first" model, as it could be called, you do play games (usually not 11 v 11, but that's another discussion) to have a chance to use the skills you are learning. But in that model, you don't spend much time in practice on tactics to try to win the games so you can have a top 10 academy team in at attempt to get to D1 so that you have the easiest road to college recruiting.

nothing wrong with some tactical understanding of the game. Tactics for the sole sake of winning in youth soccer is an issue. First the way to win in youth soccer is to limit the number of passes particuarly out of the back. A good percentage of goals are scored as a result of mistake. Fewer touches fewer chances for mistake. Of course as they get older the skill improves and the number of mistakes diminishes. Our game this weekend the goal was a result of the defender trying to play her way out of the back. Had she just kicked it forward or out of bounds there wouldn't have been a goal. For development you want her to beat the forward and play the ball from the back. From a winning perspective you want her to kick the ball out of your defensive end. Is there and issue? sure. According to most accepted experts who know way more about soccer than any of us. Is the problem as simple as no tactics vs game day tactics? no.

Gunner9 wrote:

Shelby427 wrote:

Don't let kids play the game until they are 16 years old...

Not really as far-fetched as this might sound. A couple of my friends who came up through the Sao Paolo system and had long and distinguished professional careers never played a competitive match until U14.

Exactly! but I think one of the advantadges our kids could have is being exposed to a tacticle understanding of the game at an earlier age. I know my dd's understanding of the game was all skill. Get the ball and the dribble all the way to the other end and score. She now see's the game as bigger than herself. She is able to look and understand for "herself" what is being done on the field. Not mini tactics forced on by a youth soccer bootleg mourinho for the sake of winning a game. but a understanding of the game. Creating a missmatch, wall pass, overlapping, etc. But of course without the skill you will always be limited in the tactics you can apply

intrinsic wrote:In the "skills first" model, as it could be called, you do play games (usually not 11 v 11, but that's another discussion) to have a chance to use the skills you are learning. But in that model, you don't spend much time in practice on tactics to try to win the games so you can have a top 10 academy team in at attempt to get to D1 so that you have the easiest road to college recruiting.

I'm not advocating one extreme or the other...

You assume top academy teams win because of tactics and that would be a joke. The top academy teams have the top skilled players period. They also apply SOME tactics to win.

I don't advocate a coach spending an hour of practice on tactics... don't get me wrong. But tactics like how you line up, give and go, marking up on defenders, passing into space.. these are fundamental tactics that SOME players at the younger ages are READY to learn and use. How to manage a free kick, a corner kick... nothing wrong with learning how to do this before you have a driver's license.

Some people always want to find something wrong with "the system"... I have been around the youth game in north texas for over a decade and beleive me... the best U8s-U10s blow away kids 10 years ago at their same age.... Not even close. (More so on the girls side than boys IMO)

So to recap.. I agree their should be a stronger emphasis on skills than tactics BY FAR... I just disagree with the ZERO TACTICS until menopause theory.

Kids want to play SOCCER... not do skill camps 24/7... If you want more kids to fall out of the system then by all means... don't let them play it.

We actually agree on a lot, but even more than skill, most top academy teams owe a lot of their winning ways to speed, size, strength, and aggressiveness (overall athleticism).

intrinsic wrote:We actually agree on a lot, but even more than skill, most top academy teams owe a lot of their winning ways to speed, size, strength, and aggressiveness (overall athleticism).

That is an accurate point. But here's going to be the shocker for a lot of these parents who simply believe that if their modestly athletic daughter will just stay the course, she'll somehow break out in high school. That is sometimes not the case. An average soccer player (even rec level) with exceptional speed / athleticism / aggressiveness will often have more impact on the soccer field in high school games than their select counterparts. Will such players be better than top D1 select players? No. Might they contribute more than some D2/D3/Plano players. It does happen. Learning good skills at a young age is no substitute for pure, unadulterated physical ability. Many a skilled soccer player is eventually limited by lousy genes from their parents.

Our game this weekend the goal was a result of the defender trying to play her way out of the back. Had she just kicked it forward or out of bounds there wouldn't have been a goal. For development you want her to beat the forward and play the ball from the back. From a winning perspective you want her to kick the ball out of your defensive end.

Psst...hey, defender's parents from "that" team, and I KNOW you are reading this....maybe it's time to find a new team, LOL !!!! I'm VERY sure there are many teams who would LOVE to have your dd. I mean, seriously, go99, you had to point out the one and only goal against your team from this past weekend? I do understand and appreciate your point about development but do you realize that you also just basically said that your defender sucked and that they were the only reason you had one goal (score was 7 to 1) scored against your team? I am thinking/hoping that you did not really think about that defender's parents reading your post and were honestly thinking about how that player tried to play out of the back and how that was cool for her development but......perhaps a "that was really cool" post is in order?