Scuffed | USMNT, World Cup, Yanks Abroad, futbol in America - #622: Grassroots Pt. 4 — Listener Q&A with Jim Harte and Mike Idland

Episode Date: August 28, 2025

Why not tell kids to "space out"? Can you teach 7-yr-olds to defend? What to tell your intimidated 4-year-old? How to progress from U6 to U12? We wrap up this series with a bunch of listener-submitted questions and comments, and Mike and Jim (and Belz) responding to those. Lots of good ones, and this was a fun one to record. Respect and gratitude to Mike and Jim for their service to the game. Skip the ads! Subscribe to Scuffed on Patreon and get all episodes ad-free, plus any bonus episodes. Patrons at $5 a month or more also get access to Clip Notes, a video of key moments on the field we discuss on the show, plus all patrons get access to our private Discord server, live call-in shows, and the full catalog of historic recaps we've made: https://www.patreon.com/scuffedAlso, check out Boots on the Ground, our USWNT-focused spinoff podcast headed up by Tara and Vince. They are cooking over there, you can listen here: https://boots-on-the-ground.simplecast.comAnd check out our MERCH, baby. We have better stuff than you might think: https://www.scuffedhq.com/store Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Welcome to the Scuff Podcast where we talk about U.S. Soccer. Hey, everybody, as promised, here is the last installment of our little grassroots series, a Q&A-style episode with two men I'm very grateful for Jim Hart and Mike Eidland. Jim is the founder of the high school champions league and a 40-year veteran of high school soccer, elementary school PE, and club soccer in the Tampa area. Mike is the women's soccer coach at SUNY Brockport in upstate New York and a Rex soccer coach. and coaching educator, each of them recorded an episode with me about rec soccer and how kids approach it. Today, we're going to respond to questions and comments from people who listen to those episodes,

try to tie up any loose ends. I'm really looking forward to it. Thanks to both of you for being here. How are you, Jim? Doing great. Bells, how are you? I'm well. I'm well. Thanks. Thanks again. Mike, how are you? I'm great, Pells. It's going to be fun. Great. So let's start with a question submitted By voicemail, these are our favorites. Let's just go ahead. Hi, my name's Brendan, and I'm located in Denver. The question that I have centers around the development of kids,

where my daughter, she is four and definitely is one of the smaller people on her team of three to five-year-olds. So one, how do you help with that development when certain kids are much physically further along than they are? and also just, you know, emotionally, just making sure that she enjoys it and stays positive when, you know, they're just much bigger kids and she's a little further behind on that. So I look forward to your thoughts, great podcasts, and it gave me good food for thought for both my daughter and my 11th month old son. Thank you. Mike, why don't you kick us off? Sure. I've got a few thoughts on that one. So I think big picture, my first reaction to it is don't forget that soccer is supposed to be fun.

for your child, you know, and that's regardless of age. And I would say especially at four years old. And, you know, that's one thing like where the parenting instincts for me, like trust them, you know, and if you're looking at her experience in there and it's legitimately uncomfortable, it's not an enjoyable thing to be at soccer there, it, I mean, it's good parenting to just tap the brakes there, I would say, you know. But I have other thoughts on that, too, that kind of tie a little bit more into the programming side, you know, and it's because we want them to be, obviously, around soccer.

And it sounds like the problem here is, is more than anything, the grouping of the ages, you know, like I wonder, and I'd probably end up deferring to Jim a little bit more on this one, whether the age bands are, are what you're looking for. Three to five seems like a very big band to me. But I know with my own children, like I've got an interesting thing going on in our rec program where, like, I can sometimes exercise a little bit of influence on it. But my kids are 18 months apart in age. And just about every other season, I'm able to get away with playing the older one down in age group.

And it goes just fine. It kind of, to be honest, matches her needs, her, like, skill level needs. There's certainly no advantage or anything from it. But what she gets out of it is much, much better for her. And I just think rec soccer should give you that type of flexibility where, you know, everybody always thinks about playing up. But here and there, it might make sense to play down. Okay, I got a question.

Before we go on, I got a question about this. This is something we deal with. Anytime somebody is, like, surprised that their kid has to move up an age group, you know, because the way it's broken down is kind of confusing to people. Sure. Part of me is like, man, we should just let that, we should let that girl play with the U-6s again. She's not that good. It doesn't really matter.

But the thought is, if anybody finds out, Then there's going to be kind of like a firestorm or something. And so we're not going to do that. We got to be like we got to be real righteous about the age levels. What's what's your thought on that? Let's not get carried away. It's just little kid soccer, you know. I don't think we need to have the police out there to figure that, you know, that that's my reaction to it.

Interesting. I'd be curious to get Jim's thoughts on whether, Jim, if you feel like that age band is best for Brendan's daughter. So I think you said they were in a three to five-year-old age group. It just seems to me that that's a, I mean, the difference between a three-year-old and a five-year-old is night and day. Massive. Well, it's a difference between what a, in school, what a pre-K-3 kid can do versus a kindergartar. You're talking really about like the difference between junior high and the pros. It's really a big difference.

I mean, three to five, I mean, five is almost twice as old. a three-year-old when you think about it. But, no, so I agree. That's what I would say, Mike, is that your thought about the age band is on target. As far as the parents, one of the things that we're probably going to talk about a lot in this, in the show is how we talk to the parents

and what we say to the parents in an ongoing dialogue with the parents. and one of the things that having an ongoing dialogue with the parents can do is it can let them see how you're thinking and what you value and what you emphasize over time. And then, so then you can come back to them, not as a stranger, who they don't know anything about you or what your motives are, but instead, as a person who's building on, you know,

15 different times you've already talked to them and saying, hey, by the way, this kid as a six-year-old would not be a problem jumping in here. they would be much more open to accepting that as part of building on a way of thinking that they already recognize and understand and trust. But if you are stuck with this situation, there are some concrete little points or little things you can do. First thing is somebody's always going to be the smallest. It's not really a big, it's not an uncommon thing. Somebody in every group is the smallest kid.

So this happens all the time. Of course, some are much smaller than others, and it sounds like that's the case in Brendan's situation. But some things you can do is if there is an empathetic older kid, now five years old is still kind of self-focused, but I can think of kindergartners that were focused on being helpers. And you can find that kid who is a helper type person. Often it's a girl, but not always. and pair them up with that kid and sort of make them like their little sister or little brother

or whatever the case may be. Another thing you can do if you're in a regular dialogue with the parents and one thing you get to the parents is that you want to use them at various capacities. You can have it be that this kid in certain situations gets a special eye on them by a selected parent who's just watching them. So you don't have to watch them as a coach.

you want to be able to watch the group, but if somebody's focused on watching that kid, that can be a help and even has the freedom to walk over and sort of redirect that kid or help that kid in the middle of an activity so that as the coach of the activity, you can keep going.

That might help. Sometimes running the practice by music and using musical prompts can help that kid because when you introduce a musical prompt, it's not about the kid and the other kids, but it's about the kid and the music. And what each individual kid is focusing on is the music and what is the music telling me that I'm supposed to do right now. So the kids can get

lost in the music. And then that other little kid over there who's maybe behind everything, well, they're lost, but no is really noticing that. And they can, in their own way, pick up on what the music is telling them to do. And it won't be maybe as effective or, as efficient as what the older kids are doing. But it kind of takes the focus. When everything is the coach-talking, the players reacting, then it's a lot more focus on what are all the other kids doing. But when the music is prompting them,

it kind of creates a mist that they all fall into. But I wouldn't worry too much about it because they won't always be the smallest. Next year they won't be the smallest. And they can learn from that experience and help the next smallest kid that comes along. Okay. The thing that Brennan's question made me think of

is my five-year-old, my five-year-old son. He's been playing in the house a lot with me all winter. So he's kind of excited all winter, all summer. He's kind of excited for soccer to start. And the first time he went out on the field this fall was a, we were doing a coaching demonstration for the new coaches in U-6 and U-8. We were doing, like, showing him how to do some drills.

So I had some kids of different ages out there, including my own son and my daughter. And they were doing a goal race, like a goal race's drill that one of the other coaches found useful. And he was showing them how to do it. And they would have a kid start in each corner and then dribble up around a cone in the middle of the field and the race to see you could come back and score in the goal first. And my son was up against a nine-year-old girl in this drill. And he lost, like kind of in front of everybody. and he's a very emotional kid and he got he got

he went apoplectic he started as soon as she kicked it in the goal ahead of him he sprinted over to me I could see his face melting as he was about to like start crying did it like a flying head butt

right into my nuts and um and I picked him up and I was like buddy it's okay it's okay and then he he um he ran into the car and basically stayed there the rest of the, it was like a short thing. It was like 20 minutes, but he basically didn't

come back out of the car. And I had to like help with the thing. And I saw I wasn't, you know, I was like, come on out, you know. And then I thought about it. And I had a pretty direct conversation with him a few days later before, actually before our next practice. And I don't usually do this kind of stuff. I've told both of you, I'm not great at like talking to, like, explaining stuff to kids. I'm more like put him in a situation. But I said to him, I said, buddy, I don't care if you win in the drills today. I don't care if you win the games. I don't care if you are the best.

All I care about is that you try hard. You're a good player. Just keep trying and have fun. And I swear to you, he heard me. You know, like I'm as surprised as anybody, but he heard me. Amazing, right? And the next practice, you know, he's not the best kid on his team. So he ended up losing a lot of stuff in the next practice, and he kept it together.

And I thought, man, what a, what a victory for direct conversation and cliches, you know, just try hard. And so, I mean, that'd be one thing I'd say to Brendan is just be really direct with your daughter. Like, you're not, it's okay if you don't win everything. It's okay if you're not the best. Just keep trying hard and try to have fun. And she might, she might receive that, you know. Yeah, 100%. That stuff applies to even school, you know.

Like, you see the kids, and I think it's more and more where, the pressure of getting everything perfect, it's like, oh, my, it's an endemic, you know. And that exact advice, Bell, like, I've been given, it's much more in the school realm than in the soccer realm or whatever. But it translates across, which is just, hey, did you do your best, you know? And if the answer to that is yes, we're good, you know? And like often that will be translated to an excellent grade once in a rare while. It might not. Sooner or later it's not going to, you know.

the same thing for soccer, the same thing for any performance-based dance, any of that kind of stuff. And she puts them in a healthier headspace, I think. Something that's something I want to say about that. Kids want to please and they want to do well. They often just don't know how to do well. They just need to know how to do well. And what you did was you created a template for victory for your son. As long as you try, I'm good.

yes now I understand how to do well I understand what winning is for my dad if it's if it's less than your best effort for me that's that and then that part has to get taken pretty seriously you know and it always does for like for our girls and it's rare but here and there you'll see it you know like well did you do your best and if the answer to out is no okay then we need to have a real discussion about that um because that part we do need to hold you accountable for. But the outcome piece is kind of out of your control, you know, and that's whether it's a sport or honestly the test in school or the, you know, it's across the board. And it is interesting to think about how little kids maybe don't know

what victory looks like. That's right. And that's why part of the frustration is the confusion about that, you know. It also gives us a hidden strength because we, can define what winning is. And that can take the focus. One of our later callers is asking about winning and losing and reactions to winning and losing. But developing a sort of parallel

agenda that you decide as a coach, this is what winning is. Forget the number of balls going into goal. This is what winning is. It's this. And then you're consistent with that. And your feedback is consistent with that. They'll follow you. Awesome.

Even just one final thought to put a bow on this one is, and I believe Brendan mentioned that it sounded like it was an actual team that she was on. And that one struck me a little bit as odd to the concept of having a team at that age, which is young, you know. And it's, I think that that idea would be very, very, very foreign to a kid that young of a team. And when you put them in even under six, which is kind of, I think more of like a standard age group to. to enter into sports. If you kind of, I remember, Jim, you said this beautifully in one of your episodes as sort of like advice for coaches to think of it a little bit differently, not so much as coaching a team, but you are coaching individual players in that setting, right? Happy to be wearing the same color shirt, but that's about as teamish as it gets in their mind. And like, you know,

if you really try to, you know, pay attention to them at those younger ages, the team concept is just too abstract for them. They are not thinking of it really that way. You know, I think they're experiencing a soccer ball amongst other people. And that's about as much of the team concept as they're going to wrap their heads around. Yeah, if she's not, Brendan, if she's not enjoying it and like, it's like, I think you were kind of alluding to this at the beginning, Mike. Like, she doesn't have to play. I mean, I think if Tom Byers were here, he would say she needs, you know, she, she needs to learn to love the ball at home. Give her a year.

Put her back in maybe in a year. And it's okay. I mean, it's, my daughter taking a year off from soccer was like the best thing for her, you know, and she came back with a vengeance. Let's do another question. My name is Stephen from Milwaukee. I have a nine-year-old and six-year-old both playing soccer. And I've been bought in for a while now, mostly thanks to scuff, on the idea that telling kids at those ages to pass is a big no-no. that you should focus on ball control and confidence with the ball.

And I am so thankful for the drills that you've passed along. The ones in the most recent episode were amazing, and I can't wait to try them out in the upcoming season. The one thing, though, that I heard on this most recent episode that I did have a question about and would love some elaboration on is the idea of not, saying space out. Clearly I can see in the practice drills that telling kids to space out is unnecessary because they should all have a ball and whatnot. But as you did mention in the episode,

games are important too if just for the tradition and the event nature of the game and a huge frustration with parents on the sidelines is the bumblebee aspect, the hive aspect clumping together. And so I wanted to hear a little bit about why you think saying space out is bad and how you convince parents that this is truly the best practice for kids at this age. Thank you. Jim, why don't you jump in here first? Okay. So Steve, the question about spacing out. So first of all, it's going to be a much more important problem for the nine-year-old than the six-year-old. 100% I wouldn't worry as much about it with a six-year-old. So the spacing out isn't bad in its own right.

Like to space out is an important thing to do, especially for those nine-year-olds. Maybe just using the words spacing out, which are very, very abstract and can be taken a lot of different ways. Something that I was explaining to Adam about at one point, I don't remember when, but was about having a concrete framework for positions and for roles on the field. So we did something where when I was coaching kids that age, it was six aside. So it was a goalkeeper and five field players. So we did a system of a two to one. So it started with two in the back, left back, right back, two midfielers, left midfield, right, midfielers, one person at the

top. And so, but then if you think about concretely drawing a line between those five points on a piece of paper, it makes the framework of a house. So it's a house where it comes up to a pointed roof, right? And then if you give numbers to those five points, so the point of the house is number one, down at the left midfield is number two, right field is number three, left back is number four, left back is number four right back is number five because kids read top or you know top to bottom and left to right so they can follow one two three four five it makes sense where each of those points is in the house so if you have this framework of a house and then the five points of the house and each point has a number then the kid has to just know what number am i am i and then when you say

instead of saying space out like one thing I used to say is get back to your house so then boom they would all oh I got it I know where I'm supposed to be in the house I'm number five I'm down here on the left down low or I'm number one

I shouldn't be back here with these guys and then so so think about a term that accomplishes the abstract objective of spacing out but it's very concrete and it's orientating so the kids can receive it in a concrete way.

And that is something that I would think about doing. But for the six-year-old, we don't even think about this, right? I mean, it doesn't. I do. I didn't. Go ahead, Mike. Yeah, I think, like, as a coach, like, Jim and I will not think about that, right? Like, that's just not on the menu for those kids.

But the parents absolutely will. And so I've got one or two thoughts about that piece of it. Because I know, you know, an aspect of this question is how do we convince the parents of, you know, that this idea that, you know, spacing out and playing the game as it, you know, as they conceive it to look like adult soccer is, it's not that important or relevant. And I would argue counter to their interests at those ages. It's a struggle, right? So that like the parents, everybody is coming from a good place here, right? So the parents basically, I think, sit down in their lawn chair and say, okay, time to see soccer now. And what they have in their minds is what, you know, I see on TV or like the adult version of the game.

And who can blame them, you know? And with a lot of youth sports, you know, like baseball, football, whatever, it pretty much looks like the adult organization of the game. Soccer is just a silly, convoluted, sometimes contradictory game. game. And at the under, like, six age group, it's basically impossible for that to happen. It really truly is, right? Like, you are fighting Mother Nature every step of the way if you're trying. But the craziest thing is, you know, we're all left because we've all been there. We've either been there ourselves, which probably in the beginning, or you've seen, you know, countless other coaches try to fight Mother Nature. And next year we'll go out there and we'll see a bunch of

other ones trying to do it. It's every kid, I imagine in the world, if you were to pluck them out of a, at random, unless they're super exposed to soccer throughout their, right, they're, they are just going to chase that thing around. It's just how it goes. Like when I do, I remember, Jim, you talked a little bit about it. And I know when I last talked to a few bells, we were talking about the, um, the national youth license course that was, I thought was excellent when we, we did all that. And, um, you know, what those guys said right off the bat is kids don't want to share at that age, you know, and it is the truth. Like if you just sit them down five years old with a couple of their favorite toys

and have their friend come over, they're not really sharing it, you know, and like they might break out a little bit of a brawl over it potentially, depending on their name. They're like, all of that stuff applies to soccer. It does not change for them. They hardly even know they're at soccer. I don't think they even do know they're at soccer sometimes. And that's okay.

But it's just like as the adult, you have to have some awareness of that. And when you are like pulling your hair out, trying to figure out, why can't I get these kids this space out? It's because you're fighting Mother Nature. That is not in them, right? And then the tragedy of it all when it happens, right? And so, I mean, it would be like criminal to see it at six, but you will see it at 9, 10, et cetera. We can get more into the weeds on that. But the tragedy of it is, is if you get that thing looking like adult soccer,

it's because you forced it hard on them. You said, like, you do not move from this area. You stand there. You stand there. You stand there. That's it. That's your role. Don't move.

That's the only way you're getting it, quote, unquote, spaced out, and they're going to hate it. And, like, if you were to leave it up to the kid at the end of the season, want to do this again, no chance. Right? But if you give them freedom, pretty good chance they want to do it again. it would be the worst experience for them if they have all those restrictions on them. And we just somehow have to have a discussion, more or less like we're having now, I think, with the parents and just try to, they get that. Like parents will get that the kids don't quite get sharing at that age or, you know what I mean?

You just kind of say like in the long run, it's going to be sharing. I mean, look at soccer at an older level. It's sharing the ball. But it's not going to be early on. And it's okay. like they'll get there, you know. That's kind of part of the way I would come at it. And some of this, like I know last time we talked,

we mentioned that I have these guidelines, these age group guidelines that I try to draw up for each age group for our coaches. I share those with the parents. And, you know, just email them out. And it's, if you're going to have a parent meeting, you can email them out ahead of time. It's just a one-pager, you know,

feel free to look them over. And we can chat about any of them if you want. But here's kind of what we're going to be, trying to get out of this year. And then they can kind of see it. You know, take them two minutes to read through. And they're say, okay, it doesn't quite sound like adult soccer, but I get what's going on here.

And maybe they're not quite as irate when the kids aren't spaced out at an age that they just can't do it, you know? But it's your, we are always in this game, like it's, I think it's part of it's almost like being in a cult. Like we're in a struggle. The way I see it is we're in a struggle. And we're all in it. the coaches are in it, the players, whether they know it or not, are in it.

It is maybe a touch more on the men's side in the grand scheme of things, a struggle, you know, at the top level, at the national teams, like our women's, it's just night and day, how, you know, how high they've achieved over historically, obviously, for all of its own reasons. But on the men side, it's a slow, steady, sycifice-like struggle, but, you know, to just kind of, and this is a little bit of a part of it. And I think having some awareness that from a cultural perspective, most of the parents will not have like wrap their heads around that idea. You just have to have some empathy there and do your best to have an honest conversation with them about it.

And, you know, you'll probably win some over. Yeah. I feel like with the nine year old, with the nine year old, it is probably somewhat dependent on how much they've already mastered the ball. Yes. So if you've got a team of nine year olds who are really confident with the. ball, confident step and pass somebody with the ball, like confident expressing themselves creatively with the ball, then I think they're probably ready to start thinking about space. Without a doubt.

Yeah. Without. So all of all of this house thing is all assuming that you're spending the time when they're five, six, seven building skill. Because if you think about it, what is the point of the skill is to be able to look up and, you know, see somebody or eventually make a pass? like one of the later questions is going to have to do with locking ankles and things like that. Well, there's a point to it.

The point to it is to make the ball move away from you, not just dribble it. Where should it move? It should move to another person who's somewhere not standing next to you. So it is all one follows the other, but the one comes second to the other. The skill building has to go first. There's no point in spacing out when there's no way to get the ball. to the other side of the field. There's no point in it.

But eventually, there will be a point to it. If you're doing all the other stuff right, there will come a point to it. And it's useful. And it may come at a time when they're not abstract thinkers yet. But they've acquired the skill. They have the skill. Because you taught them to manipulate their muscles in such a way that they can make the ball do things.

They're still, they still have to have a... That's where the tool... of that house can help. Kids that already have skill, but still aren't abstract thinkers yet. And in the case that Jim is describing there, that kid will have fun doing that, right? Like, that kid will enjoy knocking the ball from my space that I'm standing in over to Jim's space that he's standing in. Yes. Because he's got the tool to.

Yeah, they think it's cool because they got the tool to do it. The kids that don't have that at all and are being asked again and again and again, knock that ball from me to, Jim, they just go, they are completely confused and lost by that. And it's not fun. And they wouldn't sign up again if he left it up to them. Yeah, totally. All right. Let's do the next question.

This has to do with dribbling past people, which is a passion of mine and I think all of ours. Here we go. Hey, this is Mateus in Boston. First and foremost, they want to thank Jim for his many years of service to high school soccer in the Tampa area. I myself in a couple years too young for the high school champions league. But I wasn't able to play travel ball as a kid. My parents didn't want to drive me around. And I ended up at Tampa Prep under coach Doug Smith, many-time state champion.

And it was there, you know, I had a super serious program, playing against other super-serious programs, where I was able to play with and against guys who would play D-1, be D-1 champs, play pro, playing in the Gold Cup. And that wouldn't have been available to me if it wasn't for Jim and Doug and all the other coaches in the Tampa area who could have been fine at their academy jobs, but decided to invest in high school soccer and turning it into a beautiful community and a beautiful product that is open to so many more kids than the guys who can just play at TBU or whatever other clubs. So thank you so much. My question is about the Space Invaders drill. Mike introduced at the end of his podcast. When that drill is going wrong, right? When kids, maybe they have ball mastery,

maybe they can even dribble quickly and manipulate the ball at speed, but they don't have an understanding of how to beat a guy, how to faint, how to shift their body weight. How do you introduce that? Are you miming it out or are you letting them play and figure it out on themselves? Thanks, guys.

Mike. Well, before I get into those weeds, I just think that's like a beautiful sentiment that Mattes passed on there about Jim in the role in Tampa there. And like, I couldn't agree more with that. Like the way that you've made high level important soccer accessible to everybody in, you know, settings in which they don't have to necessarily pay for it. That's, that's a beautiful thing.

It's really, really cool. Yeah. So just to get into a little bit of nitty-gritty, Bells, do you want me to, like, as quick as possible sort of reset up that drill that he's referencing to in case people don't understand it. So it's, um, yes, please.

This is, this is a, sort of an activity that, um, I ran through in, in our last podcast together. It's just a little one B one activity that I like to use across all different age groups.

And basically what it has is, um, a setup where you've got and, you know, it's almost set up like a, like a little mini field. So you have a player with a ball on an end line. Then you have,

um, maybe, uh, seven or eight yards ahead of that, midfield, stripe line and then, you know, another eight yards ahead of that, another end line. And so on, standing on that midfield stripe line is a defender who's only allowed to move laterally, left, or right. They can't leave the line forward or backwards. So it gives you a defender that can move,

but in a pretty restrained way. And so it's something I picked up along the way at out at a coaching clinic and really liked the way that it would let me hone in on taking players on 1B1 and get down into the nitty-gritty about it. The question was basically how to, how do you get into the specifics and mechanics of beating the player 1B1? And I think the first thing I would say is that it, and this would be the case with most of these things. It depends on the age of the player you're working with.

Okay. I don't know if it was made really clear in that clip, but I'll just say that the older that player is, and again, to come back to that, the more abstract they can think, in terms of logic, I would, I'm going to, I'm going to explain it as quick as I can how I would handle it with an older player and how I would handle it with a much younger player that is basically concrete. So with an older player, I'm talking about things like tackling range is a term I like to use for the defender, right? So they more or less have a bubble around them that they can tackle within, right? I don't, it depends on the physique and makeup of that individual person, but maybe it's a yard, yard and a half, something like that that they can tackle within, right?

And older players can understand this if you explain it that way and say, okay, we have to sort of operate outside of that tackling range in terms of manipulation of the ball, any faints and stepovers or any of that kind of stuff that you're going to try to throw into the mix 1B1, just outside of that tackling range, not so far outside of it that it's going to be ineffective to the defender. And inside of it, you're always at jeopardy of losing that ball, right? So you're trying to approach that tackling range and begin the deception that's involved with 1B1 as you near that range, if that makes sense. Okay.

So then you're just getting into the mechanics. It would be like any of the simple stuff that you'd think about, right? So dropping a shoulder, you know, a little lunge, leave the ball, for example, on the outside of your right foot. Drop a left shoulder, kind of lunge on that left foot, take it with the outside of the right foot and try to move that defender out of the space. that you're trying to pass him or her by, right? So that's about how the aspects of it that I'd come at it with an older player, dealing with angles also, the angles that you come in at, right? And the concept of trying to move the player out of the space

or unbalance the player when you're trying to go by them. Now, try laying all that on a seven-year-old that, you know, it's gone. Like he or she stopped before I got through the first half of my sentence, rightly so. So then it's just about, hey, Jim, you see that guy at him up there, like a standing up there on that stripe. We're going to trick them. All right. We're going to find a way to trick this guy and get him out of your way. Right.

And then maybe you start getting creative with it. Maybe it's like he's a, he's a, he's a troll. He's a mean troll guarding that gate that you're trying to get through. Do you have a dog? Jim, do you got any pets? Yeah. What do you? What's your dog?

Do you have a pet's name? name? Daisy. Daisy. So believe it or not, the troll has kidnapped Daisy, has it behind him there. And that's the reason he doesn't want to let you through. He likes Daisy wants the pet for himself, all right? But we're going to trick them. We're going to move them out of the way of that gate. You're going to go back there and get Daisy because she wants nothing to do with, she does not want to live with the troll. All right, here we go. And so I don't know, they buy in on that. And now it just becomes about how do I move the troll? How do I move Adam out of my way? And it's all the same

stuff I just, you know, touched on so boringly at the older age groups, you know, drop a shoulder, you know, a little step over this way or that way. But it becomes about tricking the defender to move out of the way for you so you can get by real quick and go get Daisy the dog. And that's about how I would, how I would come at it with a really, really young thinker who doesn't, who's not about to get into the mechanics with the ball and the body mechanics and all that kind of stuff. How wide, how wide is the lane that they're trying to go through typically? Are you talking like five yards, ten yards? Probably ten. It's not five. And again, we'll, would depend on the age group.

It's more narrow than it is long. but it needs to be there needs to be enough room to operate you know you can put a top top player at a high level and that player would not necessarily be able to deal with five yards i think you're talking about the very best players that could operate there right so it needs to be big enough to actually move them a little bit yeah you know well i love that i love that idea i love that drill i was just my little u10 team just had a game on two games on saturday and i swear I mean, everybody needs ball mastery more than anything. I'm not telling them to space out.

I had some ideas about that, but not doing it. But man, it's like there's two kinds of players out there. There are those who can dribble past people, and there are those who cannot. And it's like, that's it. At every level of the game. The ones who can't, who don't feel like, you know, an agent out there, an actual, like someone who can make decisive actions to influence the game, which is not how they would put it, but that's how they feel when they can drobble past people.

The ones who can't do that or don't feel like they can do that, they're just treading water out there. You know, they're just like, what am I? What's happening? I don't know. Let me just not make a mistake here. But the ones who can, I mean, they're having fun out there, you know. So.

Yeah. We want to try to just enable as many of those as possible, you know. And I do think it's important for them to know that it's okay when it goes wrong. I mean, kind of brings it back to that very first question that we were talking about, right? Because I mean, even the most effective one be one players, I don't know what the percentage is, but it's not high, right? You know, if a player were 50% affected, they'd be world class probably, you know? Yeah, that were like messy, messy territory. So it's more just about like every time they take on the agency is a good word. Like every time they take on that

charge of going past a player or attempting to, great work, great work, great work. Keep, you know, praising it because, you know, it's not a high success rate thing, but it opens the whole game up. Yeah. Let's go to the next one, if that's all right with you guys. Here we go. Hey there. This is Matt from Los Angeles. Really enjoyed the series.

Thanks so much. My question is, how do you progress with the exercises from the U6, U8 that you've been discussing, up to older ages like U12, U14? How do you adapt to how does the focus shift? Thanks a lot. Jim, how do you progress? So this is the key skill is the ability to lock your ankle and make the ball go somewhere, right foot, left foot. And I'm going to give credit to Ernie Nava, who is a guy that I learned this from. He called it the one, two, threes. And one, two, and three were surfaces of the foot.

So the inside of the foot is number one, the laces is number two, the outside of the foot's number three. And he had this simple exercise, he called it the one, two, threes. And it was basically about teaching kids to lock their ankle for like playing an inside of the football or receiving with the inside of foot, versus with their toe down for kicking with the laces or with their toe in for kicking with the outside of the foot. and until they have the ability to be able to pass or receive the ball using a locked ankle, there's really nothing else. There's no point. Otherwise, you're just whacking that sucker and hoping it goes somewhere.

So one of the biggest parts of progression is the difference between a one player, one ball paradigm, where they're learning ball manipulation and being able to keep the ball. versus being able to deliver the wall. And then if you can deliver the ball, then someone else has to be able to receive the wall and receive it with a locked ankle. So the technical focus becomes the one, two, three, especially one and two.

And if you can get kids to turn their toe in and kick with the outside of the foot, all the better, it would be cool. But one and two, especially number one, inside of the foot, locked ankle, hip open, toe up, foot rolled back, strike the ball. Now, if you can get to that, if everybody has with a right and left foot the ability to deliver a ball and receive a ball, now, like that number of position system makes a lot more sense because now it makes sense for a person to be standing on the other side of the house because we can kick the ball over to them.

That makes a lot more sense. It makes a lot more sense for somebody to be standing up farther up because we can kick the ball to them and they can receive it and they can point their toe down and kick it hard and have it going to goal. But so the progression to me is the progression from a one player one ball paradigm in terms of ball manipulation, keeping the ball to the ability to deliver the wall and receive the wall.

And sometimes that comes naturally, right? Like they start to figure it out just from all the ball mastery, but sometimes it doesn't. No, sometimes it doesn't. And I think it's a specific skill. I think in one of the other questions, I wrote out a lot of notes about this. But like there's a point in time when you have to spend a lot of focused time getting kids to understand the muscles of their foot and their leg and how to how to open their hip, lock their ankle, keep their foot in a lock position with their hip open, bend the other knee, you know, so they don't lose balance.

And so those are some of the most important things. How do you do that and keep them engaged? How do you do that? Yeah. Well, it's, it's, it comes back to a couple things, a couple things. Kids want to do well, like what we talked about earlier, they want to know what, how, what they're supposed to do. What can they do to please whoever it is they're trying to please? Like in the case of your son, it was to please you. It's okay if you fit, if you lose. Don't worry about it. Oh, okay. So, so what, what you have to do is you have to teach the kids the existence. You have to really telescope in on the exact muscular movements that they have to be doing, like opening their hip, toe up. And then so they have to, in other words, the first answer is they have to know what they're supposed to do. And then they have to know how to assess it. Like they have to know.

They can't rely on someone else saying, oh, that was good or, oh, that wasn't good. there's an actual black, white, right, wrong answer to this. Your foot is either locked or it isn't. Your toe is either rolled back or it isn't. And when you follow through, you've kept that foot in a lock position or you haven't. When you swing your leg through, your leg is swinging straight through, not across your body, or it isn't. And so these are things you can teach kids. And then you can teach other people like parents who don't know anything about the game,

but you can teach them this specific thing to look at. And you can actually create exercises where kids are working either with one another or with a parent who rolls them a ball. And then the parent can make gentle corrections or not so, it depends, and stay so focused in on those muscular movements. It's like kids learn how to write. Writing is a fine motor skill. You know, kids actually can learn how to play a little.

bit of a piano. That's a fine motor skill. But you have to telescope in on the muscles needed. And then they're either doing it or they're not doing it. And they have to know how they're doing it because you have to have taught them. And then you have to be able to say, that's it or that's not it. Or maybe they have to know. Or you have to be able to tell them, your foot rolled on that kick. Keep that foot rolled back. And just a constant repetition. You can't spend a lot of time on this at any one given time. But you can't spend. spend a short amount of time many days over, over, over again. You can keep coming back to these little points. So this is about knowing what to teach, knowing what to do, and the kid understanding

what to do. So now the kid knows. How do you teach a kid how to count to 10? They have to know the numbers in order. They can do that. Now I know that's not using muscles, but it's a small task that has a certain order to it and they can learn it. The player that Jim's talking about, like, I think you have to trick them a little bit, right? And I think it depends on what age they are and how far along they are or not, the extent to which the repetitions will, like, stick and they'll stick with them, right? So I think that more the player is kind of soaking this stuff up, the better the trajectory that they're on, I bet the more that you can kind of get away with repetitions that aren't like cloaked in fun, you know, and are just like, hey, I actually enjoy making contact with the ball this way.

Put me in front of a pile of 20 balls and I'm happy to just like somebody practicing on the driving range at golf, right? But I think we're an awful lot of players. It sort of needs to be like buried in a fun game. and it kind of takes that play practice play concept like within a single activity where you know you get them going i don't know what the game might be but you get it going on something that involves what jim's getting at which is like you know is your ankle locked and what's the technique look like on the ball etc but you let it be wrong in the beginning but you let you get the game going then you stop it and you go like okay uh who's it working out for or who's it not let's start examining like um yeah the the the the the mechanics mechanical pieces that are going to bring more of you toward that, you know, success side of the ledger there and put them back out there, play a little bit more, more a higher and higher percentage of the group will start getting on the plus side of that ledger

in terms of the technical skill. And, you know, with, like Jim said, it can't last too long. So, you know, without belaboring the point, you can just move on. And then next week, you come back to it. And then the week after that, you come back to it. And then next thing you know, in two months, you have rather than 20% competence within your team on a, you know, ankle locking, passing kind of situation.

You have something more like 70% or 75% and you've made the progress, but you haven't, you didn't do it overnight and you didn't make it painstaking for them. And the players that needed to be a little bit tricked into it, you cook something up for them. And the ones that are happy to just, no, coach, you don't need to, you know, weave up a story here for me about this game. I'm just going to go ahead and do the reps. They got theirs too. There's some of that. Every kid is different.

Every kid thinks differently. And this is where the trinkets can come in for certain types of kids. If you can create a metric where if you do five of these or this many of these, then you get this little thing that you can sew onto your bag. You just have to be very intentional about it. You have to understand that's going to motivate a certain type of kid, but another type of kid is going to be frustrated by that. Because like Mike said, they're the ones that need a story.

or they're the ones. Every kid is different. Kids think differently. And you just have to know your kids, but you have to be able to do a little bit of everything because you've got a whole bunch of different human beings in front of you. But kids like getting things and they like to be right and they want to please their coach and they want to please do adults around them. And so if you can create a path for those things to happen and it wants to be right. And they want to please their coach and they want to please do adults around them. And so if you can create a path for those things to happen and it wants to want it to be fun, and they have a short attention span, like what Mike said. I mean, everything Mike said is spot on. But the point of getting the ball, getting them, you know, that progression is the progression from one player, one ball, keeping it to delivering it. That's really the progression. And I could talk a little, like bounce a little bit off of what Jim just said, the progression off of one player, one ball.

So we've talked a little bit about the balls, the players ratio concept and that kind of is like uh it it moves it's on a continuum you know so it starts at the youngest age groups at one to one right but it graduates so i think to hopefully get into some of the more like conceptual stuff that maybe matt in l.a is asking about we can so if we look at what the objectives and the balter players ratios are at under 12 uh it's a different picture obviously than what it is at the youngest age group so you know um you're looking at objectives-wise you still want all that technical ball mastery stuff. And I always say like the concepts that you train at the youngest age groups,

you can pull those up into and through the oldest age groups all the way up to senior level. You want to be very, very careful about pushing topics down age groups because you start getting kids in too deep in over their head and it's not fun and they don't really get much uptake. But for under 12, so you have all that technical stuff, dribble shoot now pass, also receive, tackle heading, for me. That stuff is all in there. But so is developed small group decision making, both in attack and defense. And now we can look at what the balls to players ratio is. And the guidance for that is one to five or one to six. Now, Adam, this is your, this is the moment you've been waiting for all these years. That equals Rondo. All right. One to five or one to six equals Rondo.

Oh, right? Yeah. I will say, I got a, I got a response to this. So yes. So on my little U-10 team, we're doing Rondos, but I'm splitting the groups up. And I'm not nearly as experienced as you guys are. But the thing is, everybody does foxes and hounds at the beginning of the practice still. Everybody needs it on my team and everybody loves it.

So we're doing it. We do that. And then I take the best kids and we go over and try to do Rondos. I'm sitting here just like soaking it up the thing about locking your ankle because I got some some girls who are nine years old and they're just kicking it with their toe and who knows where it's going, you know, in the Rondos. These are some, these are like top half of the roster players. So we're trying.

We're working on that a little bit, but I'm doing it. I'm doing it very carefully, not too much. I want everybody to master the ball and feel confident with the ball at their feet. However, there are probably six, seven kids. maybe eight who they're just not ready. They're not ready to try that. So they're going over and they're doing, and I'm talking these are nine-year-old girls

who just have not gotten very good coaching so far. I don't, I'm not, they don't maybe love the sport as much as they could and they're just, they're doing it for whatever reason. And they, I'm just, they're doing like two on two small side of games or one v one, honestly. One v. one. So the, so I guess my answer is it depends on the kids.

Yes, I'd love to go to Rondo. I'd love to go to that guidance that you just said. But at least in my rec, not everybody's ready for that at U10. And I've been watching some U12 practices. Not everybody's ready for it at U12 either. So the one-to-one ball ratio, I don't know, pull it up, pull it up as far as it'll go. I don't see what the downside is, really.

One of the slipperiest things when you're dealing with rec soccer and now you're moving up the age groups. And I, whether it's, you know, with this question or one later, I certainly want to take some time to talk about it because I, like, to me, the value in rec soccer at older age groups is like the most important thing in, in some ways for soccer in this, in this country in terms of people having somewhere to play for fun. So, but, but one of the slipperiest things is like biological age versus soccer age, they, it was put to me. time and when you're at a real recreational level so we can take all this conceptual theoretical stuff and it's all pretty i think sound you know it evolves over the years as people rethink it but it's it's it's it's all pretty conceptually sound but like you just said adam like we're um the the training topics and concepts and objectives are pretty much to like keep a player moving moving moving

moving, moving up the chain to be a top, complete, excellent player by the time they hit like senior level, right? So under 18 player there, complete, right? But that is not real life. And the lower the level of the soccer that you're involved in leading, the more you have to take into account what's their soccer age, what's their soccer ability? And I don't want to say ignore, but it trumps the biological age sometimes, right? And so you do have to dip back into those more fundamental, or at least mix in those more fundamental activities to keep improving them because that kid does need to be able to lock her ankle to play a ball over 10 or 15 yards, you know. But it, you know, the things that I try to dissuade coaches from at the younger

age groups that are more like adult soccer thinking, you know, that are formation based and you know and real kind of tactical that stuff does and it is appropriate to start bringing them in at at you know under under 12 you know we try to take into account three or four players around the ball on both sides of of of the ball right so you're thinking about three or four offensive players near the ball you're thinking about three or four players defensive players around the ball so you do have to start thinking beyond just the player in the ball the players need to but as they should they're old enough to think that way They may not be phenomenal on the ball yet, some of them, but they are old enough to begin thinking that way,

wrapping their head around the game. There are little cursory formations in there. I don't think they should be very rigid ever. By the way, adult soccer is not ever cursory. I'm sorry, it's not ever rigid in the positions, right? Like, we line them up in a particular way, but the best soccer is very, very fluid, obviously, with all those positions, right?

So, but it's real important that as you begin getting into, like, positional-based formations and things like that. There were coaching principles rather than positions as we deal with those players and we start to dabble into that, right? And it's not, we're not getting into real positional kind of interrelationship until that under-14 age group that Matt kind of asked about, you know. And then you have objectives are more or less the same as what I outlined with under 12 a couple of minutes ago.

And then how do we get the ball out of pressure as a, as a collective group offensively, how do we regain the group, or sorry, how do we regain the ball back defensively, both individually and in small groups? And so those now start do getting a little bit more into the tactical realm, but it's age appropriate for them, you know, and that kind of gives them like problem solving that matches their age. And the balls to player ratio thing is not a thing at under 14, right? And so now you've arrived at, adult soccer format, right? It doesn't, it doesn't mean you, you coach it, you know,

like you're trying to play some real prescribed brand or anything like that, but you've arrived at that model. It's 11 v. 11. You don't have the restrictions in terms of ball to player ratio that you have to model your training after to stay within. And there's, there is a little bit of like tactics in there. But I do still think, like, the priority should be, you should really emphasize prior individual brilliance over, like, big team tactical concepts, you know, and be well aware of when you have a group that's in over their head with that stuff. And just understand that it's, it's okay to kind of just keep the soccer simple for them there.

But it does advance beyond. Like, I don't, when I, when I hear that question, you know, from, from Matt, like, I hear almost a little bit of worry that, are we going to. going to get locked into this like elementary level soccer indefinitely at at the rec level and I don't think you need to be just you just make sure that it matches the thinking age of the players yes okay that's great uh there's one more thing you could do at that age at 12 14 kids can throw and catch pretty good and you can have them stand in um close enough to what I can throw a catch a ball and show what it should look like or what you'd want it might want it to look like just by throwing it and catching it. And then put it on the ground and move a little further away from each other and kick it to each other in the same way.

That stuff works wonders. I use it with my college age players last week. That stuff works wonders. And now let's go to some written questions. Brian in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex asks, any thoughts on teaching defending at the U6 to U8 level. I found it really difficult to teach kids how to be aggressive without overcommitting. I've resigned myself to just letting kids overcommit at this age and fixing it later,

but I don't know if I should be teaching them to square up a player and wait for space to put their body on the player. Jim, why don't you go first? I wouldn't worry about defending at all with under six, and I'd worry about it very little with under eight, but you can begin. And one thing that I would think about is motor skills. Kids aren't learning motor skills in elementary school P.E. like they used to. And if you think about a closing defender, right?

So a closing defender is kind of running toward the ball, but eventually is crouching, getting sideways on, side shuffling, doing certain motor movements and eventually turning and running backwards sometimes or turning your body, turning at the hips and running in the opposite direction. Those are all motor skills. And oftentimes kids don't have good motor skills. So a building block of defending kind of like in the same way that a one player, one ball, is a building block for attacking, is the development of physical motor skills,

sliding, shuffling, turning and running, things like that, running backward. you know, and I think that that shouldn't be overlooked. So if you just kind of picture the physical movement of a defender who's closing a ball down, right? So like, you know, and then you think of a kid with a limited motor skill set, right, going in toward a ball. What are they just going to run and blow it up? What are they going to do? You know, and so I would begin. with that. And then the other thing is the other very rudimentary idea is circling back. So in other words,

on a little farther away from the play, getting somebody to sort of run and circle back behind a play like a covering defender would do. And, you know, I mean, but these are just beginning ideas. I wouldn't spend a lot of time worrying about it. Okay. I, I, I, I echo that and pretty much everything Jim said, so I don't think I'm going to have a ton to add on to it. But I do like the idea, if we're just talking about from like a kinesthetic kind of perspective of seeing if the player can sort of be under control by the time they try to get the ball back. That's about as deep as I would think about it with the player. Right. So like Jim said, if they come barreling in, you know, and I think this is kind of what the question is getting at.

like these kids come in wild and crazy and how do I get a grip on it? It's more than like, because defending is a pretty abstract thing when you get down to it, right? And kids at age, it does, it's, it's a little bit abstract for them. But the movement piece is not. Like they feel it. You know what I mean? And so it's like, hey, can I make sure that when I get close to this ball to try to take it from them, that I'm balanced, you know? I think they can pretty much handle that, you know?

And then that starts without even getting too specific about it. Now you're talking about like the rhythm and cadence of the strides as they come in, getting, you know, shorter as they should be and not getting too close or standing too far away. But you might not have to specify all that, you know what I mean, explicitly. And but his instincts to just, you know, Brian's instinct to just kind of like wait until later, I agree with those instincts on the whole. me too. You know, and I think if the, if it's just a glaring red, you know, siren here that, like, this has to get addressed, I would dress it that way. Just can you be under control and balanced by the time you go try to get the ball from them? Leave it at that.

Down the line when they can think a little bit more abstractly about it. Now we can hone in on, like, the strategic approach to it, but not when they're little. That's great. And so if we're thinking of a kid, if the objective is to free the kid in the attacking realm, the objectives of free their eyes from the ball. How do we do that by developing skill? From the defensive realm, the objective is keep your body under control.

Yeah, that's a great way of thinking about it. And I feel like just reps playing the game teaches you how to defend, you know, how to get your body between, I mean, again, just to go back to my little U-10 team, Some of the girls on the team are getting kind of good at taking the ball from other players and getting their body between. I've never said anything about that to any of them, you know. And some of them aren't as well. Some of them are completely out of control. Matt, in Connecticut, I will be a new coach for my daughter's U6 team in the fall.

What should be my top three principles learnings to pass along to the kids and top three games mechanisms to deliver them? Let's just stick to the principles because we have a, bunch of games and mechanisms in the last episode. Yeah, well, that's what I would say to that. I was almost, I feel like being a wise guy here, but it's make, make your own, you know, I just so long as you, and this is like the beauty of it as a coach, so long as you understand that you're, at that age group, you're working within a one-to-one balls-to-players ratio.

So everything you do, you want to make sure that that holds true. Know that you have the ability to use multiple balls and multiple goals at one time. Make it right up, you know? and you don't have to do a ton, right? So over the course of your season, I don't know. Mine is very short when I work with my kids, like six weeks kind of thing. And I know some will be longer or whatever, but you don't have to, like you can roll with two practices, I bet. And if you just shuffle the deck a little bit between those two, their season will be great, you know.

Each one of them has about four activities in it, you know, you, you change the animals. what animal they're pretending to be in one, and it feels like a new activity to them the next week. You don't have to get too far down that line to give them a good season. Jim. Routines. Routines. Like everything about the practice environment should be structured,

and there should be a way to, like I go back to think about a good first grade classroom. There's a routine. When they come in, and they hang their book bag up on the hook, and they do this, and they do that, and they have things to do, and they're expected to do them. They do them the same all the time, and they love this, because this is agency, this is independence, and this is them taking sort of control of their own environment.

So routines, like, where do the bags go? Where, what do I do when I first get to practice? Sometimes music can help with routines. Sometimes you can, if you're one to use music, you can. you know, this song is playing when they arrive at practice. That means I'm supposed to do this. Uh-oh, it changed to that song. We do that when that song comes on.

It doesn't have to use music, but the establishment of routines. The second thing is they have to know what's going to happen if somebody messes up. And this is something that we, I think we often overlook. Like, I think this is something for the parent meeting. We should talk to the parents and we should say, okay, in an in an unemotional setting of a parent meeting, where nobody's messed up yet, nobody's upset about anything. Say, if somebody messes up, this is how I'm going to handle it. I'm going to ask them to stop.

If they don't, I'm going to send them over to you. Not going to spend time when they're going to send them over to you. When they come over to you, if you could just tell them, hey, start listening, get back out there, and you just send them back to me. The trip over to the parent, and then the trip back out, it only needs to take 10, 15 seconds. But it might as well be 10 minutes because it's a lot of time. long time for a kid to be suddenly walking over to the parent and then walking back in. And if you let the parents know, I'm going to handle misbehavior this way.

This is what I'm going to ask them to do. I'm not going to just be out there looking to throw kids out of practice. I'm trying to keep them all going. But if something happens, it's not right. I'm going to send them over to you. Don't be surprised by that. Just turn them around and send them back to me and tell them to start listening or to you know, do better. You don't need to keep them there. Doesn't need to be long. And I'd almost say

practice this with the kids at the beginning, like at the very, maybe one of the very first things you do is everybody, look where your parents are. Okay, go run over to your parents. Okay, come on back. And I do it again. Come on back. They'll enjoy doing this. And then just say, okay, now if you mess up. Or if you can, you don't even have to say if you mess up because you don't have to introduce a negative thing that hasn't even happened yet. But you've practiced the routine. They know what to do. So now when it's time to send them out of practice, they know, oh, go over to your parents. Well, they know, they've done this already. They know where their parent is. And so I, the establishment of routines is the biggest thing that I would do.

and then don't overlook the development of motor skills and that's what that's what I would add on this one. Okay. I would just say the principle, I mean, that's what you guys said is much deeper than what I have to say, but I'll just say what I was going to say anyway, which is that the main principle is just that you want them to be able to dribble better than they could

at the beginning of the season and work on anything that helps them get better at dribbling that they enjoy doing is a good thing to do in practice. And like Mike said, you could have basically six exercises and that's your, that's all you need for the whole season. And I, you know, you tell parents this and I was just talking to some new coaches last night at their first practice and they look at you like you're a crazy person.

So you got to kind of like, because out there, I was like, what were you going to do first? And they were so, well, we're going to do some passing drills, you know, with a bunch of seven-year-olds who don't know how to play soccer. And I was like, just, I would encourage you just focus on dribbling. Yes. Yes. Let him be a ball hog.

Don't. They just, they just all need to learn to dribbling. He's like, really? I was like, yeah, I think so. It's not intuitive. It's common sense. Like, their perspective is common sense. That's the catch of this whole thing.

I know. It doesn't. It's very surprising to people. Yeah. But they were receptive, I think, you know. Like you said in the episode we did, Mike, I think you said some of the, You know, some of the parents are receptive. Some of them aren't.

And that's just life. Yeah. A couple more questions. Tyler in Sacramento says, hello, I played soccer growing up and was asked to be a varsity girl's assistant goalie coach. Do you guys have any drills for goalies? Thank you. I'm very curious about this one too.

I can jump in on that one if you'd like. Please. Yeah. So the voice that rings in my head is Dr. Joe McNick always with goalkeeping. is, you know, one of the, one of the forefathers of goalkeeping in the United States here. And, you know, what he'll always say is the feet get the hands to the ball. So if you're, and again, he's, you know, Tyler's talking about high school age kids here.

So I think, you know, spend some time on YouTube and you're going to find a bunch of shot stopping stuff. And at least some amount of it will be useful, I'm sure. And that's great. And go ahead and use some of that if it feels good to you. But I can give you a couple of ideas. So for Tyler's kids that he's asking a bit. about, all right? I would put the focus on.

So if you talk about the job for the goalkeeper, right, the shot-stopping one is the one that jumps out to you, but controlling the area, which means dealing with crosses and dealing with through balls and breakaways is another big category. And subset of all of that is getting back to the bar, which is like dealing with lobs and balls played over range that, you know, threatened the goal when you're,

off the line. And there's footwork for all this stuff. And when I say footwork, I'm not talking about how does a goalkeeper play with the ball at her feet. I'm talking about how does a goalkeeper get from point A to point B on the field in order to do what they need to do. So we have ones called the Miola footwork drills. All right. So for people that are a certain age, I don't like that name will ring a bell. And that all came from a ring a bell for everybody. I hope. I hope. But that all came through, you know, Dr. McNabb's curriculum there at his number one goalkeeper camp where he'd have, it's real simple. So it gets into the drill. So I think Bruce Arena came up with these four Tony Mueola at Virginia is my understanding.

So put him in front of a goal. Two cones is all you'll need. You put them out at the six-yard line, one yard wide of each post. And now you run patterns. from post to cone and cone to post, et cetera, using all crossover footwork and always orienting the body toward where the cross would be coming from. So if you're moving from as you're facing the field,

your left near pose out, let's say, I mean, you just create different patterns within this, but if you're moving from your left near pose diagonally out to the right higher cone, now you're dealing with potentially a cross that's coming from your left side on the flank. It's gonna ask you to deal with the far side of the field. Crossover footwork would be left,

right, left over right, left over right, left over right to get to that part of the field. Now you deal with the catching or boxing technique with the ball. And just all those different patterns will bring out different footwork solutions to situations that come up again and again in the game. I've got related ones called the Sorokans that deal with back to the bar. So now what you'll do is a sim kind of setup. Only you have a, the cones are, you have a singular one on the, goal line. You have three cones up at the six yard box. One is in the center. The other two

are two yards in from the post, right at an outside the post. And now what you do is you start at the center cone at the line, that's your home base, straight run out to one of the angles, crossover footwork back. So now again, you're oriented so that as if you're facing the ball that's getting lobbed up towards your crossbar on the way back, you do that in both directions. So it would be, as you're moving to your left, it would be right foot over left, right for over left, right, throw over left all the way back to the home base, sprint back out to the angle, do it from the reverse side. Now you're moving left over right, left over right, left over right.

Again, all this is in preparation to be able to deflect over the crossbar potentially of a ball that gets lobbed at it. And so you're planning for your bottom foot, which if you're moving to your right will be your right and your top hand to be synced up so that you can touch and play over the bar that way. And then the last one I would throw in there is this is Dr. Magnix, the double goal theory. And this is a fun one. Scuff people will love this.

So you take two goals, physically put them together next to each other side by side. So that takes some doing and some manpower, but you do it. And you put a goalkeeper in there to defend two goals. And you start with balls out. Again, at a high school age, I would take them somewhere between 30 and 35 yards out. So you have to be able to strike the ball over that range. Just take a couple players if you can't do it yourself. And now you put them through a series of rounds.

to deal with that double goal. And they just get progressively harder. It's called overload training. It's beautiful. Every sport has it, right? So if a baseball player is warming up in the on-deck circle, they've got like a weighted bat or two bats traditionally, that kind of thing, right? It's the same concept.

And so now what you do is you play around and the goalkeeper, anything she can do to keep it out, they do it, right? And now the next round, you say, okay, same thing, but no diving. So now they've got to make their way around, no diving. They get in behind the ball. And then the next round, it's, It's no diving and no hands. He just keep ramping up the demands on the activity.

And then eventually you put them back in a single goal, and they feel like giants in there. And it's like this. And if you do it well-timed with games, you know, a day before game kind of thing, it actually can sometimes carry over a little bit. But all that is about getting the feet moving quicker to do the job. That last one happens to be about shot stopping. But, you know, crosses back to the bar footwork and shot stopping. three examples for you.

Okay. And your U-10s, don't do any of that stuff, I just said. Yeah, no, no, we're not going to catch. U-Tens just make sure they have fun in there and don't, you know, it's not life and death when the ball goes in the goal. It's that whole idea. Did you do the best you can, rotate the other players in, move on. Yeah.

Sooner or later, a kid will, like, take a liking to it. Pay attention to that because they like, They don't grow on trees and nurture it. And you can break the rules a little bit, right? So if you go in there and you go like, yeah, well, my rule is every kid plays 10% of the time and whatever it might be. But here I've got a special one and it's in them and you can see it. Bend the rules there. Let them have some of that time.

Not 100% but let them have some of that time. That's one we need to nurture. Definitely. Okay. All right. Let's go to, I believe, the last question. And it's kind of a long one. but I think it's an important one.

Stephen in Round Rock, Texas, S. I'm going into my third year of coaching my son's rec team. The boys are all 7-8 years old. This fall, we play 5 v.5, 4 in the field, one in the goal. We play on a larger field that's typically used for 7v.7 with larger goals and goal boxes. In my opinion, it's too big of a space for them to play positionless soccer.

I've taught the boys the diamond shape and guide them towards being roughly in the right area during games. Most goals are long breakaways from a scrum for the ball. so I think having a boy playing sweeper is important. We don't keep score, but the boys know the score and get deflated if they're losing big during the game. I'm glad they want to win. I want them to win too, but it's not what defines success at this age. How do you handle that balance?

So I guess there's really two questions here. What do you think about a larger playing space than is sort of prescribed for the number of players in the age group? A, and then B, how do you handle this balance between wanting to win? and not making it be the end-all, end-all be-all, particularly when it comes to stopping breakaways, which happens constantly at this age, you know? So, Jim, why don't you start? Well, Mike, you wanted to address the field thing,

so why don't you address that, and then I'll let Jim start on the, is it okay to play a sweeper question? Sure, yeah, I mean, I think there's so much in this question for us to dig into, but yeah, I think the answer to me, the simple answer is the field is a problem. I think, you know, it really does matter that the dimensions are appropriate to the age

because that's behind so many of the knock-on problems that are included in this question, right? Right. It's behind what is almost necessitating positional tactical stuff for this coach. And, you know, I think it's important. When we answer this one, at least from my perspective, like I can see that this is coming from a very thoughtful and caring place from this coach who obviously wants best for the kids and the players. But I don't know. I just have a lot of like kind of holes to pick in the situation. I think the first one is that the field poses a major problem.

So I don't know what the answer to that is other than try to get involved and, you know, make your case for why the competition should be played on an appropriate size field. but this isn't doing them any favors soccer-wise. Okay. Yeah, I agree 100%. Let's get into the, you know, if the field were the right size, is it okay to say like, say you rotate, say you rotate who has to do this job.

You stay back at midfield and you, I know you're really against this, Mike, but what do you think, Jim? You stay back at midfield, in case they break out, just be there to, snuff it out, you know? I don't have a problem with that and it depends

why you're doing it and who you put there. If you put it in, we talked earlier about teaching kids to circle back. If you put it in the context of that particular understanding of defending and you make everybody

take a turn at doing it. But if the reason you're doing it, is to make sure your team wins the game. If that's the purpose of it, then I don't think you should do that. But if the reason you're doing it is because the field's too big and you're not really playing a real game, well, that's not the kid's fault. And it's like I think like if you were a teacher and there was a tree that fell across

the opening of your classroom and the kids had to climb over that tree to get into your classroom, It's laying on something happened, whatever. Their point is there's an obstacle there that shouldn't be there, and they have to navigate that obstacle to be able to get what I want to go. Well, that's what the big field is. And so you have to give them a tool to work with a little bit. So I don't have a problem with giving the kids, because it's really about empowering the kids to solve a problem,

which is the constant breakaways. Here's a solution. But it's not, if the reason you're doing, doing it is because you want to go 12 and oh and you're going to put that big fast kid there and they're going to kick the ball out. No, I wouldn't do that. So that's how I look at that. As far as the winning part, because I think winning is important and I think we should never teach you kids that that's not true. The definition of that is we're trying to teach them to kick it in the other goal, not in our goal, for a reason, because we count those and that's how we know

if we want or not. So I don't think we should ever go away from winning, but what we should do is redefine winning. And that's, we talked about that a little bit earlier, is winning, as long as you give a definition of winning to the kids, that is something that they can accomplish, and that doesn't embarrass the other team necessarily. It's just focused on their performance. Like, if I'm going to count the number of times that you kick a ball with a locked ankle, with correct technique, and I hope it happens 10 times in the first half. I'll be counting. Go play. It doesn't matter what the score is. What matters is how many times has this happened if you've got the kids following you and you have to establish that rapport with the kids. So you can have a

parallel agenda to winning. Winning as defined by me is this. And then you can focus on winning because now we know what winning is. It's like when your son thought he was losing, but then you redefined it for him, and he was okay. Yeah, I actually do agree with quite a bit of that. I think the, like, I think, Adam, you kind of started touching on an important, probably like a compromise answer, which is, if you are going to put a player in that kind of a role, let's make sure it's rotating, right? So, like, my problem from a, just almost like a development standpoint is that that

that player is so isolated from the game and the decision making and stuff, you know, in a way that matches an under, you know, a seven-year-old, a seven-year-old's kind of remit there. But if it's, if it's kind of rotated, I mean, the same happens very often for the goalkeeper at that level, right? Is they're just like so, so far away from the game. They're not getting much soccer out of it. You can try to work with them to stay attached, but it's very, very difficult. You just live with it, and that's why you rotate it and put that player in. So I could certainly like adapt that, you know, point of view on over to that, that sweeper role and kind of be okay with it. I think, um, a couple things with it, right?

Like, I think Jim hit the nail on the head with like, why, why are you making the decision potentially to do this? And if the answer is winning, you've got to really reexamine it, right? And if the answer is like in, in service of creating the best we can in terms of this environment where the players can continue to enjoy the game and get a little bit better as they do it, then it's kind of okay. I think one of our other questions asked about, like, how to sort of address the fact that the parents get so frustrated with situations that come up, you know, whether it's the swarming, you know, of it or here will be like nonstop, maybe breakaway goals or whatever. And I just think like the adults, especially that, you know, the parents, they'll appreciate the tactical

intervention much more than the kids will, in my opinion, right? So I had a, like, the kids will be unaware of it. And I think often not that bothered by it. Like, what I would challenge, Stephen here to like examine this a little bit closer. And again, I could be right. I could be wrong. But just, just look at a little bit closer and consider this. It's like, are the kids discouraged by this or are the adults discouraged by this, right? And I had this come up one time in my rec. It was actually my first year coaching rec soccer. I thought I had done such a great job.

Came through squeaky clean. Everything went by the books. And the very last game we played, the other coach comes walking across to my side of the field or, you know, during the game. And he's like, hey, can we get this kid off the field? She keeps scoring these breakaways. It's just a, you know, it's a kid that was bigger and happy to be finding her way through. from you know and I moved her around throughout the field and she had the same rotation as everybody

else but she just was able to it and I'm like I'm not putting restrictions on the players you know it's this that's not how we handle it and he's like oh they're very upset like the team's very upset you know the score was getting away and I thought about it and I'm like no they're not I the adult is upset here right I'm looking at the kids kids are doing just fine they're just out there playing soccer one play at a time I'd be very surprised if many of them know what the score is or anything like that. What age was this? Eight.

It probably is this age group, eight, eight or ten at the oldest, right? Okay. And I just think, like, we are so hyper-tuned and hypersensitive in that regard that we sometimes just project our own stuff onto them unnecessarily. And sometimes, and we always mean well, like, certainly that coach meant well by coming over to say that to me, like, hey, maybe we rotate this kid off, like to, you know, He meant well. That was so that the kids don't have like a negative experience on his side.

But I just don't think it reflected reality. I think reality was that the kids are just going about this one plate of time, doing well, just engaging it. And here we have an adult keeping close track of a score, which we don't even keep, you know, in the league. And I would, I almost wonder if that's a little bit could be behind a piece of this question, right? maybe it's not as big an issue for the players as you think it is. See, I'm not sure, Mike, because I think, I was, again, I'm going to bring up my game on Saturday. One of my U10 teams played a very good rec team, I think, kind of a, some kind of select team. I don't really know what's going on there, but they were like a clear level up from our team and from anybody that my girls had ever played against.

It was a great experience for them. I was really happy with how the whole thing went. But I could see, you know, we hung with them for the first half, second half. They started to pull away. I think it was final score was like seven or eight one. Nobody's keeping track except me. Something like that. But I could see the heads dropping.

Like honestly, the girls on my team were pretty discouraged, getting discouraged. And so I don't know. I do, I do, I'm not sure kids never care about that, you know, just to kind of like, like, just to add another layer here. Like, yeah, more often than not, I would imagine the parents are the ones, the adults are the ones driving this whole discussion. But kids care too. I don't mean to say they don't care. Yeah. I don't, like, yeah, if that's how it came across, I don't mean to say they don't care.

I just, does it approach the level at which, like, drastic change needs to be, you know what I mean? I mean, it is kind of life. Like, you win, you lose. It's, you know, it is kind of life. It's in there. I don't know. That's sort of my, I totally appreciate your perspective. And I, you know, you have to have some awareness, obviously, on the emotional side.

And if you are like it's crystal clear to you, it sounds like Bell's there that, that was, you know, kind of getting into the negative territory for those kids. I mean, I wasn't asking another coach to pull anybody off. I was saying, like, guys, keep your heads up. You're doing great. We're fine. How do you measure success, right? So you measure success, like Jim said, it's totally, you measure success for kids at that age group. How often are they getting the ball, dribbling it, and how hard are they trying to get the ball and dribble it?

You know what I mean? And, you know, you get a kid that has like three successful dribbles and the team loses by five. To me, I've just, to that, all I'm on is that kid and go, go, go, great, great, great, great job. Three times today? That's awesome. You know what I mean? I bet next time we can get four. And I don't know, but it's like keep in mind how you measure the success for the age groups.

And because it's so easy to slip into the winning and losing model because that's our adult world that we, you know, that's very much the perspective that we come out of and understandably so. But it is it is a different project for the kids that young. Jim. Winning winning is important. I don't think we should ever put a message out that winning isn't important. but the question is what is the definition of winning at any given moment in time and I think you can do a little realism with the kids

hey sometimes teams are better than us okay does that mean the game doesn't matter of course it does here's what we're trying to do in this game of course we're trying to score more goals than them but this is what we're really trying to do and this is what I'm watching bring that lesson of doing your best is the measuring stick that we started this whole thing out with

I think, you know. I mean, that is totally life. Like, you get to real adult soccer, you 100% are going to get outmatched at some point. It's going to happen in normal life. It's going to happen in work. It's going to happen academically. It's going to happen wherever where you kind of meet your match and are like over your head, right? And then so what's the standard by which we measure how you approached it? Did you do your best work? Was it your best effort? Right. And even in that, that scenario that we've just kind of like reviewed together to each of those players, did you do your best at what we've asked you to do? Did you do your best to get on the ball continually? Did you do your best to dribble that players can do? And if the answer is yes,

and guess what, the, you know, opponent was stronger than we were in those situations, that's life, but success for you, for having done your best. And if you kind of like hung your head, stop trying to get the ball, stop trying to take players on because, you know, this gets bigger than me or whatever, not success. We have to have a serious discussion about that, right? But it's not really tied into the score of the game there. Okay. All right. I think that's probably good for us for today.

I'm so grateful to both of you for your time. Thank you, Jim. Thank you, Mike. Absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks everybody for listening. We'll see you.