Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Refereeing, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: Arsenal, chamberlain, fast striker, quick feet, southampton
One of the sensations in the English leagues at the moment is another product of the Southampton youth system – Alex Chamberlain. Fast, furious and a fabulous touch this boy looks the real thing.
I’ve always been a bit envious of the teams I play that can just launch a long ball to their winger who with a bit of speed and a good first touch can score goals at will. But in youth matches the fast players can look really good without actually be a good player. First touch and speed make a huge difference at this level.
As a coach you can allow yourself to get caught out once by this sort of tactic but you shouldn’t let it happen once you’ve identified the tactic. Getting players to sit deep to counter the tactic is one way of stopping the player running through unchallenged to the goal.
A player running at speed is highly dangerous to both your team and your health! It can frighten the life out of your goalkeeper so the rest of the team have to make sure there is no room to run through the team and towards the goal.
On my blog I have posted a compilation of some of Chamberlain’s goals, check them out and think about how you would play against a player like this
Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Fitness, Soccer News, Soccer Refereeing, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management, Soccer Training | Tags: age, development, youth
I was explaining my ‘youth’ policy for my younger teams at a dinner party last week when one of the other guests on my table said: “But your players are all the same age!”
What another coach would understand, but this guest didn’t, is that within an age bracket, say U10s, there can be up to a year difference between some of the players.
And that makes a huge difference in youth teams. some players will grow quicker than others and be taller and struggle to cope with coordination, while the younger ones find they are brushed off the ball easily.
You should try and give each one of your players targets to meet during the season and also give them as much time playing matches as the older ones in your squad. By helping them to develop you may just find a gem that you didn’t realise you had – and a lot of coaches never discover that the players they leave on the bench every week could make a difference to their teams.
You could give players targets at each session or match, like “I will try to head every ball that comes to me at head height”, or “instead of dribbling into the box every time I will cross the ball”. You must make a note of this at the end of the session or match and talk to your player about it.
It is not unlike the top teams who have to bring young players through to the first team. At Chelsea Carlo Ancelotti is keen to bring youth through and that is hard when you have such a strong first team. However Ancelotti reckons he has found a star player through his youth experiments. “In six months we have found a fantastic young player in Josh McEachran. Others from the academy are close to playing for us. We hope to find more.”
