Teaching U-little's spacing..when it is too early?

[Administrator]

I was coaching a U-9 team here in Kansas City in the fall and we were struggling with the typical "bunching up" and "bee soccer" routines. I worked with my players on how to not play on top of one-another and after a few weeks of practice, things were improving.

A good exercise that Doug Williamson gave me was to have the girls play handball with a smaller ball. If you let them use their hands they become way less nervous and they will actually stay further apart. Once I did this, it let the girls see their spacing and when we switched into playing soccer again, they seemed to 'get it'.

I repeated this exercise a few times in the following weeks and noticed some decent improvement in their ability to stay apart from their teammate and not right on top of them.

Do you work on spacing or simply not being right on top of their teammate? When is too early? What have you seen?

[Jeffrey Geller]

I have my U7s & U8s getting into a diamond shape as much as possible. When we win the ball, we get in a "big diamond", with the two wide players literally on the touch lines. When we lose the ball, we get in a "small diamond" to protect the middle third of the field. The players realize quickly that the faster they get wide, the more open they'll be, and the easier route to goal they'll have.

With a little repetition and constant cues, the players catch on very quickly.

To practice getting in the diamond, sometimes we play a game where 4 players stand in the middle of the field with their eyes covered and they walk around. When I say "GO" they quickly look at where they are on the field, and run to the 4 points of the diamond.

[Joe Cummings]

Jeffrey, thank you for sharing and for helping to get our online forums up and running. The sharing of information among all our members will be quite valuable.

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[Martin Roberts]

Ryan, I think it depends on the intelligence of your players, I have seen u8/9 be able to understand, rehearse, and execute spacial movement and movement off the ball, and I've seen other players in the same team see the ball as their personal property and won't let anyone else touch it.

At that age all I would, and do, consider; is to work on technical ability, controlling a ball, making the pass, and who to pass to. By correcting their technique I have found that you naturally implement space and shape, and they pick it up quicker..at least in training!

[Brandon Koons]

Ive been coaching college players and high school aged club teams for years, but recently coached a younger group of players through U9 and U10. I wanted to see if young kids could grasp some of the Defensive Shape ideas I use with older kids. I simply showed Defenders in the same area being beaten by one player dribbling. We called that group one "Layer" of Defense. I then showed them how much more helpful it was when a player dropped out of the crowd and created a second "Layer" of Defense.

It was the only tactical point we worked from the start and the girls loved showing they recognized when to create another Layer. Making sure we always had two Layers of Defense taught them to appreciate going away from the group. It drastically cut down on our goals against too (we had a ton of shutouts, which I thought was impressive for 8-year-olds). It also made it so parents, who just can't help but blurt things out, said constructive things when reminding the girls to make Layers.

When they moved up to U10, I introduced the terminology of 1st and 2nd Defenders, describing them by their roles of Pressure and Cover. Seeing it as the 1st and 2nd Layers, the girls picked it up quickly. I had a bunch of 9-year-olds that could discuss Defensive Roles better than half the coaches they played against.

I should say however, I am strongly against teaching Tactics at too young of an age. I introduced the idea of Layers to get players out of the Crowd that this thread of comments was created around. I never harped on these ideas. It was simple and easy to understand, they picked it up quickly, it gave them some shape and we spent the rest of the time on technique / individual skills / etc.

[John Mulholland]

At the younger ages I tend to focus on just getting them to stay on a particular side of the pitch. If you can keep them to the left or the right then the field opens up naturally. It is also something that the parents can help with positive comments. This is going to be much harder if you have a team with a wide variety of abilities because the stronger player inevitably ends up going into the weaker players area to help out. If you have a balanced team of abilities it is easier get them to trust each other and space out.