Hello and Welcome to the FCB Blog for U-11 & U-12 parents and players! Please check the blog as often as you like or when you receive an email reminder. It’s full of technical training tidbits and lots of other stuff to help the girl’s be the best player they can be. This first blog post lets you know what we’ve been working on during practice and previews what’s coming in September. I’m looking forward to a great year! The Inside Scoop on What We've Been Practicing
During the first week of practice, we focused quite a bit of time on individual foot-skills and when to use these skills. We did moves to beat players 1 versus 1, moves to take the ball away from pressure, and hesitation and double moves. I hope all of the girls can name at least 2 moves from each of these categories and demonstrate how to do them. (This is your daughter's cue to show you what they've learned).
After the foot-skills and 1v1s, we progressed to attacking in groups of 3. We started the travel camp week with 3 against 0 (talking about how to move, where to move, and how to pass). We progressed this slowly all the way to 3 on 3. I designed the practices this way to continuously give the girls the right balance of challenge and success. Once the team found regular success in an activity, we added another defender to make it more challenging.
What We Will be Working on This Fall
The 3 on 3 games throughout the year will always have the same set-up, but each week will have different rules to bring out different parts of the game. There will always be two goals for each team to score at and 2 goals to defend. With two goals, the girls will need to read the defense and make decisions based on what they see. One of the goals will inevitably be easier to score at than the other (there will be more space around it and less defenders).
We want the girls to master recognizing a 2 on 1 situation and how to take advantage of it. In time the girls will not only know how to read and attack open space, but how to move the defenders to create the space they want to exploit.
Our other focus in September will be how to attack in our formation. This year we will be playing a 1-3-3-2 (1 goalkeeper, 3 defenders, 3 midfielders and 2 forwards). We will be addressing how to create 2 on 1 situations in the center midfield by having outside mids come into the middle. We will also work on how to create 2 on 1s on the outside by having outside defenders overlap into the attack. Lastly we will cover how the 2 forwards make runs that work together and create space for one another. These ideas of movement with 9 players are complex and will take the girls some time to implement. Mistakes will be made and we will sometimes lose the ball in our midfield and defensive thirds of the field. This is all a part of the process and is expected.
*Please be encouraging throughout this process. Without your support the girls will revert back to old habits. You will see an incredible difference in the way the teams play once this movement becomes second nature.
Our Goals and Your Role
I encourage parents to ask their player after each game just two questions:
- Did you have fun?
- What did you learn?
We all need to reinforce with the girls that our goal is more than winning. It’s to develop as players and as a team. Helping our players develop positive character traits and learn “life lessons” is just as important, if not more important, than “the win”. Please also reinforce our goal of having fun. Keeping the game and the experience fun will keep the girls coming back to be part of the team and continue to love the game of soccer. If we put the emphasis on anything else... so will they, and this can undermine what we're trying to accomplish this year.
Thanks for your continued support!
Please feel free to email me or post a question on this blog!
-Coach Eric
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