Soccer Practice Games: 5 Ways To Discover Game Progression
If you are like me, you will probably have no difficulty in understanding the significance of soccer practice games as compared to drills. Initially, the games must focus on helping the kids acquire the skills and improving their movement with the ball. However, as they progress with their soccer training, there are a few things that you must observe.
What works best is that kids are randomly grouped so that they get to develop their individual styles along with having fun just like we talked about before. To begin with, the size of these groups must be small enough so that the kids have more freedom and liberty to take their own decisions.
Such an arrangement also ensures that the kids have more space to move about in the field, get more touches on the ball and become more accountable for their choices since there are very few players in the group.
On the contrary, when the kids adapt to playing in groups with few players and also improve on their skills, introduce some variants. You should now introduce progressions in soccer practice games. It requires you to make more strict rules for playing the game that too in relatively larger fields with few more players added into the group. Now you must initiate comprehensive strategies that serve the dual purpose of honing individual skills of players along with team’s objectives.
There is something that I’d like to mention here and it calls for your special attention. A majority of coaches tend to put too much pressure on kids to make them ready to play live tournaments very early in time. Understand that there are no shortcuts. Just like soccer drills, you cannot mechanize the process. It has to be a natural progression that takes time.
The plans suffer and results decline when coaches lay a lot of emphasis on competition, introduce players to soccer terminologies early, or make a lot of rules and regulations. This obstructs their process of learning and growth.
As the kids make a transition from small groups to large ones, they should instill in themselves a sense of camaraderie. It is crucial to understand the difference between focusing on your own skills at one time and then using those skills to win the games for your team.
In this situation along with games, it is vital to hold discussions also. Understand that the players have now matured themselves in the game. As a result, it is a blunder to ignore their skills in soccer exercises.
Involving them in decision making and encouraging them to come out with their thoughts will go a long way in inculcating a sense of responsibility in them.
The games should now make them think out of the box to win matches. When the players think themselves as a team and not as individual players, you have succeeded in your job as a coach.
Your next step! To take what you’ve just learned and implement in your plan. Soccer practice games make for a valuable tool in soccer training and you must create them in a way so that they help the kids make natural progress. sEnroll for our youth soccer coaching community that has a number of games and strategies to make training sessions fun and educational.
Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Practice.
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