Soccer

As coaches, one of our goals is to help teach players to get better at the Beautiful Game. When we watch young players in a game or even in a practice, we can see so much in the way of skills and tactics that we want to “fix”. We can easily walk away from a game with a list of five or more things we want the players and team to fix. We then are faced by the challenge of cramming this long list of player and team tasks into two practices before our game the next weekend. This is the common scenario facing nearly every youth coach of the Beautiful Game.

Long ago, when the mountains were young and the seas were just filled, I was a tank company commander. I was blessed by the Gods of War to command 14 tanks, and it was called a company. Ok, keep reading, I promise that this will get to soccer shortly. Have faith.

Tonight, I was given the blessing to have about two solid hours of drinking beer and thinking about soccer due to the fact that my friends all bailed on me and left me alone at our local watering hole. I decided that after getting my IPA and wonderful warm soft pretzel with cheese sauce, I would focus on developing a framework to analyze a soccer team playing a game. This was building upon a few assignments I had during my C license course. I broke a team down into three sub-teams and four system states. The three sub-teams are defense, midfield and forwards.