U13 - 1v1 defending

Our U13 boys convened tonight for a 2 hour session.  1v1 defending was the theme of the night.  This is probably the single most weakest point of our team.

We started out with a 12-minute run where we asked for a minimum of 1.5 miles followed by five 40m sprints.  This is becoming tradition.

We moved into a passing-receiving warm-up type of drill and had them receive the ball 4 different ways.  Always first touch out of the feet and in a different direction.  The last style for receiving was to step on the ball dead, fake the kick and then change directions.  As usual, we looked for quick passes.

We then did a running-turning-passing drill using 4 different turns.  Our coaching focused on the balance in the turn, keeping the ball under control, lifting the head after the turn and making an early pass after the turn.  Doing turns only is not good enough because in a game you are always making a pass after the turn.

We've been passing, dribbling and turning for months.  We'll see how it pays off when he hit the grass.

For 1v1 defending we started with straight up 1v1, me against you.  One player serves the other and they play.  The nets are not square to each other so the players were not running straight forward and defending the target directly behind them.

Coaching points were:

• Goal side of the ball at all times
• Balance/patience (pressure ball, but don't over commit)
• Threaten the ball
• Speed/angle of approach (don't be square to the goal)
• Look to attack if/when you win the ball back
• If player turns away from you, don't let him turn forward again.  Force him back. 

From there we went to a game where there was a 1v1 happening and 2 players behind each net ready to play.  Winner stays in.  If you lost another guy ran in with a ball to play.  Everybody had to pay attention since there always had to be players ready to play so the game would never stop.  The game turned out to be very competitive.  When you do 1v1 it has to have a competitive edge to it.  Added points to this:

• new player came in quickly so winner had to be ready to switch from attacking to defending
• important to attack when you win the ball so you can stay in the game
• look to strike early if target is open so you were in a better position to defend
• if a player won 3 games in a row the other guys in the group did 5 pushups.

We then went to a 7v7 game (well, 7v6 we had 13 players).  We were looking for players to pressure the ball early and get into 1v1 defending mode.  This was working out "OK".  To add some intensity we added that if a team scored twice in a row the other team did 10 pushups.  So our mentality was if you were looking to score your second goal, you did not want th others to score and tried to win the ball back.  If you were the team under threat of pushups you worked to win and keep the ball in possession and score.

Anything to make the game competitive is helpful.  It's difficult to replicate a game.

It was nice to have Coach Paul out tonight and have 2 groups for each exercise.  More organization, more pointers and 4 eyes instead of 2 helps make everything easier.

The only bad feeling I left with tonight was that the final game was only 20 minutes long.  I didn't feel I had the time to step in and make corrections and still leave time to play freely.  So we tried to make the game's conditions do some of the teaching for us.  The other stuff was going well and I let the clock get away from me.  We also ran a bit late, which is not good for parents.

Next up is Wednesday.  I am probably going to repeat tonight's 1v1 theme with different exercises and a longer game.  Plus the 12 minute run.