That prompted me to think about and revisit my desired soccer philosophy, especially in the context of coaching young players. I emphasize speed in play, including quick passes, quick touches, free flow to encourage lots of movement. The problem with that is that our team isn't great at making passes, and we have players who don't have the legs for the amount of movement the system requires.
The system I encourage is similar to Arsenal's style, which is no coincidence because they are my favorite team. Stoke, by contrast, are known for what I call "Operation Long Ball." They play lots of defense, and an ideal goal for them is stealing the ball in their own third, sending it up to their target striker, and having him fire at the goal two touches later.
That style of play would probably work well with my team, and we'd likely score lots of goals. We have a couple kids with big legs, and a couple kids with speed. We could probably pull Stoke's style off with some good success. On offense at least. And quite frankly, with how many games we lose close, it would be nice to get some extra goals from time to time.
The problem with that--and I tell parents this all the time-- is that kids who are fastest this year might not be next year. Eventually the kids will catch up to the kids who have big legs now. At that point, it's important that the players are well-rounded. That's why I encourage my players to play soccer, and make it look like soccer, even if that means we lose to teams beating us with Operation Long Ball.
In my opinion, my role as a youth coach is two-fold. First, I have to improve the kids' soccer ability. It would be a real waste of time if the kids came out to practice, participated in the camps, and games, and didn't get any better during the season. I am supposed to identify their strengths and weaknesses, and help the player improve in all aspects of his game.
The second thing I have to do is to get the kids to fall in love with soccer. To some extent, this is easy to do because the kids like me, and I make practice fun. However, losing games isn't fun. If you keep losing games, it's easy, in my opinion, to get down on yourself and seek a new sport to participate in.
When our style of play isn't getting us wins, perhaps the kids are improving, but are falling out of love with the sport. Obviously the solution isn't to just do the opposite so we can get the wins, but then what is the solution? Just be patient and hope that with more training, we'll be able to play attractive soccer and get the results?
Seeing as that's what I'm doing, let's hope that's what happens.
