U17 Boys - Transition (Part 1)

This morning we had a session with the u17 boys.  It's been a long time since we had 14 boys at training.  School soccer has been busy for most of them, but slightly detrimental to the development of this group.

To be honest, I went without a plan.  :-)  I was feeling silly always having a plan only to watch it get scrapped.  I leaned on my experience, read the numbers and mood and tried to make good use of the time.  I had several ideas in mind and decided what I wanted to do while they had their own thing going.

Our situation was 14 players on a 60x40 mini pitch, 20 balls, blue and yellow pinnies and plenty of cones.  The full field was available but the club is looking to keep people off that until the last possible minute.  Understandable.

The boys had their own shoot-out going and we let them finish that.  I am not a big fan of interfering when the kids show some initiative and get their own juices going.

I decided to take a transition theme to the practice.  But, for transition, I was looking more at the mentality of staying awake during the game and reacting quickly to a change in possession.  We did not specifically work on counter attacking, etc.

We started off with 9v5 keep-away.  Very little coaching.  5 players in yellow, the rest in their grey shirts.  If the yellow team won the ball they had to complete 3 passes to get the 9 to do 5 push-ups.  Coaching points were:

• When the 9 lose the ball, to converge on the yellow to win ball back and prevent push-ups.
• When the 9 win the ball back, to re-establish their shape and use all the space.
• Stay awake.  Transition from attacking->defending and vice-versa

It went well and their hormones made it competitive.  The ball was moving quickly enough and the boys were expressing themselves through their ideas.

We then moved to a game where we set up a field of play 15x40yds, divided into 3 sections, with the middle section the smallest.  We had 3 teams (grey, blue, yellow).  The team in the middle had to prevent passes from making it from one end to the other.  A player from the middle could enter the end areas to pressure the ball.  If the team in the middle intercepted they had to immediately play the ball to the team they did not intercept from and switch places with the team that just lost the ball.  The players who just lost the ball had to move to pressure the ball in the other area and prevent a pass through.  The team that just came out of the middle had to get to their new area and be ready to play.  First team to complete 5 passes across wins.  If a ball lands in your area and you let it go out you were back in the middle and the coaches served a ball to the other end to keep the game moving and maintain the reason for staying alert.

To make the game work, we did some slight coaching for:

• Shape in the end areas to keep possession and be ready to make a pass to the other end
• Defensive shape to make the game more difficult for the passers
• Coach Loris introduced a slight progression to say passes had to be knee-high to force better passing, quicker decisions and more success for the team in the middle and more transitions

I was going to step in and fix a few things but the players were yelling and being demanding with  each other when somebody was not hurrying or alert to their new duties after a change in possession.  That was what I was looking for and we let the boys' collective venom give the game a life of it's own.  This game lasted for quite a while.

We then set them up in a mini-game (7v7).  There was very little coaching for the first part.  To turn up the heat we set up the game, golden goal, losers do 20 push-ups.  The yelling started again when players were not coming back to defend and getting forward on winning the ball back.

To finish, Coach Loris moved them to the full field to get some shooting in with our GK in goal.

On Thursday I have the boys on my own.  I will continue with transition play but apply it directly to game situations.

With this group of boys, I find myself doing very little direct coaching.  I get more success from them when I set the practice up to force my coaching points through the situation and conditions created and allow their own competitiveness to drive the session forward.  The practices must have meaning and be enjoyable because we want them to keep these kinds of numbers.

It's fun listening to them trash-talk each other about school rivalries.  I look forward to the school league play-offs heating things up.