I posted this comment on my FB Fan page and Twitter feed a couple of days ago and it's because of what I have been learning this past week, the importance of patterns and "choreography" as ways to work on keeping possession and attacking. There is much more to what I've been learning but this is a start.
Now Patterns of Play is nothing new to me but what is new and what I've been learning is the importance it has in a players develop at such an earlier age. The two big problems with US soccer players is our skill and the knowledge of the game, our tactical depth. Our tactical depth is by far in worse shape. I sometimes like to listen to other coaches and see what they say to their players and see if I can learn anything. I RARELY hear anything of quality.
I only know of four people that use patterns and choreography to help develop their players. Two are in California and two are in Illinois that I've talked to. I'm guessing there is more but these are the ones I know about. I have seen all of these guys teams play and let me say that I was very impressed and I knew they were onto something that I wanted my teams to do. Here is a video that shows what Kleiban's team looks like. It is an After and Before, yes that's correct. I still haven't been able to finish watching this video because the Before is such crap. His team has actually played against a Barcelona Academy team of the same age and tied them, I think they lost the semi-final game versus them 2-3. There is NO long ball or using the bigger faster players tactics going on. Watch the game here. XuXuh is in the game too. Watching these teams play shows me that what they are doing works and I want my teams to play similar so badly!
According to one of the blog posts it took at least 6 months to have the team look similar to this. Even after three years they are still working on the foundation for the majority of their training sessions. Within this past week I've been studying like crazy and developing a plan that is utilizing Futsal as the foundation to build from for outdoor. They think that players at any level can resemble a possession style so I'll be putting their methods to the test. I'm not delusional, I know my teams won't be able to play at that level but my goal is to resemble it and have them playing the right way at their own level.
For my futsal training I've been incorporating a lot of pattern movement. I am sticking with one pattern that will have one progression. Reason being is that I do not want to confuse the players, less is more. I have already noticed a difference in my teams with futsal from only doing three practices. I've worked on technique, 1v1, 2v1 and a big portion on the Box (2-2) Pattern. I've incorporated the Choreography part into scrimmage, I'll do more with it later. There is still more to do, a lot more, but what I'm doing is building the foundation.
In the video below you will see my girls vs a red team and a black team. The red team was before we started and the black team was today 11/30/13. Also, let me make a disclaimer. The red team was a better team and I've edited out a lot of the not so good play. If you see how long the video is you can tell that it is not an entire game. For the majority of the game we did not play good but the parts that are in the video I've RARELY seen in our games. Honestly, some of the play isn't that great but for our level it's good. This is more about what the possibilities that may lay ahead with this new way of training and I'm really excited about it.
Lastly what I'd like to say also is that we played this team before and tied them 4-4, a lot of slop goals from both teams. I'm not sure what the score was today but I know we won easily. Maybe 6-2, only one goal we scored would be considered slop. Even in my boys game I was noticing improvements in our movement off the ball but the boys biggest issue was VERY POOR decision making. We conceded a lot of goals from turn overs. My 13s are better than that and I'm just going to put it down as a bad day and a good opponent. But this is a good start with my girls and hopefully this is the start of something great.
Sincerely,
Derek McMullen
@CoachDerekMc
