THE ELEMENT OF PERCEPTION

In 2011 I belonged to a club that favored its’ senior teams and had no interest in their juniors. The juniors were a means to an end, as the only way that the senior squads could belong to a local football association and play in a league, was by having a minimum of three junior teams covering u9, u11 and u13 respectively. I coached the u11 squad.

The club’s facilities were more than average with a club house, change rooms, equipment and three well maintained fields. The goal posts were portable and required some effort to set up. The club’s committee refused to allow the junior teams to use the proper sized goals on practice days and we all were given small steel goals to use (with a height of 1.5 meters and a width of 3 meters.

We had a terrible season as we lost the majority of games and conceded more goals than we scored.  I took the time to investigate why we were struggling, by visiting other clubs in our league and watching their practice sessions. I also observed my players in action and made notes; got a friend of mine to video record a few games that my team played in and spent time putting the pieces of the puzzle together.

My team was struggling because we were practicing with small sized goals, whereas our opponents from other clubs were using large goals. They were strong on set pieces i.e. corners and were able to take aerial shots at goal from way beyond the goal area. My players on the other hand needed to get right up to the large goals to score, virtually running over the opposing goal keeper in the process. On match days my goalie looked like a fish out of water inside a large goal as it is far easier to defend a small area than a large one.

Training with small goals had created a one dimensional approach to scoring. My players could not see the big picture at all. Shooting at a small target at most times with low shots in order to score had created tunnel vision which held us back. Our set pieces like corners were poorly executed and virtually impossible to do in front of small goals, as the players were as tall and some even taller than the goals we were using.

REMEMBER: When dealing with young minds you need to look at how they see things and perceive things to be. If you’re struggling to achieve positive results then you need to take a step back and analyze the problem. More often than not the solution is staring you in the face.

Cheers for now.

Mike

P.S. Next time youth football coaching drills, we will cover a drill that works well in improving your players’ shots at goal.