Careful what we wish for

My position is this: street soccer is the most natural educational system that can be found."
--Rinus Michels, FIFA Coach of the Century

Watch any 6 year old dribble a ball. They will keep it under their knee, they generally keep it close, and they love it. By the time they are 13 they can't run with the ball without it jumping three steps ahead of them. Why? I think that as coaches we train that ability out of them.

Watching kids develop in free play I am seeing different skills cultivated, sometimes in direct opposition with the accepted teaching principles. Here is one example of a technical/tactical elements that certainly questions what and how we coach young kids.

1st defender. Kids at the Joy of The People center when first introduced to free play last year would stand flat footed on the floor, as an attacker moved near (they rarely even moved to the ball!) the youngsters (mostly u9 and u10's) would take a big, no, HUGE swipe at the ball, as if they were going to break the leg of the attacker. Generally the attacker saw it coming and would skip by leaving the kid with a big whiff.

I desperately wanted to correct the situation, but it was free play and therefore it was not my role and I left it. This continued throughout the winter.

Then a funny thing happened. They made it work for them.

Toward the end of winter we put together a team of those free play kids for a futsal tournament in Prior Lake. Seemingly recognizing the situation in front of them as if it was just another of a thousand games they have played at the center, the JOTP kids played with absolutely no fear, enjoying themselves as they moved through the tournament winning there group. They played with a lightness, and calmness, and they took lots of risks. They qualified for the final against a a team from a club that generally dominates tournaments like this. Lining up for the final the other team sported matching bags, warm ups, and uniforms. The JOTP kids showed up in spray painted t shirts they made the night before--and they could not have been prouder. But there was a bigger difference between the two teams then their kits and gear. It was their defending skill.

In the final the opposition played impeccable first defender. They got low, they moved their feet, they shut down penetration, shots and crosses. They were well coached.

Here is where it got interesting. Somewhere along the winter, in those hundreds of hours of unstructured play, those frozen, lazy feet, those crazy swipes at the ball, had transformed into smart, darting feet of pickpockets. The big swipes at the ball were still there. But, now
sometimes they were getting beat, sometimes there was a foul, but most of the time the JOTP kids were stealing the ball, tapping it behind the surprised dispossessed attacker and moving deftly around to pick it up and attack as if they had done it thousands of times before. Well, they had. The kids had spent the winter wanting the ball and going after it, and somehow they figured out a way--and luckily the did it before it was coached out of them. Those many hours of free play had not developed classic first defenders, it created ball thief's.

Like the street basketball player that can strip you of the ball when you dive for the basket, the JOTP kids, nurtured like the street basketball players, had the correct accumulation of practice of stripping the ball off of dribbles. When that basketball player is at college, the college coach can spend five minutes explaining how to play first defender in basket ball (stay low, shuffle feet, belly button toward attacker, etc) It takes 5 minutes to learn first defender. But, it It takes a lifetime to learn how to steal the ball.

And, perhaps more importantly, the reverse is true: if you are not playing against defenders who get in close, very, very close, then that player will not have a chance to train against realistic and mature defenses. Attacking skills will work against athletic, and fast, but not against the resourceful and unpredictable skills cultured on the street.

This has implications at the highest levels. When the USMNT U20's were swept and held scoreless last year by what was essentially a U16 Brazil team, US Coach, Wilfred Cabrerra, lamented the lack of comfort on the ball against the Brazilian defenses. "It's not great news, he said, "but we must get more comfortable with the ball against that type of close proximity pressure."

During the Futsal final The BIG CLUB kids had this perplexed look of hey, where is their first defender? Can they come that close? They had never seen kids come for the ball like that. They looked like they had never practiced against anything but first defenders who stayed low and did not dive in. They lost the ball as they tried to penetrate, and became more tentative. Meanwhile the JOTP kids were not swayed, they attacked whether they had the ball or not. The JOTP kids won the game.

Free play allows skills to grow that otherwise may whither at the hands of well meaning coaches, first defender is just one example. Of course we want our kids to be smart defenders, but maybe with kids there is no smart and no dumb, just a learning process that sometimes can be hard to watch but given time and care can produce amazing results.

Get your kids to explore and expand on play, build more and more of it into every practice. Recognize something new. Try to celebrate each new idea and encourage kids to expand on it. Set up times and spaces where the kids can go on their own. Let them learn like the last generation learned baseball, football, and hockey, at the neighborhood parks in a free play setting. If we do that we give each and every kid a better chance to grow, learn and love the game.

TK

All Play and no work

All Play and No work: The Free Play--Deliberate Practice Continuum

As we look at youth development, building hours take thought and balance. Work and play are both part of a continuum of practice that players need to build smartly. Both are important. Here in the US we value the principles of deliberate practice, discipline, hard work, teamwork, and we tend to lay it on thick. We ignore the loose, seemingly mindless, unstructured, qualities of player driven FREE PLAY.

We know it’s important. We can’t find time for it. We are developing only half the player.

Young players, especially those in their “Golden Years,” of 9-13, should put in as many hours as possible in FREE PLAY situations, self driven, unstructured, safe and invigorating, free play is acknowledged as the greatest developer and it’s importance to the development of a player is without question.

Our players, players raised in the organized, competitive based US youth system, understand hard work, but don’t get the play part. They understand the “work,” but may not be able to express themselves in a situation that calls for “play.”

Perhaps this idea is best illustrated by giving an example of the opposite.

Because the opposite can be true. Players may play a lot and not understand hard work and discipline of attaining goals.

As DOC for a big club I once sent a very talented U13 player to participate in a U16 practice. This was a player who was raised in a refugee camp in Kenya, he had build thousands of hours of play. His ball skills were world class for a U13 (he was soon to join the US MNT at the U15 level). I was hoping this skillful player and the team would bond. The Team began by playing small sided in very tight space. The player scored 7 goals in 30 minutes, some of which were quite spectacular. At the end of Practice the coach asked the players to run eight 200 yard repeats. The player made it through one. The other players had no trouble giving effort to the sprints.

The coach called me that night saying that the player would not make his team. He did not complete his sprints. He lamented a Bad attitude, a low capcity for work.

Because he could not make himself run those sprints he would not be on the team.But what about scoring goals under the pressure of three defenders in front of the goal? Doesn’t matter.

My question to the coach was would you tell a player he could not be on the team because he could not finish in front of the net under the pressure of three defenders? No. Would you demand that that player finish those chances “or else?” 

That player has no more capacity to complete the task in front of the goal as the other player has to complete the 200m runs.

While the one set of kids understood “PLAY” while the others understood “WORK.” One kid had been brought up playing with no rules, or objectives, the other had been brought up under strict supervision and organization--this player understands work.

That’s because we put too much emphasis on work. We can control the work. We can't control the Play. In fact, if we try to control it it does not work. It is built up over time spent with only Fun as the objective.

These hours of mindless fun are an invisible learning tool used by every great player ever to inspire us.  

Pele: One the Street to 16 then deliberately practiced at Santos. 3 World Cups.

Zagalo: Free play till 16. Then DP. 5 world Cups. Rivelino, played at the Park, Zidane, at his courtyard, Maradonna, neighborhood waste field…the list goes on and on.  

It takes a balance of deliberate practice and unstructured creative play to develop, and that means everyone, not just the next Messi, but all kids.

Our players, players raised in the organized, competitive based US youth system, understand hard work, but don’t get the play part. They understand the “work,” but may not be able to express themselves in a situation that calls for “play.”

Never too late.  Set up a cool field in your neighborhood.  Find and old tennis court. Build the environment.  Don't worry about the hard work, that comes later and there is plenty of time for that.