Question Number: 13693

League Specific 9/7/2006

RE: Under 11

Patrick Trombly of Winthrop / Newton, MA USA asks...

This question is a follow up to question 13653

You are right, Chuck, there should be offsides at this age. We had offsides in 5th grade when I was growing up and I'm now in a more affluent town where the kids are more sophisticated than we ever were. But mine is not to question why, mine is to know what the rules are and make sure my kids don't give up opportunities because of what I think the rules ought to be. There's no offsides right through 8th grade and more than half the kids won't play in high school. I need to teach to the whole class and to teach the now more than the then.

I am teaching ball handling skills as well but I like my "team" approach. We will have a few set plays, and it will help the kids in the forest-versus-tree category - they will hopefully learn to think of the whole field and the whole team, not just themselves, the ball and the nearest man. The idea is that six weeks from now, some of the girls will be coming up to me saying "coach, I think we could do X on a corner kick." Not everyone will get to that level but they'll have an improved concept of how their individual actions fit into the team objectives.

I played for 4 years, and my daughter is in her 4th year, and soccer in the US, not only in this age group but honestly through college, other than the elite schools, isn't the soccer you see the pros play on tv. It's hockey with your feet and on the grass. Maybe six kids in the whole league will make it to a level where the way Pele did it will help them. Right now, and for the next several years - and probably for the duration of a given kid's soccer 'career,' it comes down to a booted ball is faster than a person running without the ball, and a person running without the ball is faster than a person running with the ball. In the time it takes to look up and find an open man, the ball gets taken from you - so why not station some folks at specific spots, particularly after stoppages, so that the person with the ball simply has to boot to that spot? Yes the other team might be covering but everyone on my team knows where the ball is going, and can help out. Right now, passing for the perfect shot ends up with the team getting no shot off at all, which is a wasted opportunity because most of the goaltenders are just not very good. So I tell them, if you have a shot, take it, and kick the cover off the ball - - you lose a little accuracy but over the course of the game the team gets off twice as many shots on net. If you don't shoot, you can't score, and the team with the most scores wins.

It's not like baseball where the action is individual and one kid's swinging like they show you in the Charlie Lau video helps the whole team, regardless of whether the other players are on the same page. It's 7 v 7 plus goalies - the few times you get a very talented player, typically someone who moved here from Europe or South America, she dribbles around three players beautifully but two of them catch right back up to her and they and a third defender end up muscling the ball away from her. I'd rather sit her at forward, tell her to stay home, have the defense steal the ball using the "box out" method I've described to make up for the fact that the forwards won't be coming back to help, and then boot the ball to where they know the forwards are, who now have a more manageable 1 or 2 people to dribble or pass around to get a shot off.

There's just too much of a disconnect between the way the pros play and the way they play at anything below the elite levels in the US, and what works at the elite levels doesn't work unless most of the players on the team can do it just as well. In some cases it's a choice between teaching what most of the kids will never be at a level to benefit from or teaching what will definitely help them do better the following Saturday.

This is America - the land of instant gratification!

I don't know - this could all fail. We'll just have to see. I'll write back in mid-season and let you know.

Answer provided by Referee Chuck Fleischer

Thanks. Just remember the five things allowed to be altered by the international governing body. Who cares what they think.

Answer provided by Referee Keith Contarino

I'll have to disagree to an extent. 7 v 7 with no offside is simply NOT soccer. The kids I referee that are playing 11 v 11 with all the rules in place do benefit from learning how the pros play. If those in charge would simply leave the game alone and not muck around with the Laws, we'd have much better soccer at all levels.