Should you write soccer plays in youth soccer?

Lots of great scripted works from high school, college, and professional coaches. Ken Hofer, the one-wing legend of Menominee High School in Michigan, writes his first 15 or so plays. He likes to see how the defense lines up and how specific defenders respond to certain football plays in his playbook. I’ve seen a lot of Menominee games and often thought the play was a little weird on the first or second possession. The Maroons didn’t seem to move the ball as well as usual on their first two possessions, running a different play on each play. On later possessions they seemed almost unstoppable. It became clear that Coach Hofer was writing the first 10-15 plays for him.

When you coach youth soccer, you’re under different limitations than high school guys. Quarters are only 10 minutes long in most cases instead of 12 minutes at the high school level. Youth games are slower so there are far fewer possessions, each possession becomes very important. Using a full possession or 2 or 3 to follow a script can put your youth soccer team in a hole that can be difficult to climb out of.

A hybrid way to get some of the benefits of the dash without giving up 2 or 3 possessions is to explore just your base game and a handful of your “home run” plays. An example would be on your run out of the tackle, make sure you watch the defensive end on the play side, if he’s boxing keep running out of the tackle, if he’s a fast end run the sweep. On wedge plays, see how hard the weak side defensive tackle is coming in, if he’s charging hard, run a trap play, if he’s not charging hard, keep wedgeing. On sweeping plays, if the playside corner is sitting back, keep running the sweep, if it comes hard, throw the sweep pass. On the sweep, if the back defensive end and corner jump, run the reverse. All of this is detailed in Chapter 13 of my book “Winning Youth Soccer: A Step-By-Step Plan” along with our “Quick Scout” and “Easy Count” scouting methods. Most youth soccer coaches prefer to “watch” the game rather than watch the game, you have to be disciplined and watch your keys to determine what will work and what won’t. It’s definitely more fun to watch the game than to explore it properly.

Another thing that many youth soccer coaches fail to get right is setting up their home run plays correctly. If you are executing a play action pass, the escape from that play needs to be established long before you go for the throat in the play action pass game. In youth soccer, that means 5-6 times minimum. If you’re running a trap or reverse, the bypass or sweep flow should be there and it won’t be there if you haven’t executed the bypass or sweep long enough. The series of reducing wedges will not work unless the wedge has been set, and so on. Too many trainers get anxious and go for the throat when the opponent isn’t ready for the “death blow” yet.

I go into a game with a script for the first 6 moves or so. I’m going to scout specific defenders on each of those plays to help determine how I’m going to call most of the game. Then I have 4 game series mini-scripts that I’m going to run as the game goes on, each mini-script is designed to set up a home run in the series or something on the next possession. I also remind myself to try to work on one or two pieces that we may have neglected or need to work on. In the meantime I make sure the defense has to stop our base football game, if they don’t I’m going to keep running it until they get too tight, then they get hit with that complementary game for a long win. Too many youth soccer coaches don’t make a play that works enough. Have the defense do something they’re not used to, overcompensate for that football play, and then hit the weakness it exposes.

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