Need advice...

[Anonymous]

Thing is the low-technical skills teammate is able to set up the plays, providing assists every single game, occasionally score and is able to run back and defend when necessary while DS did not score and had maybe one assist all season.

Hmmm. My son has good technical skills (per his coach), but not enough aggression. He didn't score many goals this season, but was able to provide multiple assists to players who were more aggressive. I think you should definitely ask for a meeting with the coach and get his view on what is missing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

What does movement off the ball mean? Never thought of that! When the season starts up again will try to get a video of a game.

In soccer, similar to other team sports, movement off the ball means getting open, moving into space effectively and / or creating space. Simple example. Player’s teammate has the ball and player moves from behind a defender to make themself available for a pass. More complex example. Player’s teammate has the ball. Player checks towards his teammate creating space behind player. Other teammate sees the newly created space and starts run towards that space. Teammate with ball sees the run and plays ball over player and defender into the space into path of other teammate’s run. Other examples are making bending and diagonal runs, holding runs, etc. Watch pro soccer games and watch players off the ball to get good examples. Lots of stuff on YouTube too.

[Anonymous]

Talk to the coach and ask him to explain in technical terms what he thinks your kids needs to improve on. Once you have those terms you can get help for other coaches.

I have noticed at the younger ages, some of the more technical players are over looked. They need other players around them who are technical to really take off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:U12 boy has a not so great season and is looking to improve his game over the summer. He's not a kid who will play in college but we enjoys playing and we want him to feel good about himself and be the best that's possible for him. Coach has not been helpful. We were told DS's technical skills are excellent, probably the best on the team. He's fast and athletic. He is one of those kids who looks great in practice but then so-so in the games. He has a teammate who is the opposite. Also fast and athletic but his technical skills are apparently the worst on the team. But he does very well in games. DS is puzzled and I don't know enough about soccer to explain what his teammate has that he does not. I saw this type of question come up recently and the explanation is usually that a child who does well in practice but not as much in games lacks confidence or is afraid of physical contact. DS doesn't seem to have these problems.

What are we missing? Could it be DS is not able to anticipate opponent's moves? Can drills or coaching can help?

Is this a rec team or a made up story? No kid with poor technical skills is going to do well in games unless this is rec.

[Anonymous]

Nope this is travel, B team, so the kid with the "worst" technical skills has good skills but the gap between DS's skills and this child's skills is pretty wide.

Thank you for the explanation about the movement. I will talk to DS about this and have him watch a lot of games over the summer.