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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Same on my kid's team.  There is one player on the team who is fairly tall/fast for his age, however, he is the weakest technical player on the team: he has weak ball control ability and very little skill at shooting, too.

Yet, when he plays, he plays as striker!  This makes it very difficult for the toothless offense to score when he's in the game.

Roughly speaking, if you were to classify players as either "creative" players who can control the ball and create attacking plays, versus "destructive" players who have a knack for breaking up the opponents' possession and attacks, this kid is CLEARLY a more destructive player.  He can effectively use his speed and size to harass the other side and steal the ball.  However, he lacks the ability to do anything with the ball once he gets it.

I try to stay out of the coach's business, and so I haven't said anything about it, but it's very puzzling to me why he plays this kid at striker.[/quote]

Where would you put him? [b]If your coach is worried about winning he/she is not going to trust him on D. The ball will never get out of midfield with this kid because he isn't skilled enough to move it up. [/b]I think this is why these kids end up as striker.[/quote]

I disagree.  With this kid (and any other player who fits the description) he's big and fast and decent enough at defending.  Once he gets the ball, even a long kick forward or in the general direction of where his forward teammates are would be enough to get the job done on defense.  (We are talking about U10 here.)

You can't win games by playing a "striker" who cannot score (or struggles to even have the confidence to shoot the ball, and rarely makes an on-target shot) -- not when you have only 7 players on the field, one of whom is a goalkeeper.  Time and time again, other players get the ball forward to him, where he bobbles it, loses almost every 1 v 1, or just kicks it away out of bounds; really nice inbound crosses from the wings are wasted on him in the box.  You can't win games if your offense is toothless.

"Other players can score, too."  Sure, other players can try to pick up his slack on offense. Same goes for defense -- other players could pick up a weaker player's slack on defense, too.  However, my main point is that for this kid (and others of his type) his weaknesses on defense are far less apparent -- he can defense decently enough, and his speed/size and toughness can be better put to use on defense.

I mean, there's a reason why in professional soccer the most technically talented players are not defenders.  [/quote]

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