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[quote=Anonymous]Coach here,

From what I've seen defense certainly gets the short end of the stick in most training sessions.

Realistically over the course of the season/year there should be a good balance of the various periods of the game being taught; with the ball, lost the ball, w/o the ball, won the ball etc.

It is a challenge I feel, especially at the youth level to focus on defensive concepts due to how this plays out on the field. For example, especially with younger teams, your team may have an above average concept of defense and skill set, but they really struggle when they have the ball. Watching this game as a parent, you may feel that the other team is much better as they are better on offense and may have more of the ball. You may lose a lot of low scoring games as a result, but you still lose and losing unfortunately causes problems for teams over time in many ways. Even at the professional level how well a team performed is sometimes measured in ball possession, passes completed etc. even if the score might say otherwise, great defense isn't really celebrated by most and takes away from the 'beautiful game' picture that is often sold some even call this 'anti-football'.

So what happens? (Some) Coaches focus on attacking to the detriment of teaching proper defending. It's one thing to lose 0-1 or even 1-2, but it can feel different if it's a 2-3 game or a 3-4 game. From a casual observer and even more inexperienced coaches, it can feel as though you were more in the game in a high scoring game, then the lower scoring game.

Teaching defense is also a skill. I wish more teams had more than a single coach at the older age groups. For example, GKs really get screwed over without specific coaching. Ask any parent who has a kid who plays GK who has been on teams where there is and isn't GK training and they can tell you the difference. The same is true with defense, some coaches are better teachers of certain parts of the game than others. I believe offense is easier to teach and learn and is what is most attractive, so that is what gets taught the most.

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