Quote:
Originally Posted by rils
Yes this is excellent - its about keeping kids happy and developing them - what do u guys do with players that want to play in specific positions and then you rotate them in a match situation and their confidence drops - is that the right thing to do? ie putting defenders into forward positions or reverse?
|
Yes, soccer is supposed to be fun, and when you have players who like being keeper, yes, they should play there. And I'll grant that keeper is a real position, and being that it offers a completely different skill set than playing the field, kids will react differently placed in goal. But it seems to me that we are seriously buttonholing kids (and ultimately over-coaching) if we talk about "our keeper" on a team of U8s or U10s.
Back to your question, though rils, the OP mentioned U8s, so I think that if kids have too much positonal sense at that age, we're doing something wrong. The whole point of smaller sided, grass roots coaching, is getting kids to stop feeling like they are a striker, they are fullback, and to give them the chance to play a lot, touch the ball a lot, and work on their first touch and movement. If you are playing 3v3 or 4v4 there's not a lot postional work there, and even with larger 6v6 and 7v7 games, yes, kids should be rotated so that they can get over that fear of playing out of position.