Fresh Air Shooting

[CDB]

I have been floating around this forum for a while and this is my first post, so please be gentle!

I have a young lad playing up top by himself at U10 7v7 mini soccer.

His vision, holding, positional sense and knack of getting into the right places is unbelievable for a lad of his age. A good targetman.

However, all this is undone by his inability of being able to strike/pass the ball cleanly, I feel it is his composure at the last moment before striking the ball, taking his eye off the ball...etc.

We have coached him to strike through the ball with the laces, and encouraged him to try passing the ball into the net to gain confidence. To be fair to the lad he does it in training well enough. He trains hard, is always smiling and enjoys his football, which at the end of the day is what it is about.

Has anyone out there seen and mastered similar? If so, could you give me some idea's or pointers?

[74offsuit]

It sounds to me like you have the technique side of things covered.

One small tip I picked up on my L2 course, was to get the player to imagine there is a smaller ball within the ball, and this is what the player is attempting to strike.

It may also be worth asking the player how he feels about his play too, as my son said something interesting to me last week, that I was not aware of. We were watching Man Utd warm up before a match on Sky TV, and Ronaldo performed a trick that I thought was pretty cool. My son (15) told me he had been able to do this trick for some time. I asked him why I had never seen him do it. He replied there is 'too much pressure' during a match to attempt such a thing! This has forced me to ask myself some serious questions about my coaching. As I want my players to express themselves fully, without pressure.

Anyway, I'm rambling off topic a bit , but I hope this helps.

[lanesra]

Originally Posted by 74offsuit

It may also be worth asking the player how he feels about his play too, as my son said something interesting to me last week, that I was not aware of. We were watching Man Utd warm up before a match on Sky TV, and Ronaldo performed a trick that I thought was pretty cool. My son (15) told me he had been able to do this trick for some time. I asked him why I had never seen him do it. He replied there is 'too much pressure' during a match to attempt such a thing! This has forced me to ask myself some serious questions about my coaching. As I want my players to express themselves fully, without pressure.

I wouldn't worry too much about it 74offsuit (you know, that's an interesting handle...) because much of the pressure in games comes not from you, but from the simple fact that this is a game, there's another team trying to do all the things we try to get our kids to accomplish, and at your son's age he'd rather win than lose. Add to that the peer pressure he's going to get if something goes wrong, and of course, your son isn't going to want to try something different. Though I do understand where you are coming from here vis a vis putting your kids under pressure to win.

Now, what you should be doing is encouraging him to do this at practice, and then of course, rewarding him when he does try. For instance, when we scrimmage, I award points for lots of behaviors on the pitch: everyone who executes a good Cruyff turn, takes a free throw in 3 seconds, a give and go, a first time shot, a shot with a left foot, you know, this sort of thing. Then at the end of the scrimmage I tally all the points and losers have to help me clear the field. Do something like this in practice and award him points when he (a) tries it and (b) double points if he uses it correctly, i.e. it buys him time or space.

[mcolwell]

You should continue to concentrate on the technique side until it becomes second nature which takes some time. It sounds to me if he is feeling the pressure of matches? I have a lone forward at under nine level who is a bit in and out in terms of shooting. I think that a lot of it is body position when striking the ball? A lot of players try to shoot from different body positions rather than being directly behind the ball. This is obviously the case in matches when you are rushed to shoot by the presence of opposing defenders. What i founs also worked was to drop him back in to midfield sometimes and let him come from deeper positions rather than receiving the ball within the opposing goal and not being obliged to strike on goal.

[rils]

Have you tried passing arcs or pugg goals? the opportunity as alone striker is fairly immense and its just confidence making him sky it -

1) set up some goals with cones in the corners role the ball to him and get him to side foot pass weighted onto the cones.

How long has he been playing for?