I spent a couple of hours watching U7 and U8 girls play soccer at Grant Middle School yesterday, and I saw something I didn’t like. U7/U8 is played with five players on a field with goals marked by flags. The goals are pretty big, and there are no goalkeepers, so scoring should be pretty easy. Coaches have responded to the challenge by designating one, or in several cases, two players as defenders.That wouldn’t bother me at all if not for the fact that the defenders appear to have been told to stay in the goal area. (You know, the small box just in front of the goal.)

This is wrong on many levels. First, at a theoretical level, in soccer you want your defenders close enough to your attackers to be able to provide support behind. We call that the attacking principle of depth. By telling players to stay within feet of their goal, even when the ball is at the other end of the field, you lose the opportunity for those players to provide you support. Now, in U7/U8 that really isn’t an issue. Your defenders aren’t going to be very effective in providing attacking depth until you team knows how and when to pass the ball back. That won’t happen until U10 or so. However, by training players to stay way back, you are missing an opportunity to teach them that defenders can and should support the attack, and you are setting yourself up for years of yelling at your defense to “push up!”

Second, and more troubling, is that if you have two players standing in front of their goal while the others are playing soccer, you have two players who are not engaged in the game, not getting touches on the ball, and not having fun. Players whose job it is to stand and wait are not growing as soccer players. Further they may find the whole affair as tedious as I did and not want to come back next year. When you do your substitution and move a player from a dynamic, exciting attacking role to a static, boring defending role you take the wind out of their sails. When you move them from defending to attacking, they are not warmed up and ready to attack.

Finally, and worst of all, I think having the defenders hang back is setting them up for terrible failure. When the attacking players are running around the fields chasing the ball and trying to beat the other team’s players, they get warmed up and get used to touching the ball. Then one of these playes gets a fast break and starts heading for the defending player at speed. The defending player, who up till then was picking daises now has to focus and perform as well on her first touch as someone who has been involved in the game. It doesn’t seem like a fair match-up. Then if the attacking player scores, the defender is likely to feel like she let everyone down.  That sounds like a recipe for disaster.

I am not opposed to having two players play defense, and three play attack, but I wish the defenders would stay connected to the attack and simply play at the back of the bunch. I think teams would be at least as successful in wins and losses and develop the players better.

Please let me know what you think!