Lessons from a second grader

By: Robert | June 19th, 2007

I coach a U-8 co-ed soccer team on the side; I enjoy working with the kids and I get a huge thrill watching their skills progress from the beginning of the season to the end. We play 4v4 on a much smaller field than normal and because of the kids ages I don’t try to teach tactics or set plays or anything of that nature, I work on ball control, passing and positioning. I always tell my defenders there are only two things they have to focus on: stay in position and stay in position. Every now and then you’re going to get beat by a guy who can just run circles around you and all you can do is shake their hand and say “good game”; the key is to make sure those who can’t, don’t.

These past two games (Real Salt Lake and Toronto FC) illustrate what my second graders have learned and what I am about to say perfectly. Chris Gbandi, Clarence Goodson, Alex Yi and Drew Moor do not stay in position and that leads to goals scored and goal scoring opportunities. To see how a 4-0 beating at Toronto came to be we have to look at the game versus Real Salt Lake; its no secret that offensively RSL is inept, Moe Syzlak in a dark and dingy bar has a better chance of scoring. But anyone who saw that game knows that goalkeeper Dario Sala earned his paycheck. Our defense tried to stop guys one on one and couldn’t. Andy Williams, Freddy Adu and Alecko Eskandarian all had really good chances to score (I think there was even one more but that’s just overkill on my point) and were all thwarted by poor finishing or number 48. Defensively there was some getting out of position by over-compensating to help other’s that night, but the field conditions (I know there are no other options for Rice-Eccles stadium at this point but it needs to be said) and Real Salt Lake’s lack of ability masked the mistakes.

For the Toronto game, you could almost see that the defense got together beforehand and said “All for one, one for all,” because the game began with them swarming to help, especially Alex Yi and Clarence Goodson in the middle. No one was going to get beat one-v-one because someone else was always going to be there to help and for 20 minutes it worked. For 20 minutes they were there together stopping any and all attacks as a unit, I don’t know if the announcer said anything about it because I don’t speak Spanish but I said aloud “man, these guys are all over the field.” The thing with clumping up is its fine when the team you’re playing against doesn’t pass the ball to the wide-open man like Eskandarian and Adu, but when Toronto started to pass the ball a little better (not great, just better) we were in trouble. I can’t tell you how many times a pass was made to the wings and instead of Toronto quickly passing backwards, they waited for a moment for the central defenders to look their way and then crossed the ball in, not every cross was a good one, but every cross seemed to have the right intention.

But its not all the back fours’ fault, central defender’s (McCarty and Saragosa) are supposed to protect the defense, stopping those passes that start from the middle of the field and go wide that were so dangerous on Sunday. That of course did not happen. Toronto’s quick counter-attacks are not supposed to be effective if the defensive midfield is operating properly. Maybe they were too focused on helping out a depleted offense, maybe Toronto was just too good (I doubt that), or maybe it was something else. In any way, a 4-0 score line is something even my second graders would understand needs to be worked on because this is Dallas where right now the FC stands for “Frustrated, Completely.”

HOOPS PRIDE!