Soccer is played with 22 players on the field, 11 for each team. A goalkeeper and 10 field players. In the US, we start playing 11 vs 11 at age 12. Imagine watching 22 12 year olds running around a 120 meter by 80 meter soccer field? If you are a true technical soccer fan, it is extremely hard to watch! Birds actually land ON the field WHILE THE GAME IS GOING ON!
It is said that in a 90 min game a professional player will spend less than 3 minutes on the ball. So what does that translate to for kids who are moving the ball less and covering less ground in a 70 min game? MUCH less. Our kids need touches on the ball more often! Futsal has helped in this sense but that is for about 2 months in the “off season”.
There is no reason that our young players should be playing 11 aside before the age of 15. Smaller field = fewer players on the field = more touches on the ball, and better development.
In this country, we go from playing 6 vs 6 from ages 4-9, 8 vs 8 from ages 10-11 and then 11 vs 11. Why the hell would we play even numbers all the way up until 11 vs 11? 11 is an odd number so shouldn’t it be 5 vs 5, 7 vs 7, 9 vs 9 then 11 vs 11? That’s how it is everywhere else. There is no reason that we should have to invent a formation for playing with even numbers.
When coaches take a look at how the best youth coaches play and the formations they use, our US coaches can’t use the models because we would have to add in a player somewhere on the field.
Now let’s cover an epic tragedy. College soccer’s substitution rules. It is getting to the point where coaches sub 8 or 9 at a time, and up to 20 times a game. You can’t really blame them, because if the rules allow it, you of course can take advantage. However it’s far from what soccer is. At the college level you should be allowed to use 6 subs for the game. That’s it. That way the team who is trying to play the least amount of soccer can’t just press you for 90 min subbing every 10 min like an American football team doing everything in their power to stop your technical attacking minded soccer from happening.
The players who end up coming out of college soccer and going to the pros more often than not end up injured around month 7 of the pro season. In comparison to a 3-month college season and being allowed to get subbed twice a game, 10 months and or 90 min is a lot. It is known that college soccer is not supposed to be there to develop professional athletes. Let’s think about it a different way. In college you play 2 games a week, usually half are on the road and half of those are mid-week games that’s a lot of missed classes. If we kept all the games to the weekend and one game a week it would mean more studying time. An overall more well-rounded student athlete that stays healthy.
Wrap up: Odd small sided games throughout youth development, less subs in college, and a 10-month college season.
the D'Agostino Philosophy 