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7v7 formations, experiments, experiences...

Chris Ironmonger

Hi all,

Currently managing an Under 8's junior team and with the current lockdown conditions were pretty much heading towards the 7v7 version of the game with not much 5v5 football left...

I wanted to hopefully hold a discussion about others' experiences, experiments when thinking about and selecting the best formation in this format for their teams/players...

Does the attributes of you players dictate how you eventually lined up? Should we care, whats the best for overall development, should that still remain the focus? I'm keen to keep it high on the agenda but losing every week unfortunately would confidence wise hurt the group we have as they are used to winning and to break up their progress as a team to purely focus on development seems counter-productive to me..

Hoping to really get into this some..

Thanks all in advance :)

Parents

  • I’d say that the sooner your team starts to lose a few matches the sooner you can start to deal with psychological side of the game and that age group learning to lose is as valuable as any other lesson you could teach.

     I wouldn’t overly think about formations, most teams start 2-3-1 as it balances quite nicely, but often adapts from there. At some point you might want to cover the wing back role, so would need to adapt it to 3-2-1, or if you want to work on emergency defending and getting back you could load the midfield and attack more.

    obviously you wouldn’t change to a new formation every week, but introduce a formation that helps your next two/three topics.

    id try, based on your players current characteristics, to give players 2-3 set positions, where they will play the majority of the time. Don’t just stick your weakest in defence, but try snd put a strong and weaker player near each other so they have a good learning opportunity.

    I’d only start to fix players positions after they are fully physically developed, so roughly u14’s onwards, but I know teams that do this from U8, personally I don’t think this helps develop players in the long term.

Reply

  • I’d say that the sooner your team starts to lose a few matches the sooner you can start to deal with psychological side of the game and that age group learning to lose is as valuable as any other lesson you could teach.

     I wouldn’t overly think about formations, most teams start 2-3-1 as it balances quite nicely, but often adapts from there. At some point you might want to cover the wing back role, so would need to adapt it to 3-2-1, or if you want to work on emergency defending and getting back you could load the midfield and attack more.

    obviously you wouldn’t change to a new formation every week, but introduce a formation that helps your next two/three topics.

    id try, based on your players current characteristics, to give players 2-3 set positions, where they will play the majority of the time. Don’t just stick your weakest in defence, but try snd put a strong and weaker player near each other so they have a good learning opportunity.

    I’d only start to fix players positions after they are fully physically developed, so roughly u14’s onwards, but I know teams that do this from U8, personally I don’t think this helps develop players in the long term.

Children
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