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Getting U9s to calm down and focus

Derren Jones

Hi All,

I'm the assistant coach to a new (7 months old) Under 9s team. We have gear players and they're all good lads, but the coach and I get frustrated with the constant messing around at training. They've had huge progress since the first games (lost 9-0 and 8-0 for example) and are now scoring, but they still can't defend as a team and have had at least 4 games when they've 'snatched defeat from the jaws of victory'. 

The coach and I firmly believe they gave the potential to win more games, but they need to listen and knuckle down a bit in training. I know they're U9s, but looking at the other teams we come up against, those performances are obviously achievable. 

Any advice to keep them on task in taking and so mucking about would be much appreciated. 

Derren

  • 0

    Time is big factor here as the teams your looking at have likely played together longer.

    in terms of concentrating and reducing messing around I’ve always found competition to be a brilliant incentive by either splitting into to 2 teams each person having to complete a set a drills first team to complete all drills wins or head to heads 

    for your defence, I’d get them working together in teams for deals to build communication but consistency and time will do wonders to! 

  • 0

    Hi Derren 

    We have the same problem. Do some really good training sessions, come match day everything goes out of the window, heavy losses and doesn't seem to bother lads. Next training session come back happy, and not really bothered what the score was.  Then generally the session has some messing about. 

    We seem to struggle to keep the motivation to win, and hold concentration. 

    Feels like a lot of the time 2 steps forward. One step back. 

    Any words wisdom on matchday for encouragement is welcome

     Chris

  • 0

    From personal experience, give it time. When my lads team first started at U8's we were getting beaten heavily week in, week out at the start of the season. The thing was, the kids really didn't care, they just wanted to play football, so we concentrated on making it fun. We came up against teams that had been training longer than we had, or that had played together when they were much younger. Come Christmas we started to get a couple of closer results and by the end of the season, we were beating teams that had hammered us in September.

    In training, we used small-sided games so that they all got plenty of time on the ball and coached them in the basics as we went. We tried to make sure each session or drill had a game element to it, with one side winning based on what we asked them to concentrate on. For example, the winning team might be the team who had the most passes.

    Just let them have fun and it will all fall into place