Getting U9s to calm down and focus

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

Parents
  • 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

Reply
  • 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

Children
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