“Structured Spontaneity” Creates Freedom for Players
US Soccer Magazine
By Bobby Howe, Director of Coaching for U.S. Soccer
In the mining villages of Durham and Northumberland in the northeast of England, they used to say that if you needed a soccer player, go to the pit head and whistle, and three center forwards would appear.
This area was one of England’s great breeding grounds of high quality soccer players. The “Northeast,” particularly in the 1930s, was a depressed area with high unemployment. There was little to do, so the kids and the young men played soccer morning, noon and night.
Similar conditions have been prevalent in the other soccer breeding grounds of the world, such as Europe and South America. Those conditions also continue today in some parts of Central America, South America and in the emerging soccer nations of Africa.
Given those circumstances, where do the kids learn their soccer skills? Not by coaching! They play small-sided soccer - 2-a-side, 3-a-side, 4-a-side - almost always with an improvised soccer field and often with an improvised soccer ball.
It is from this kind of environment that most of the great players have emerged, along with the average player who was still highly skilled in the basics of the game. Generally speaking, such conditions do not exist in North America, and no longer exist in Europe. But the requirements to have fun, kick the ball and develop skills most certainly do.
How to do it? By “structured spontaneity.” This play on words is a contradiction of terms, an oxymoron if you will, but it is there for a purpose. Coaches need to recreate the conditions under which kids have great fun and learn the game. This is the purpose of small-sided games.
In many cases, parents volunteer or are volunteered to act as coaches when their children start to play (often at five or six years of age). Inexperienced soccer coaches may try to draw on their knowledge of other sports played in the United States and use that as the foundation of their practices. As a result, their practices take the form of repetitive drills where there is much standing and little activity. Naturally, young players with limited attention spans will lose concentration and become difficult to manage.
For parents who have limited or no playing experience, the position of coach can be quite intimidating. Perhaps some of the fear could be removed if the coach understood that young players learn more from the game than the coach. Therefore, coaches of young players should consider themselves organizers and supervisors of small, fun-oriented games rather than instructors and allow the games to do the teaching.
The beauty of the game of soccer is in its simplicity. Within a given set of rules, there are two teams with the objective to score goals. A full-sided team consists of 11 players who must combine individual abilities cohesively to try to win the game. Within a game there are individual and small group games which have to be won for the whole team to succeed.
The game presents a series of motor and sensory challenges. Having control of the ball is essential to a player s success. Unlike golf, where skill can be improved by repetition of the correct technique, soccer is a game with skills that can only be improved by exposure to the demands of the game movement of the ball, movement of the body and opposing pressure.
Psychologically, young players five, six seven and eight years of age are unable to cope with the decision-making necessary to play 11-a-side soccer. At that age, they are also incapable of sharing the ball with many teammates. It is important, therefore, that coaches do not present such unrealistic challenges or ask for such decisions.
As small-sided games are the foundation upon which the 11-a-side game is based, it is important that players are exposed to small-sided games at an early age. The younger the age, the fewer the number of players that should be involved. Fewer numbers create more touches of the ball, easier decisions, greater enjoyment and more learning for the player. And, for the neophyte parent-coaches, easier management!
