WORLD CLASS COACHING
40 Fun Games For Young Players
By Luca Bertolini
Table of Contents
PART ONE
Introduction
PART TWO
Fun Games
PART THREE
Fun Games
PART FOUR
Fun Games
Introduction - why substitute exercises with games?
Children and young aged boys consider specific technical exercises boring. They see soccer as a pure game and a way to have fun.
Games are the opposite of work and "production"; it's pure enjoyment, it's intrinsic motivation (it doesn't matter the age), the rules are not a limit as they are accepted to take part of any kind of game. It's again the opposite of the ordinary reality, as fantasy, imagination and creation are the main factors to create and take part to a game. The factors are the objectives of the children while they are playing, which they usually take very seriously. It's a pleasure for them to engage, concentrate themselves and to strive too.
Playing is a way of driving the fears away and to overcome them and it's a fundamental key to develop the cognitive and personality dimensions; it helps the development of the behaviors dimension, which is, in turn, preparatory for the adult life. Children learn to follow rules and to share things, goals and feelings with the teammates.
The rules must create educational, but always fun, games. They create the behaviors of the player who must respect them; but, on the other side, these rules must be child-oriented. To force rules that the coach already knows a child cannot respect is useless; the behavior rules must be fixed and indisputable, but the game rules must be proper and useful for the young players, allowing them to have always have fun, while learning.
The coaches must be very good at not forcing them to perform "working practices,” but a finding a solution: to set-up fun practices with a technical or individual tactical objective behind them. This way, a double result is reached: the players are coached and they have fun at the same time. Rules and play must run parallel as well as the coach-teacher role of the adult who manage them while playing soccer.
A well-known Italian coach, Maurizio Sarri (Chelsea Head Coach 2018/2019), said: "Don't kill the children in the deep of a player; a player who is having fun, gives his best twice.” So we should never forget that soccer is always a game, at any level. The coach must be the first one being happy and having fun on the field, especially with young players.
A youth coach should be a soccer teacher, rather than a trainer, helping them to take part in the practices to support a general (motor, psychological and emotional) growth. Games, especially competitive team games, are very suitable for these objectives; the more they feel motivated, the more they learn, as they have fun while performing their tasks. He must be very careful about the most fun practices, while children are performing, to understand how to develop them and to find new variations; the more children are having fun, the more they are learning. This way the young players can test themselves.
Basically, to play is a personal experience for a child, especially during the first ages of life; but team games and teammates will help him to understand that playing with others can be useful for him and for his objectives to increase his pleasure and to keep this feeling longer. The desire of repetitive pleasure of playing is satisfied, as other of his own kinds have the same needs.
How to categorize playing soccer as a game and how can soccer be useful for children?
Playing can be categorized as follow:
• Free - the players can't be forced to take part
• Separate - space and time limit
• Random - developments and results can't be decided beforehand
• Un-productive - it doesn't create goods or news
• Ruled - with ordinary and usual laws
• Fictitious - aware of artificial nature of game
Games can be categorized into four types:
• Competition: sports or mind games
• Gambling games: luck is the main factor
• Mimicry games: role games where the players become someone else
• Vertigo games: thrill seeking, risk-taking, adrenaline inducing
Soccer is for sure a competitive game, where luck (randomness is always present in a soccer match) is a factor but not the main one usually, where the players have roles but they don't become someone else and where all the players try to provoke themselves in terms of improving inside the team, to make the team better.
Soccer can't be considered as free, because all the players must be part of a team and take part to the matches (or training); on the other side, they can't be forced in taking part, but in this case they are out.
It's a separate game as it's played inside a marked field and the duration is fixed; we may say that it's a separate twice, as each player has limited space and time to play, moreover when in possession of the ball.
It's for sure a random game, even when there are big differences of quality and ranking between the teams. Eventually it's a ruled game, as the laws of a match are always the same; the referees must interpret them being sure they are followed by all the players.
In my opinion, it can't be considered as un-productive, as every match ends with a final result (a news) and every player performance is a news as well. It's not fictitious too, because matches are real and the players don't lose themselves inside their roles in the team.
All these categories and characteristics sum up all the reasons why games are so important to allow children learning soccer as sport as well as way of growing up support. All these factors constitute all the team sports anyway, not only soccer.
Children learn to be competitive while being helped by the teammates, to have a role being themselves, to overcome their own limits and to improve themselves, to act inside limit of space, times and rules (respecting teammates, opponents, adults and the refrees), to find a way to make every situation the most predictable possible, while playing, to be strong and look for luck rather than waiting for it.
I think that the most important education the children can learn from team sports is to reach their own goals together with other people, considering the players of the opposing team as opponents but not as enemies.
How to coach (teach) soccer through children games?
Children and younger boys must experience game situations with the ball, talking about soccer, creating relationships with the ball and among themselves, freely and randomly. All the games and practices must include random situations that allow the children to understand and to find individual solutions as the relation player-ball is prevalent during the early ages. Teammates, opponents, and the space are important elements but they are secondary for now; the children or young boys must be helped in feeling them, but not forced to consider them as an older or adult player would do.
The are 5 key factors that must be considered fundamental, when coaching children:
• Skills and Planning
• Rules
• Coach as teacher
• Progression
• Testing
These key factors must not be thought as we would do thinking about exercises, but they must be "game and children oriented".
Coaches must be prepared and skilled to work with children, their educational manners must be proper and suitable for the young players. But, in my opinion, a precise season plan is not necessary; only general guidelines (what we are talking about right now) are so important. Players, spaces, time, weather are always variable elements; a basic session plan is anyway important, but coach skills and his ideas to adapt the practices are even more important.
We already talked briefly about the coach as a teacher, who must help the children having fun, being the fist one having fun on the pitch. We should never forget that the coach represents a child - adult relation moment for the players; another adult, apart from the parents. He must be sure that all the children have the same chances to take part to all the practices of the session to improve their decision making skills and to express themselves as people, not only as players. The coach should be a referee too, during practices; a referee who helps the players while playing, but who doesn't judge or punish them.
All the games and the sessions should be a progression of experiences for children, but not a planned progression; it must respect their timing and not a timetable. It's possible to consider 3 kinds of progressions:
• physical (the lesser about children)
• technical (the coach issue is always how to progress this factor through fun games)
• individual progression (the most important)
The physical factor must be considered concurrently with the enthusiasm of the children; as it goes down, then it's time for a rest and a change of practice.
Technical issues should be increased during the season. The level of the players at the moment should be the main factor to consider when deciding whether to progress or maintain same level of requirements. Moreover, a coach should use games to promote a technical progression for the children.
Individual progression means helping them growing up as person with their own
character; and the children must grow up in a positive environment full of inspirations.
Testing must be part of the games and of the sessions, but not a judgement; it must help the coach to understand his young players, and how they are growing up, rather than the children. Mistakes must not be underlined, but they have to be warnings for the coaches and for the future inquiries.
If we decided to substitute exercises with games, how to run the sessions?
• The set-up of each session should be ready since the beginning of the session if possible
• All the players must be involved (divide them into groups on different set-ups if needed), even during problem solving moments
• Pay attention to the sizes of the pitches and of the balls (in my opinion, the best solution is to alternate num.3 and num.4 balls)
• Be positive, avoid negative words, encourage risk taking
• Pay attention to the body language of children; it must be suitable for soccer
• If needed, use handball sequences before playing with feet to understand each game better
• Don't stop the sequences; let them play. Focus briefly on coaching points among the practices
• Be sure all the players follow the rules (both as behavior and during the games)
About the games in this book
These games are ideas on how children could practice soccer on the pitch. They are designed for players from 5 to 10 years old, but they may be adapted for older ones too. They don't shape a complete training session, but I try to be as global as possible; each game can be considered as warm-up, as main part (following the variations or thinking about new ones) or as a final game. The main goal I try to reach with these 40 games is to create a proper cognitive environment that can help your children learn. I hope these practices will be fun and useful for your little players and easy to use for you.
Note that sizes of the pitches and the number of players must be adapted to the ages and to the level of each team's players.
