The under 14 rep team I coach played the Skills Acquisition Program tonight in a practice game. I think we have 3 or 4 former SAP players, who did not make the Skilleroos. First time I had coached this team for a match.

The game was divided into thirds of 25 minutes - for more whole team addresses by the coaches. They hammered us in the first 25 minutes!

They were playing in beautiful triangles all over the pitch, a few of their ball carriers could dribble and ball carry with their heads up, they were dribbling around our players in 1v1 duels, plus our defensive midfielders, 6 and 8 were too advanced, leaving space in front of the back four.

Then our players came off at the end of the first 25 minutes and they were already out of gas - and I thought I'd been training them hard! SAP were already 3-0 up with us barely having a shot on goal.#-o I found myself applauding many aspects of their play resulting in 3 well deserved goals.

Then with changing personnel, our team became more compact. They always had the centre of the pitch covered. Plus our guys were playing forwards more as they received the ball more from diagonal passes. Moreover, the distancing in the midfield triangle was surprisingly good, with about six players we rotated maintaining excellent triangular shape over the last 50 minutes. It became more of a contest. Somehow our rep team won 7-3.

We'd certainly worked on a lot of diagonal balls on the training track and playing forwards with the correct body shape to play forwards with the first touch.

What the SAP teams gave us though, were a lot of things to work on at the training ground - many unexpected, such as 1v1s (attacking), probably more intensity, which can be achieved in running with the ball at fast pace. I was surprisingly pleased with the structure and the possession play. We do this in every session in the third stage of training (KNVB 7v7) or FFA NC's Game Training.

We will be able to play the SAP team every fortnight.

We need more games, which we might be able to get with the NTC women, my club, and possibly some state league senior women's teams.



Edited by Decentric: 29/3/2013 12:31:24 AM

loving these youth training posts. I get the impression that the kids under the current curriculum are improving immensely, technically and tactically. In your opinion are the current crop of players near the level of maybe South Korea in terms of first touch and game sense? Or is this something we will find out once the under 17 world cup qualifiers arrive?