Recently I had the opportunity to watch a bunch of kids teenagers from the Vale do Paraíba, São Paulo, battle it out in an underage inter country club comp. I was with my friend who is the Vice President of the Cachoeira Paulista country club, possibly the smallest town represented at the comp, and as it were, their teams ended up taking home the majority of the trophies. After heading back to the country club for a few celebratory drinks (us oldies that is) the kids got to playing some small sided games.

As I watched from the comfort of the bar, I noticed one glaring thing. The kids preferred to pass the ball around the box than shoot. Not only would they pass it around but they would try all sorts of passing manouvres and plays to open up space. I asked my friend why they dont shoot, he replied that the coach doesn't let them.

These kids werent the most talented that I'd seen (although admittedly they probably had more skill in their big toes than a lot of Aussie kids have all together), but the maturity they showed to pass the ball around and open up space, pass to a team mate, make runs and work on not only skill but on positioning and vision (and passing obviously) was lightyears ahead of anything I'd seen before, all this from a bunch of kids ranging from 8-15 years old.

So that brings me to my point. Obviously scoring goals is the aim of the game, and practicing shooting should always be part of training. Yet, its pretty well documented on these forums that we all want Australia to move away from the british kick and run method, and the strong emphasis on winning needs to be stamped out. It was pretty obvious to me why the teams from this little town managed to win so many trophies. These kids focused on the other parts of the game, even in a kick around they followed their coaches instructions and passed the ball around, trying to find creative ways to create a goal. I dont know how it was ingrained into them, but it was as if these kids were more impressed by making that killer pass than scoring a golaço.

The funny thing is, at a comp with more than 10 cities represented, they made the final in all bar one age group (won the 3rd place playoff) and only lost one of them. Not only that but they scored a minimum of 3 goals in every game.

Obviously, this is Brazil. Australia is another kettle of fish. I see this as Brazil maturing with their football. We all know theyve got the skill, but sometimes they dont have the head nor heart. In this instance they showed the head. Now we all know that Australians have the heart. We need to work on not only the skills, but the head. Skills come hand in hand with smarts. If you have the vision to play that killer pass youre already 50% there, you just need to complete it. 50% of the time you're good enough to make the pass on natural ability. So lets make that 75%. You now have a 75% chance of making a killer pass. We have a 25% margin to work with.



Edited by bundi: 20/7/2013 06:23:49

A lot of the teaching around SSGs encourages the players to complete a number of passes before taking a shot so in time we will see an improvement in the passing technique of our younger players.

Good thread, Bundi.:)

Now in Australia coaches often prescribe high numbers of passes before shooting, to work on structured possession.

This happens in 4v4, 7v7 and 11 v 11 on the training ground. If one wants to work on one section of the team, hypothetically exemplified in midfield and attack, versus defence and midfield, a coach may prescribe only 10 seconds possession before shooting for the defence and midfield.

The onus may be on the midfield and attack to maintain possession in a more central area, to improve the cohesion between the 9 and 10. They could have unlimited time in possession. The defence and midfield would have an onus of trying to score as quickly as possible to effect a turnover with a time limit of 10 seconds in possession.,

This could be prescribed in order that the session objective for the focus team (attack and midfield) is to maximise time trying to achieve the objective of sustained possession.

Edited by Decentric: 22/7/2013 09:13:50 PM