By sokorny - 11 Jan 2016 5:44 PM
This season I am coaching at my local club. I will be coaching the thirds team (nothing serious). In this division our club has two teams. For the past few seasons the coach of the thirds has picked the strongest of the rest (and the club has won something like the last 5 seasons, including an undefeated season last year). However on the flip side the other club's team in the same division lost nearly every match (and quite heavily). Both these teams are largely made up of players under 20 years of age (most around the 16 year old mark), with a sprinkling of 30 plus year old players.
Now my question is what is best for the club? To have one strong team (and therefore one weak team) or two balanced teams?
Our league and reserves teams usually finish top 4 (in recent history) but have not won either comps for over ten years. Considering our thirds have had so much success my thoughts are that my role as a thirds coach is to provide a pathway for getting the young players to step up in the near future to these higher divisions. But the impetus in the past has been more so on results (has this perhaps been to the detriment of our reserve and league teams?)
So what do you think? Should I just pick the strongest team available to me, or try to balance out the teams more?
Consider that our 'fourths' only had 2 to 3 players last season over the age of 17, and week in week out they were getting pumped. The 'thirds' had about 5 players over the age 17.
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By sokorny - 21 Dec 2016 7:24 PM
Alrighty me again. Well after much debating with the family (read my wife) I've decided to coach the thirds team again this season. I will be doing it this time with an "assistant" ... more so that we can share the duties (as with a young family soccer was taking up Saturday with the kids and Sunday away from the family coaching the boys).
This season we've decided to go with a strong team and weak team. The balanced sides worked okay last season, but some of the better players in the other team were wasted as their coach treated it like a social team (and he is coaching again this year). Which is fine and good, as it is a fairly low level. But there is not much point having two balanced sides if one is a social team and the other wants to be competitive and develop young players.
I guess the message is that sometimes we learn from our mistakes :) and if you don't try you'll never know.
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