Inside Sport

Small Sided Games


https://forum.insidesport.com.au/Topic2323375.aspx

By Crusader - 7 Mar 2016 12:58 AM

An interesting point in Why England Lose on Penalties is that the two countries that most overperform in football are Denmark and Iraq. Here is why Iraq produces so much talent for such a small and impoverished country.



That picture is taken in a refugee camp within artillery range of Mosul that houses about 2500 people. The camp is two and a half years old and the field was refurbished for the first time two months ago. Organised football is played from 8am to 10pm daily and they have 48 mens teams, from under 12s to seniors and 4 womens teams who are looking for opponents.

Every village of about 1000 or more has a field like this and sends representative teams to play in larger towns that have full sized artificial pitches. The only way to play on a full-sized pitch is to make the representative sides, until such time the Iraqi kids only play street football and SSG. This is a huge incentive for these kids, almost an obsession, and from a young age it breeds a mindset that winning is more important than player development. Interesting to compare and contrast with FFA introducing SSG as part of the national curriculum a few years back.

It produces players with wonderful touch but the goalkeepers are universally shit, comically so.
By juniorcoach - 31 Mar 2016 11:35 AM

Barca4Life wrote:
juniorcoach wrote:
Thanks Barca, so it basically falls under miniroos format. Where games will be reffed by parents etc


Im not sure about that, parents are always trying in influence things no matter what you put in place i've experienced that just assisting my mate who is a coach in the SAP a couple years ago.

I read somewhere that in Holland they are trying an experiment that they have removed coaches and parents and referees from the sidelines to the point where they are far back so this will allow the kids to play on their own.

If it works i'm sure they will implement that idea here in the future. :d


Yes I agree, an option would be to keep 12s as part of the NPL format. They are first game of the day so ground could be set up box to box with smaller goals. It would only take a few minutes after the game to remove the goals so would not affect next game under 13s in any way.
With this system you could still have official ref and parents would be kept well behind the fence :d