Tomorrow I’m going to put some of my ideas about soccer tactics for U8 into practice during my team’s game against Swampscott. Strategy at this level is more about finding ways to bring out the kids’ natural tendencies than it is tactical thought. The focus is still on footwork: passing, dribbling, trapping. We begin to try to develop a sense of field vision, however, and this is accomplished by removing the stresses of position play.

Over the past few weeks, I’ve been rotating the players through the positions on the field and taking note of where they seem the most confident. I’m going to use that information tomorrow to put together the 4 groups of 4 players that will go out on the field together. My hope is that by putting the players in the positions which are most comfortable for them, they can then be able to focus more on skillwork. Also, I suspect that they’ll be less likely to bunch up around the ball, giving them more opportunities to play an open game.

That’s the theory, and I hope it works. If it doesn’t, I’ll just keep working on it. I’ll let you all know here how it goes.