By Stuart Crawford
I was never a great footballer as a younger man, but my Dad was, and he seems to have passed on his ability to my son, which goes to prove that talent can indeed skip a generation.
Having a keen footballer as an offspring has certainly rekindled my latent interest in the game, and over the past few years I have spent many a happy hour visiting various grounds around Edinburgh and the Lothians watching games at youth level.
During the course of this most enjoyable of pastimes I have seen games good and bad, and players ranging from poor to outstanding, through the eyes of an interested but non-expert layman. It strikes me, though, that there are common themes which emerge from my spectating experiences, and I offer them here as ten rules for playing football at youth level which – if applied sensibly and in the appropriate circumstances and context – might just help players and teams to win.
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Some are statements of the blindingly obvious and hardly original thoughts on my part, but I include them for the sake of completeness. Here are the first five rules, with the second half, as it were, to follow: Rule 1 – Keep the ball No prizes for observing that if the opposing team doesn’t have the ball, they can’t score. Common sense, isn’t it? Why is it, then, that the big punt upfield seems to be the norm in local football parks across the country? Why do most goalkeepers thump the ball out of hand rather than pass to their own side? When the long ball is played at this level there is, on average, a 50 per cent chance that it will end up with the opposing side, thus giving them the advantage. And giving the ball away needlessly is one of the main reasons that teams lose. So, if you want to tip the odds in your favour, play the ball in short passes, accurately – like the great Liverpool team of Hansen, Rush, Dalglish et al, which always built from the back. I’m not saying you should never play a long ball, but it should be the exception rather than the rule. Rule 2 – Shoot on sight How many times have I torn my hair out because players are frightened of shooting for goal? Sufficient for me now to be bald, that’s how often. Despite all the bravado shown in training and in mucking about with their mates, for some unfathomable reason very few players seem to have the confidence to shoot from distance in matches. Presented with a choice of pass or shoot, most players pass, and nine times out of ten the scoring opportunity is gone. It needs to be drummed into young players, time and again, that the minute they are in the vicinity of the 18-yard line they are within shooting distance, and they should have a go. Who knows, it may take a deflection and end up in the net – but if you don’t try it never will. Rule 3 – When in doubt, put it out Don’t mess about if you’re unsure what’s safe when defending – put the ball out of the park and buy the time to recover and resettle. Yes, you’re giving away possession, but on such occasions it’s usually worth the trade. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve seen one of the backs try to dribble his way out of trouble, lose the ball, and the other team then scores. At this level it’s safety first, no matter what Emilio Izaguirre does at Parkhead of a Saturday afternoon. And never, never, pass the ball across the pitch in front of your own goal, no matter how good you think you are. Never. Rule 4 – Make the ball work Scottish football is famous (or infamous) for its huffing and puffing, do or die, blood-and-snotters approach to the game. Second only to the hoof-it-up-the-park approach comes the “run with the ball at your feet at breakneck speed with your head down” technique, which inevitably ends when the carrier is tackled by the fourth, fifth, or sixth man he has tried to go past on his own while teammates watch from semi-static positions, leaving him stranded and exhausted at the wrong end of the pitch as the opposition counter-attack. All that effort! So little return. Make the ball do the work, man, pass it. Pass and move, pass and move, conserve your energy for when you need it, rather than expend energy on some futile gesture which impresses neither coach or teammates. The ball can travel faster than the fastest winger can run, so use it accordingly. Rule 5 - Play direct football One of the biggest blights of modern football – certainly at youth level – is the backwards pass. It may be OK for Barry “Square Ba’” Ferguson in the Barclays Premier League, but all it does at boys’ (and girls’) club level is give territorial advantage to the opposition. You know the script: centre taken, pass back to the big, ugly defender who blooters it up the pitch. Ball lost, on the back foot defending straight away. What on earth is wrong with passing the ball forwards these days? The best form of defence is attack, so play in the opponent’s half as much as you can, I say. In fact, if I was a coach, I would ban the backwards pass altogether, with the possible exception of the pass back to the goalie in extremis. So there you are, the first batch of rules. Stick it in your pipe and smoke it, as they say. The final five will follow after the half-time pies and Bovril. In the meantime, let the debate and criticism begin…Donate to us: support independent, intelligent, in-depth Scottish journalism from just 3p a day
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