My U10 Rec team had their first scrimmage last night and did well. I was thrilled to see them finally starting to look UP and get aware of what’s happening on the field (vs. looking at the ball all the time). However, I’m still struggling with how to arrange my players for 6v6.
I talked about U10 formations previously, but didn’t really come up with a ‘best’ answer. Of course, there may not be one since soccer is a fluid and dynamic game. I’ll admit that post was written from a theoretical point of view. Now that we’re coming up on our regular season, we’ll see how things pan out on the pitch.
So back to last night’s scrimmage. Both teams started out with a 2-3 formation (2 defenders, 3 forwards) and it worked well. However, being a scrimmage, I started to mix things up and move players around. I also encouraged the kids do some things they hadn’t done before, like defenders who had time to settle the ball – take it up an open lane instead of just passing. This worked very well in some cases. I had one of my defenders streak up the touchline with the ball and take a good shot. Another time, with the wings making runs up the touchline and drawing opponents towards them, the defender with the ball saw an opening up the middle and just flew up to the goal.
Now this was on a 53 yard field (our match fields are just under 60 yards long, but were being used by other teams) so take that into account. One dangerous thing about this was the rest of the team wasn’t quite expecting certain defenders to take off either and that left our end of the field woefully uncovered. However, I pointed out to my team that if the front 3 saw a defender streaking up the field with the ball, the closest player to midfield HAD to stay back and cover. Near the end of the scrimmage, they started to do just that and we protected our goal much better. They really started to grasp the idea of protecting ’space’ and using the space, though we still bunched up at goal too much at times. But I digress.
We never tried a 3-2 formation officially. However, given how successful the defenders were moving the ball upfield on the wings, we might just use that more often. I’m torn on that, however. We’ve spent a lot of time this preseason working on possession. Keep possession of the ball at all costs and the goal opportunities will come. Having 3 up front makes it easier for us to control the ball up front. I’ve always figured I’d start out with 2-3 and if we built up a lead of a couple goals, switch to a 3-2 with defenders allowed to make runs if a lane opens up. If things are winding down and we need a goal to tie, etc., I might even go with a 1-4 with the ‘1′ being one of my more tenacious defenders. Some might say U10 kids can’t grasp different formations, but I’m not sure of that. I’ve seen kids on a number of our Rec teams understand about positioning, open space, staying clear of the ‘diamond’ in the center of the field, etc.
I know some of you have been playing 6v6 at the U10 level for a while now, so I’d love to hear what your experiences have been. What have you found worked as expected? What didn’t? Did the kids understand what you were trying to get them to do? Definitely post some comments – successes and failures 
I can’t honestly say I’m confident in any formation I come up with. I know in the pros that managers will use formations based on the opponent, but this is Rec ball! So you go with what you feel comfortable with, but have the flexibility to change things up if the opponent warrants during the match. The key is making sure the kids are ready for it and can handle the pressure so they are ready to play in a new formation.
I love that our league decided to stick with a larger field as it really gives the kids space to run and move, encouraging more 1v1 and longer passes. I expect the matches will be high scoring affairs as well, but that’s not a bad thing. Many of my players got to score or got good looks (the other team’s 3 keepers did an outstanding job all night) so that raised the ‘fun’ for them a bit.
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August 27th, 2006 at 9:59 am
I think a 2-3 is fine. Offside or no offside? – OK – I’ll shut my mouth! Regardless, for the last two years I focused on not so much in tactical positioning – but yes – the players need a place to start and realize they have a few responsibilities – but that was wings try to stay wide and defenders need to remember to come up field when we have the ball and be in position to track back quickly when we lost possession., That said, when we have the ball everyone was on offense and when we lost the ball everyone was on defense (responsibility wise- that is).
Example – If we had the ball – ALL players need to think forward and move into space – not just stand there! On defense – closing down an attack was everyone’s responsibly to try to win the ball back.
6v6 are not many in sheer numbers on the field so all the players need to be able to contribute. I also move players around from position to position in a 2-3. Except goalkeeper where I hade 2 kids I could count on.
I am not sure that helped but I tried to keep it simple – I wanted my players to be able to be technically well trained – be able to dribble, pass and shoot properly. Tactics will iron itself out as the season progress and simple instructions are given.
August 27th, 2006 at 12:02 pm
I probably didn’t make it clear enough in the post – I’m not trying to overdo tactics vs technical – I agree 100% that technical skills are what need to be worked on at this age. Honestly for our entire month of practices, it’s been 95% technical, with some tactical thrown in here and there. But the kids do need some basic idea of where to be on the field, etc. In other words as a coach, I’ll put in 80% of the work into tactical and then simply to tell the kids basic tactical positioning.
I agree 100% on all playing offense/defense. We’ve been stressing to the team constantly that there is no ‘offense/defense’. Everyone plays both. You may be in the rear positions, but once the ball is past midfield – you better be up contributing to offense, etc. Everyone should feel like they can score. Any team that doesn’t do this in 6v6 is going to have serious trouble.
So regardless of 2-3/3-2, all my kids play offense. On defense with 2-3 I’ve told the center forward to help, but not go deep to their own goal so our players have a target to pass to if necessary to get it out of the crowd. Not sure if that’ll always be the case, but my kids are doing quite well at containment so the 4-5 disadvantage hasn’t been a huge issue – yet.
So, yes, tactical simplicity is the key, but introducing some basic positioning concepts seems worthwhile, and much of that will come during match play, not necessarily practice (i.e. taking away from technical instruction) The basics I’m stressing are:
* wings should not cross the center line of the field
* Everyone plays offense in the opponent’s side of the field
* When ‘defenders’ make runs, someone should hang back
* The center forward hangs back a little on defense (not cherry picking – they just shouldn’t dive into their own penalty box – more like try not to go far into their own goal box)
* Stay spread out into an ‘M’ or ‘W’ – the whole open space concept.
August 27th, 2006 at 10:18 pm
I would suggest 3-2. That way a “wing defender” can make a run up the field and, in the event of a counter, you have 2 back already instead of just one. I’m willing to bet with a 2-3 you’ve been caught with just one defender back at times?
August 28th, 2006 at 8:39 pm
I wonder what types of concepts 10 year olds haven’t yet grasped but are learning. Maybe what isn’t so important is are the actual tactics but they they learn about the tactics and see how different onces make differences on how they play together.
March 11th, 2007 at 3:49 pm
While I agree that technical skill is the major emphasis at this stage, without sound tactical basics our players tend to chase way too much and are often out of position. We play with two defenders, two forwards and a striker. The forwards often act as sweepers while the striker seldom enters too far into the defensive side of the field. The better U10 teams we face have the basics of field position and lane management down and when they execute good passes, any individual technical skill advantages that we may have are really neutralized in a hurry. In my opinion, getting U10 players to understand position management and how to use the entire field is a key concept that must be introduced at this stage.
March 12th, 2007 at 11:08 am
I’d agree. We tend to play a 2-3 on the attack with the defenders up at mid field trying to seal things off and sweeping. The forwards push up as a unit mostly. On defense, we morph more to a 2-2-1 with the center forward hanging near midfield while the wings come back to help on defense.
We spend the bulk of our time on technique during practice, but work on tactics during free scrimmage time and during matches. It has helped them understand how to adjust to an opponent. We even have tried a 1-1-3 at times at their suggestion and it worked well.
So tactics have a place in U10 for sure. I laugh when I hear people talk about how U10s can’t understand offside. Sure they can. I see it all the time since out league plays U10. They may not understand the subtle parts of it, but they know they can’t cross the invisible line with out the ball or the ball in flight to them.
Digressing for a moment – in our last match, we actually encountered the offside trap against a team over and over. Normally we see MAYBE 3-4 offside calls in a match. But we were pressing this team hard and they were playing a 1-4 trying to drive one in. Their one defender was quick and I don’t think he even realized what he was doing, but he’d hang near the bottom of the mid field circle and my wings, seeing us gain possession would move even with him. When we got ready to pass/cross, he’d dart toward midfield trying to intercept, catching us offside constantly. His thinking was ‘let me intercept that’ and he ended up really helping his team because the ARs were younger and had trouble judging the timing of the kick (playing ball to our forward) and the defender darting towards midfield and they erred on the side of caution and called us offside a LOT.
Was a great learning experience for my team – because now they understand a lot better how offside can work from a single match situation where they begin to grasp what he was doing and sure enough towards the end of the match, my wings started to match the defenders movements until they KNEW the ball had been played to them.