Help with U9’s
Hi everyone, hoping for some advice with my U9’s.
I have a travel level team on the East Coast, and I think I have a pretty high-level team. We played in the rising stars cup last weekend and played swag (Philly Union’s preacademy) and lost 2-0. Just so people understand the level, my group is talented (I got lucky with a lot of them joining my club).
However, my team is very very poor at any movement off the ball. They’re not great at identifying open spaces, or moving in a way that loses defenders to be able to receive free and then progress. I know that they’re U9’s and the movement gets better with time. But are there any activities anyone has run that seem to get the movement piece down? More importantly, what are the constraints on those activities, coaching points you’re making to highlight and emphasize the behavior, references and cues you can have players looking for, or slogans you can keep repeating so players keep doing it? Or any other resources that are worth looking into? My end goal is to get the moving into open lanes to turn into a habit, something that the players do without even thinking.
Side note, I want to start getting into more technical sides of the game, and coaching those pieces. Right now, my way of coaching on that side is give them 1 simple point, and do a lot of reps and it’ll get better over time. This is mostly because I don’t know the very specific technical aspects that help players. If anyone has ideas or resources, would be super helpful to connect.
Thank you to all!