For beginning soccer players, tunnel vision may have them focusing on little more than the tip of their cleats as they kick the ball blindly down the field. Your goal as coach is to have players expand their horizons so they become aware of the options and make better decisions. With well-designed practices, players can gradually abandon tunnel vision and pay more attention to teammates and opponents in the manner of field generals Xavi Hernandez and Andres Iniesta, who run the middle for Spain's national team and their club team, Barcelona, based on exceptional field awareness.
Step 1
Split up your players into groups of five or less to play small-team games to foster intelligent, composed decisions, recommends coach Alan Hargreaves in "Skills and Strategies for Coaching Soccer." Divide your practice area into adjoining grids of an appropriate size, 10 by 10 yards or larger depending on the age and skill levels, marked by plastic cones to prepare for these matches, called small-sided games in soccer parlance.
Step 2
Assign players to simple games of 2v1 to start. Allow them to work on passing, holding their head up to look around, and dribbling in the simple, friendly environment of the small-sided game. Remove cones to combine adjacent grids and change the game to 3v3 and ultimately 5v5. Distribute team members so each small team has a balanced number of weak and strong players for best results; make the assignments yourself rather than allowing a strong player to select teammates, which may embarrass those selected last.
Step 3
Play "Silent Soccer:" a full game of up to 11 players per team, but with no player allowed to call to or to even whisper to another. Penalize talking with a direct free kick. Players need to think and act for themselves based on their observations of what is happening on the field. "They must look off the ball when their team is both in and out of possession," Hargreaves notes. As coach, you can stop play and bring the group together for a minute or two to talk about what players should pay attention to in the next period of play.
Step 4
Encourage players to regularly view examples of excellent field awareness by professional players, either in person or on television. Copying players with excellent field vision is constructive way to improve, writes University of North Carolina Greensboro soccer coach Michael Parker in "Premier Soccer." "It's important that players have idols they can look up to and imitate in order to improve their tactical awareness," he advises.
Step 5
Work with behavior modification to help a player with poor tactics achieve better field awareness in small-team games; "silent soccer" and emulating an idol are not effective. For example, if a forward is regularly offside, sit down with her and review the possible causes, Hargreaves suggests. Note that it is not the player's fault if the referee makes an error or a teammate sends the ball too late, but it is her fault if she forgets the rules, runs too soon or fails to look both ways along the line of defenders. Track reasons for being called offside and review them with the player to spur improvement.
Things You'll Need
- Plastic cones
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