Communication on the soccer field

I had a chance to interview Head Coach Darren Ambrose of the University of Pennsylvania Women's Soccer team a month or two ago about many topics. One topic we got into was about how to develop communication on the soccer field at the youth level and up. Below is a little excerpt from it. Take a read...

Gary: If you look at communication on the field, what do you see…How are we doing in that area? What do coaches need to do in order to better themselves in that area?

Darren: I think we need to let kids play and organize themselves in 3V3, 4V4, 6V6 games and have less structure in practice. Because when that happens, the natural element of the game will come out and kids will start to or tend to do that a lot more as opposed to constantly telling them where to go and what to do. We take away the communication aspect for them because they have someone else that does it for them.

Gary: Perfect, yep.

Darren: We can allow them a little bit more opportunity to play in unstructured games. I think that presents the opportunity for them to communicate where as we constantly do exercises that are...the decision-making is taken away from them you know then they’re not being trained to communicate. They don’t need to. So I think if you put them in those situations more often it will present an opportunity for them to communicate a lot more.

Darren is right on with this! I have fallen into that trap myself where I over coach sessions and stagnate the communication development of my soccer team.

How do you assist your team in generating better communication on the soccer field? Leave me a reply!

Thanks and have a great day!

Gary
www.soccerandspeedcoach.com