Not running up the score is not only good sportsmanship, it's smart coaching. My experience is that if you run up the score and it seems easy to your players, then watch out for a let down the next week, because your players will get cocky, lazy and not hustle. I found it best to win, but keep it close. There are several ways to do this:

-- Moving the Fullbacks and Midfielders up to Forward, and Forwards back to defend or to the Midfield, is probably the best approach

--The 2nd best approach is to "play short" by taking one or 2 players off the field. This is good because it will force your players to work even harder and to hustle even more.

When we got 4 goals ahead, what I did was to first move my players around, and if that didn't even it up, I would take one off and then a second.

Putting constraints on your players such as that they must make 5 passes before shooting is artificial and is contrary to the hustling, score-if-you-can attitude you want to encourage, and I think it can possibly be confusing to players and cause them to pass when they should shoot. I think it's better to use an approach that still encourages them to play hard and do their bes

David SoccerHelp

---

Soccer Drills soccer drills soccer training drills youth soccer drills soccer drills soccer drills kids fun soccer drills for kids soccer drills soccer drills positions soccer formations soccer positions assigning and coaching soccer positions Soccer Rules soccer rules and rules of soccer Soccer Coaching soccer coaching and how to coach soccer Soccer Positions soccer positions soccer formations soccer formations for 4v4 to 11v11 Soccer Rules soccer rules and kids soccer rules soccer formations soccer formations Youth Soccer Drills youth soccer drills Soccer Drills and Youth Soccer Drills soccer drills for kids that are fun

---

From www.soccerhelp.com
Copyright 1999-2010, David and Kay Huddleston
Want to Re-Print this article or part of it? You are allowed to link back to this article or to Soccerhelp.com. You may also copy on paper for handouts up to 10 pages from Soccerhelp.com PROVIDED: you don't remove any references to SoccerHelp, don't give the impression you own the information, and you MUST include "Copyright www.Soccerhelp.com" at the top or bottom of the article. To copy our work without crediting us is stealing and we will protect our copyrights. We would rather be nice than mean, so please save us some trouble and credit Soccerhelp.com if you copy any information from this website. It is illegal to post any information from SoccerHelp on the internet without written permission from David or Kay Huddleston, except we will allow quotes of up to one page to be posted PROVIDED you add a FUNCTIONING LINK on the bottom of the same page that goes to www.Soccerhelp.com and says "Copyright www.Soccerhelp.com". The link MUST work for both visitors AND search engines. We have to enforce this due to blatant theft and to protect our copyrights and we hire a service to look for copyright violations. Thanks for your cooperation in this matter.

Back to SoccerHelp Home Page

Back to Table of Contents