Asked to play out of the back but never work on it in practice

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VillageKeeper

BRONZE
Does your S/DD ever practice on the pass back and what options they have when they receive the ball? It seems the coach wants them to keep possession but does not work on the "what ifs" during practice. Then she gets in the game and gets yelled out for not doing it right. Does this happen to anyone else?
 
A good GK club or group trainer will work on that as part of a shooting drill, with other GKs either providing the back pass, imitating the striker to pressure the back pass, or being available to receive a back pass, after which a shot is taken (it can also be done as part of a 1v1 drill).

It's also helpful to play futsal or small-sided games since the issue for many GKs is touch and quick decisionmaking, which requires repetition and comfort on the ball rather than some formulaic approach.

It's helful to apply all of this with your team, but you have to first acquire the basic skills (including the ability to play with both feet) and then you can apply them.
 
VillageKeeper said:
Does your S/DD ever practice on the pass back and what options they have when they receive the ball? It seems the coach wants them to keep possession but does not work on the "what ifs" during practice. Then she gets in the game and gets yelled out for not doing it right. Does this happen to anyone else?
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I would say that the experience you describe is the norm, and coaches who actually provide direction/instruction for the defense and keepers during practice are the exception. My DD did finally find a coach who taught and drilled playing out of the back under pressure and without pressure, so they do exist. But it took us 5 years and a huge stroke of luck. Some clubs try to make it a point of emphasis, but results vary within those clubs from team to team sometimes.
 
DDs current coach (and last coach at a different club) were big on holding onto the ball and working out of the back. Last coach as the team was never the biggest, fastest and strongest, current coach as he just wants to keep possession. There has been a fair amount of time spent this season in practice working on moving the ball back and forth in the defensive 3rd, including the goalie as one of the options when moving the ball. It takes a lot of work and faith in your defense and holding mid. As @SMUB06 above references, futsal has also had a big improvement in DD's foot skills.

Find the right coach.
 
I agree with Mystery Train...most coaches don't know how to teach this. A lot coaches are so afraid of it that they won't even use it, because they are worried the GK will lose it close to the goal. The yelling is also something to be concerned about. Perhaps there is a disconnect between the team coach and the club GK coach...each just thinks the other is working on it and blaming your GK for not learning it right. It may not even really be your GK's fault (the defenders may not be doing what they need to do).

There are quite a few specialized aspects to the technique that need to be trained. First, as mentioned by others, the GK has got to have a lot of technical work on using both feet and on their first touch with both feet...if their first touch is bad, it's very easy to turn over the ball or have it roll into goal. Second, there's where the GK is supposed to stand in receiving the ball (basically switching into a triangle around the goal when the team has possession, and practicing switching from this triangle on offense to the arc on defense). Third, there's when and how to call for the ball (which involves screaming your head for the back while other players might also be calling for the ball). Fourth, there's practicing on checking your options particularly when under pressure. Then last there are the options, the big three being give and go back to the player who gave it to you, switching the field, and playing it long (each technique is slightly different).
 
30 minutes of Rondo for my 05 daughter every practice keeps her foot skills strong. Every game gets between 10-20 passes back to her.

This past weekend she ended up playing 5 games over 3 days and had over 100 opportunities to play with her feet. One of our girls was playing left defensive back for the first time and every time she got the ball she would fire it back to my daughter. At least 15 times by her alone in one game. A couple times from center line. We asked her why after the game, she laughed and said "I wasn't sure what to do when I'd get the ball so I'd play it back to the keeper and then go wide". One time an opposing player was about to block a pass from my daughter and she did a roll over to get around the defender and then made a pass. Lots of oohs and aahs on that one. Great weekend of soccer.

Once you find a coach that pushes the team to play that way, stick with them. I've never seen another keeper get as many touches as my daughter does, not even close. Are mistakes made, yep. Are they getting better, yep. Having a coach willing to lose a game while they learn to play this way is difficult, but in the long run should see huge benefits. She sees a couple keeper coaches for work stopping shots so is in a great situation right now.
 
So I'll share an anecdote with the backpass. Having taking some advice from more experienced GK parents (both here on this forum and elsewhere), I'm pretty much down to 2 redlines on any team: 1) they have to allow outside GK training, and 2) my GK must take some of his goalkicks. I get sometimes the big legged defender needs to be there to boot it particularly if you are ahead with minutes left and just want to send it, or if the defenders just can't get it out from the back after several tries. My sons goalkicks are pretty good (he's on the younger side of the age line so never will be able to compete with a huge older kid with the big leg, but he can get it to the half of the smaller field and his technique is better than the big legged defender that is just relying on force). More importantly, he's accurate and doesn't usually make a mistake turning it over ...most of the time the big defender will invariably give it right back because he's just "sending it" not aiming it.

At a former club, we had the end of the summer progress meeting with the coaches, and I got the assistant coach who had been assigned to coach the defensive end (and who knew very little about developing goalkeepers). I took all the feedback...all good...until we hit the red line. I laid out my marker, having chosen that hill to fight on. The coach didn't have the excuse that his goalkicks don't cut it, or the defenders couldn't handle it since these defenders could, and I was friends with the DOC who had just given a speech to the coaches about goalkicks (which the coaches weren't fully happy about). One point I raised was, and if he's not engaged in the offense, he can't help you with the backpass.

The response I got back floored me. Note my son is an amazing sweeper keeper...he's a solid higher level bronze when it comes to shot stopping and can do the other techniques but he's not the most amazing out there....he's not the biggest guy that can run out there and be a wall on the corner either...but building from the back is his gift (a couple DOC that have seen him have said he is the best they've seen for his age in a long time) and his GK coach trains it every session (he even trained it on a 1 v 1 special session with his team strikers, which surprised me very much considering the topic was going to be 1 v 1). I had been clear with the team coach on signing on that we were looking for a team that he could help build the back. The response was that they would never put a goalkeeper in that situation, unless that goalkeeper was a very skilled mid player that could be a 10 and then probably not at this age (age 10)...it was unfair to the GK. I sort of knew it was probably over at that moment even though it was only the end of the summer. The technique (even the first touch) for dealing with a back pass is different than a striker or a mid dealing with a long ground pass. Some of the same principles are there (such as touching away from the pressure), but the ball is essentially going backwards (and the GK may need to go short or long, laterally or forward) which means adjustments need to be made to the technique, and just because a mid is an excellent passer doesn't mean he can do the back pass well. And my son had dealt with a few backpasses in tournaments, never having any issue losing it or failing to get it back out. So I walked away from the meeting feeling the coach didn't know how to coach it and basically didn't want to do it. By the end of the season, my son had stopped asking for it, and that in turn contributed to his loss of confidence, since he knew he had lost his moment to shine.

Luckily, some winter futsal over the break quickly got it back for him. I'm optimistic this year, but I always start off optimistically........
 
@Grace T.

You and I have talked about this before, but that story just kills me. So what if they screw up and a back pass turns into a goal? THEY'RE NINE YEARS OLD!! Nobody is scouting them for contracts!

Here's a counterpoint: My DD finally made a high level club team when she was in HS after years of toiling on B teams and Flight 2 teams from small clubs. That coach told the whole team that they were going to learn to play out of the back consistently no matter the early mistakes. He'd bench defensive players for booting the ball up the field and creating turnovers instead of playing safely back to the keeper. He'd yell at my DD when she panicked and booted the ball up field to clear it and tell her to calm down and play the easy pass. He told them that we were gonna score goals, and if our defense gave up a goal on a mistake passing back, our offense just had to suck it up and score two more. At the end of the first season, we made a great run in the playoffs and got into the championship game. We dominated possession, but gave up an early goal when a slow pass back that my DD maybe should not have called for got picked off and scored. The game went to PK's, and we ended up losing mostly because of that one mistake. Our team was devastated, but our coach calmly told the girls that, "We're going to lose some games that way because of our style of play, but I'm okay with it. We're not going to change. We got here by playing that style and we're going to keep doing it." Mind you, this was a championship game for an older age group with college coaches watching. So much more critical than a U10 league game. They ended up meeting that team a year later in a national tournament and crushed them. Fast forward to today, and my kid and her team is so much better off for that experience. Even when they are getting heavy pressure, they know how to react. I just wish my kid had been getting that sort of coaching at the younger levels. I can imagine that she'd be even further ahead if she had.
 
Mystery Train said:
@Grace T.

You and I have talked about this before, but that story just kills me. So what if they screw up and a back pass turns into a goal? THEY'RE NINE YEARS OLD!! Nobody is scouting them for contracts!

Here's a counterpoint: My DD finally made a high level club team when she was in HS after years of toiling on B teams and Flight 2 teams from small clubs. That coach told the whole team that they were going to learn to play out of the back consistently no matter the early mistakes. He'd bench defensive players for booting the ball up the field and creating turnovers instead of playing safely back to the keeper. He'd yell at my DD when she panicked and booted the ball up field to clear it and tell her to calm down and play the easy pass. He told them that we were gonna score goals, and if our defense gave up a goal on a mistake passing back, our offense just had to suck it up and score two more. At the end of the first season, we made a great run in the playoffs and got into the championship game. We dominated possession, but gave up an early goal when a slow pass back that my DD maybe should not have called for got picked off and scored. The game went to PK's, and we ended up losing mostly because of that one mistake. Our team was devastated, but our coach calmly told the girls that, "We're going to lose some games that way because of our style of play, but I'm okay with it. We're not going to change. We got here by playing that style and we're going to keep doing it." Mind you, this was a championship game for an older age group with college coaches watching. So much more critical than a U10 league game. They ended up meeting that team a year later in a national tournament and crushed them. Fast forward to today, and my kid and her team is so much better off for that experience. Even when they are getting heavy pressure, they know how to react. I just wish my kid had been getting that sort of coaching at the younger levels. I can imagine that she'd be even further ahead if she had.
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This story makes me feel so much better about my son's current situation. He had a choice of 3 teams (1 which I knew was going to chase the wins to try and make silver but basically had him punting for most of the tryout, 1 which was a very long commute, and 1 where the coach is a former GK and knew what he was doing but the team is both new and very weak). I put him on the weak team (which is improving leaps and bounds week after week) so he could get a lot of shot stopping experience, so he could work through his issue, but mostly because they had one tryout that was all focused on the backpass. Got a lot of weird looks from people that I knew that I hadn't taken the better fancy offer.

They had a very impressive sequence this weekend....opposing striker was right behind our CB chasing a through ball down...no way our CB beats the very athletic very tall striker....the CB from the half way beautifully toe passes it (just inches ahead of the striker) to my son whose screaming his head off along the with the coach for the back...striker closes son down fast (who is trying to beat him to the ball) and he's looking around for the option and lands it right at the feet of the RB who's at the top corner of the penalty box, with a short aerial ball that's just the right height for the RB to put it to ground...RB feeds a through ball to the midfielder and we are back on the attack for the 1 v 1.

I'm optimistic this year (even if we lose all our games) but I start out every year optimistically and God knows how long the coach can hold out before the parents begin to get impatient.....
 
As a parent I don't ask for much from the coaches (ok, maybe I do :D) but taking her own goal kicks and making sure the coach wanted the kids to play back to the keeper were at the top of my list. We were able to play in the SC NPL league this spring and finished middle of the pack, but not one single team played possession like we did nor did any of them play back to the keeper more than 2-3 times a game. Choose the coach and style over a higher level team. I can't imagine what High School soccer will be like next year, but really pushing my kid to play basketball instead because I don't expect much out of the High School team.
 
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