I like the advice I get on here and i have another “what would you do question?”
DD is age 10, she was at the same club for 4 years playing flight 2. One of the top players on the team. She was having fun and very comfortable.
This year a flight 1 team from another club wanted her. I mean they really tried hard to recruit her. So we made the jump. She wasn’t getting the same opportunity to play up at her club of 4 Years. So we figured let’s try it and see what she can do. I knew this would take her out of her comfort level and challenge her.
Things are great. It’s a lot more competitive. The tournaments we play are really good tournaments like Blues, Manchester etc. I see her doing good and she seems happy, but then again she’s always happy. She can make the worst situation into a positive one.
So what’s the problem? The coach! He’s mean, negative and never has anything nice to say. He loses his shit at every practice and game. It takes everything in me not to get up and pull her out and never go back. Plus I see him trying to build a strong team and not focus on individual Player development. He doesn’t encourage dribbling, skills and creative play. It’s “pass, pass,pass!!” All day long. My DD trains outside of practice a lot.
It sucks that she’s not encouraged to use her skills.
So what would you do?
Stick it out and hope they change the coach or go back to her old club and play a lower flight? Btw her old club is all about player devolpment. They encourage skills, dribbling and creative play.
Yelling hurts some players, helps others. It's all about knowing your child and what will light a fight under her vs burn her out. Remember that you shouldn't try too hard to put yourself in her shoes, she will be different from you. It sounds like she doesn't mind it and doesn't take it personally.
If you just want to have fun, then being the best player on a team does that. But if you want to improve: neither be the best, nor worst player on the team. Seen a lot of wasted potential because the "best" player just enjoys being relied upon and styling on the other team instead of learning the game.
Creative play is overrated. Look at the last World Cup. The Latin American countries pride themselves in having better foot skills than other countries, and they do (*cough* Croatia). However, not a single one made it into the semi-finals. Passing, high press, strength, set pieces, and headers are the game now.
I've also seen many younger undisciplined teams stomp their opponents at the younger age levels, and that same team blows up and never wins as they get older. My younger brother just reffed a team that won a U8 7v7 final with 4 right forwards (because none of the kids wanted to play left forward and the coach caved. Don't get me started on their "defense")(Obviously, an extreme example, but it serves my point via microcosm). These kids were all skilled creative players, but I think unless they change clubs fast, they will put a ceiling on their soccer career.
Meanwhile the more disciplined teams learning to properly pass and play out of the back when they are little; they constantly lose because of the inevitable mistakes (to coaches that abuse the build out line rules), but then they start winning as they get older because they have started learning the system sooner. Every new thing will have growing pains, and the disciplined team can get through them and bear the losses for longer term benefits.
That all being said, creative play is not bad in itself, she should continue to train on her own, it will giver her a leg up in the future. But she needs the team play "pass, pass" not for a leg up, but just to be on the same starting line as the other girls.
