frank schoon, August 18, 2022 at 9:11 a.m.
As I sat there on the couch with my notepad, wanting to take notes for tomorrow's SA comments, at the end of the night, there was nothing. It wasn't worth spending time for the problem is much bigger than the game details that I usually talk about at hand...
First of all, The USSF should do a study on body fat content of the US women soccer players. I look at the Japanese and Dutch women and they are all thin, and athletic looking. I see way too many big butts ,heavy thighs on the US women teams...
I had mentioned gestallt before, but the US developing strategy has got to change from atheticism to intelligent play. From day one it should be taught to the players that you CAN"t outrun the ball, nothing is faster than the ball. Once that is understood, then you play the game in a way that you let the ball do the running, not the player, for that is much faster...Of course that is easier said than done, for you have to understand the parameters that come with fast play, for example, positioning, field positioning and ball-handling skills,not fast running, but fast thinking. That in itself is part of the gestallt that needs to added to our game. The problem ,currently, is that we don't have the coaches to teach that for they likewise have never grown up in that type of old-fashioned gestallt.
Look at the dutch and Japanese when we played them, both were not about to fight it out with the US team, because we can kick anybody's ass, playing physical out there. You never saw a dutch player or japanese player try to outrun an American with the ball....forget it...but we will definitely try to for that is our gestallt that's been baked into our DNA from day one...Turbo, baby!!!
Both the Japanese and Dutch players beat our players with short fast ball movements combined with various players. You never saw them trying to outrun an American player in a mad dash down the wing or down the field, but you would see that display with our players because that's baked into our DNA....
NEXT POST
frank schoon, August 18, 2022 at 9:46 a.m.
Note how fast the Japanese turn with the ball, on a dime, especially when they allow an American player to come very close. The make a feint, as if they will in one direction but go the opposite. We don't even do that. Why don't we see that with our players, simple, we don't have the coaches to train and develop that type of style. We simply train to straight forward, too direct, too simplistic and too predictable.
The Dutch are too smart to get in a foot race with the Americans. They only attempt a quick dash of about 5meters than quickly pass the ball off, perhaps it backwards making US chase the ball back ,leaving a big open space forwards but behind the American players to pass the ball. In this manner you don't have to try and outrun someone but instead beat 2 or 3 players through one pass. We just don't play smart soccer and that is due to coaching....So when you're told our coaches are all licensed ,what is that suppose to mean, Licensed???? This is a joke.
If you want to begin to increase the level of faster play, that means not run faster for that only slows down the game, instead there are other parameters that come into paly to FORCE a player to play faster. Instead of 11v11,full field, play it half-field. Or play 11v14, where the 3 extra players forces the other team, to look ahead,move, think and pass faster....It is the little details. Rinus Michels in the WC'74 practiced playing 11v11, half-field, full goals, never full-field. In other words time and space became of the essence and that requires faster thinking and moving.
In street soccer days,the kids on the teams never wore specially t-shirts or color pennies. No, ofcourse not ,you just played with what you wore that day in school. In other words, teams were never equal, nobody wore similar colors, which forced kids to always look up and remember who your teammates were and where they are situated. Unlike today, the coach just throws out the color pennies and seperate two teams. That was never done in my days of street soccer, where you automatically were forced to look ,think, prepare to where the ball should go ahead of time in the next move because similar color teammates weren't there. All this stuff became automatic to the kids in my days through playing. Today, that gestallt is lost and instead, we have some 'goofball' with a license directing you 'where to go, what to do, what color to where'.
Development of soccer needs a serious change and the first step is for player to learn to play faster which is done by forcing them to new parameters of play....
)