Introducing a curriculum for U9-U10 players

A few years ago, I wanted to guarantee my players had all the necessary tools in their “player development brain” by the end of each age group, so I wrote a comprehensive soccer coaching curriculum, covering the age groups from U7-U16, which I am converting into the EasiCoach series.

Having introduced the U7-U8 manual in January, yesterday saw the launch of the brand new U9-U10 curriculum.

All this hard work came to fruition recently when I agreed to help coach a U9 team. They’re a very inexperienced team, described to me as a “B” team – I prefer coaching teams like this because, in my experience, they’re the ones that present more of a challenge to my coaching skills.

I’ve had a couple of sessions with them and they’re a fantastic bunch of kids, even though these boys are not even “the best” in their year.

On Saturday we played a “friendly” against the “A” team. It’s hard playing against a team that your players feel is better than theirs. They started moaning immediately. I picked them up on that and told them to concentrate on passing and playing as a team, and to tightly mark the players they knew would run the game.

What happened was that they ran the game, playing as a team with the focus on passing and support play. The “A” team, sure that they would win, played as individuals.

I am looking forward to getting them playing “real” matches because I think I’ve made them aware that, if they pass the ball and support each other, they have the ability to beat anyone.

See a sample defending game 3v3v3 blocking passes from my brand new EasiCoach U9-U10 Soccer Skills Activities manual.