SC Soccer Forums SCSoccer.com Forums Club Soccer & ODP Coaches already know who teams are before tryout?

Does anyone think that most coaches, especially ones with already good teams, know who will be on the team before tryouts? I mean, why get a new player with certain risks involved when you can just keep an old player who you know well and know the "risks" associated with taking them?

I was told last year, that if a player isn't on the starting line up then coach assumes they didn't work hard enough to get in the starting team. So every sub was off the team; it didn't matter how they performed at tryouts. Think they've ever looked at EPL rosters and their starters versus subs?

Well, it most likely isn't a coach's first priority to look at subs from last year at tryouts anyway, because he already knows how good they are from last year's practices.

I'd expect that most coaches of existing teams know who they want to keep and what the weak areas are for a team (i.e. gaps to fill). So, especially as kids get older, the tryouts are probably more about filling gaps.

Also remember that the coaches are trying to put together the best team. So that means the best 11 players for a eam may not always correspond to the best eleven athletes etc. All positions must be filled with the best players for a position. For example, if the "best eleven players" were all keepers and midfielders, then likely the coach would have to look for defenders and forwards in lieu of a few of the worst of the top 11.

At what age do you start to pigeonhole players into certain positions? WHat if the best 11 were all midfielders? Shouldn't they have had some training on the back line as well as up front? DOn't you think a good coach could take 11 great midfielders and make a great team out of them. Now if you're talking 11 goalies, then you may have a problem.

I saw this around u11 kids staying in one position on, but just recently I saw where a coach started taking players who played majority of their time on back line and moved them to midfield and sha-zam they went from being a struggling player to a good player. Untill the coach trys kids out in different positions sometimes the kid and team misses out on a key player because of the "pigeonhold". The only problem I saw in the past was when a coach decided to try the "different" spots in a tournament we paid big $$$, so please coaches "test" this at practice first....

What needs to happen at this level is that players are all trained as utility players - they can play any position and play it well. In game situations the coach may easily adjust his line up given the strengths and weakeness of the opponent. This will allow the team to modify easily and effectively. This is one of about 100 ways a solid team is built and how it achieves successes.

I'm not sure there IS an age where you should start to pigeonhole players into single positions...it's easy to do because both the players and the coaches get "comfortable" with familiar players in familiar spots, but it's important to keep testing to find out what options are available, both for the individual player and the team. Finding out that a player can handle multiple positions opens up many more chances and strategies for team success, and it makes the individual player more "marketable" when moving on to other teams and situations. It's usually worthwhile to try to shake them out of their (and the coach's) comfort zone and see what they can do in other spots--even on u18 and high school teams, some of my best defenders have also been my best scorers and vice versa, and being able to swap players between high-pressure and low-pressure spots during a game is a great way to rest them on the field without having to sub.

Agree 100% about finding the right place for each kid, but that kind of testing/playing doesn't intentionally happen on the highest level teams as the kids get older. It may still happen, but I'll wager it isn't the coaches original plan. Teams below the top level are the place where these experiments happen.

I had (perhaps mistakenly) assumed we were talking about the highest level teams since the thread was about tryouts.

If a kid goes to a tryout and when asked what position he plays he says "anywhere" is that a player the coach wants? On one hand, it could show him a well-rounded player, on the other hand it may show someone who has never established himself at any one position.