Chico,
Question. At what point should we be more concerned with development rather than winning. Last year we were on a team that won all the time but the coach did not do very much to develop the players as either individuals or a team. He allowed the more assertive players (who, as it turns out, had been playing together since u5. They are now u11) to dominate every conceivable situation in games. They took every penalty, every corner, every free kick. We are talking about 4 players on a developmental team of 18. They also played in the center of the field so they even controlled the flow of the game. Unfortunately, they are not the type of player to get everyone involved. As center mids they were often out of position and did not distribute the ball. They used their physical strength and speed to just power past people. It got to the point were a few of the "others" did not enjoy going to practice or playing. A few of these players have a ball with them were ever they go, they would even stay for 30 minutes after practice to shoot and play world cup, yet they didn't want to practice with this coach or team.
This season, 3 players from that team were, for lack of better description, demoted to the pool 2 team. Two of those players have much better skill than many of the pool 1 players but they were also the smallest players on the team. This year, we find the coach to be much better even though he is just out of college. He has the team playing well and working together. He also has not pigeon-holed them into position like the coach did last year. We didn't win many games at the beginning of the year. We were actually 1 win 1 tie and 10 loses during the first month of the season. However, we worked the ball much better than last years team ever did, even by the end of the season. Why did we lose so many? 1. we went to a tournament after 2 practices. A tournament that we didn't go to last year because the coach said we were not ready. 2. We are much smaller than the other teams we played. I insist that you could take 4 or 5 of our players and switch them with the pool one team and both teams would get the same results. This season, everyone loves to come to practice. They laugh and have a good time and along well together. Ususally 8 out of the ten players stay after to play and it is all we can do to get them to leave.
So once again, at what point is development REALLY more important than winning?
Last edited by kdlsc; 11/01/06 02:00 PM.
