In order for us to remain competitive, we need some practice and a better game plan. The goal here is not to run up the score or to win a ton of soccer games, but rather to have fun while improving the quality of our individual and team play. Our teams are fun teams to play on and play against, and that needs to continue.

Our better plan has three primary components:

1. Help everyone on our teams improve their individual ball skills.

2. Help everyone on our teams understand and implement basic defensive and offensive positioning that works for particular combination of players.

3. Work towards having each of our teams play as a cohesive unit - when we have the ball, everyone is on offense, and when the other team has the ball, everyone is on defense (with everyone playing the same style of offense and defense).

When we do those three things, other good things will happen as a matter of course. We'll allow fewer goals, we'll take more shots and score more goals, and we'll have more fun while suffering fewer injuries.

If we work on this stuff only during games, it will take years and years to implement the plan. It is almost impossible to improve your dribbling when you touch the ball only 40 or 50 times in the course of a 48 minute game. It is very difficult to get better at shooting when you take only one or two shots in a 48 minute game. And offensive and defensive skills are much easier to understand, practice, and master if you do them first in slow motion and then gradually increase the intensity - something you really can't do during a game.

And that is why we're doing Fish Soccer - so our teams can fully implement the "better plan" in a season or two instead of taking three or four years. I'm hoping just about everyone who is going to play indoors with us next fall will participate in as much Fish Soccer as they can.

If you've got any questions or comments, please let me know.

Rob
rob@robfish.com
889-5222