9v9 to 11v11 Transition

Prior to the development of U12 SCCL several clubs did this. Tophat and Concorde and GSA often put their top U12 teams in U13 Athena (usually B but occasionally A). Once U12 SCCL started most clubs put their top 2 9v9 teams in it and played up to U13 for tournaments. I am aware of a few Tophat teams that did not do this. This year Tophat put their top 2010 team in DPL instead of their 3rd 2009 team. They did very well in the first two DPL games plus their tourneys. It is good for them but not necessarily for the current U13 3rd team who will have to jump to U14 DPL next season.

Personally I think the majority of players benefit from 9v9 as far as more touches plus being forced to play in a tighter space and thus speed of play and passing accuracy in addition to technical skills all have greater importance. But teams that choose to play long ball can often score from midfield so that can become frustrating to watch.

For the players I do not see a benefit, including the top team at a club. I am a proponent of entering them into a tournament or two near the end of the spring season so they are a little more prepared for tryouts at U13, but an entire year is not beneficial IMO.

With the above said, I watched some of a lower level (SCCL-P2 or P3) boys game last weekend. This was U13 and they were playing 11v11. IMO they should have still been playing 9v9 as the field was clearly too big for the players. I honestly did not see a benefit for those players being on the 11v11 field.

The biggest benefit is to the club who can then tell many more parents that their child is too good to play in their own age bracket. While their are always one or two players who actually benefit, the club gets to sign/retain many more players with this lie.

It depends on the team - some teams look ridiculous playing on a small field at that age while it suits others. The biggest development issue has to do with geometry. Passing and first touch, to be specific. A pass that is a yard off on a small field is no problem, but that same pass is 5 yards off with the geometry of a larger field and becomes a turnover. First touches also suffer - shorter, low velocity passes are easier to handle and longer, harder passes get bricked straight to the opposition. People always talk about whether or not top players continue to be top players or if other players catch up in development, and I believe a big factor is how they handle all that comes with playing on the larger field. Then tryouts come and rely heavily on small field scrimmages, so coaches don’t really know how players will handle it if they haven’t had any game experience on large fields.

Good points. It’s just very hard to get any experience on large fields outside of playing games because most practice fields are shared by multiple teams.

Or, when moving from 9v9 to 11v11, AU releases the young players that looked good on the small pitch but can’t duplicate it on large fields. That has definitely happened. It happens with all clubs/teams. My kid’s teams have few players still together from their 9v9 days. Obviously it’s not the only reason but there is a percentage.

Like most said there’s a small like 3% chance it’ll help an individual U12 player.

For teams though to get that head start is a big difference depending on what league they play in. For maybe a preECNL top team that’s looking to play in June and July’s playoffs and want to make sure they don’t struggle and lose a couple results in the Fall. Or a lower level team that’s looking for promotion in SCCL and wants to make sure they don’t drop early matches and points. But for low level ECNL/RL, gal/MLSNext, DPL and even SCCL Club to club there’s no true advantage since those leagues don’t have pro/rel.

As a coach that often found myself coaching U12 and U13 at one of the local ECNL clubs, I can tell you this is not done for player development. Like many posters have said, it’s often used to “sell” a parent into coming to or staying at a club. “Here at, insert club, your kid will get the opportunity to play 11v11 in the spring or 11v11 all year”. Even better then they can pitch playing up a year… ooooh impressive. (Sigh…eyeroll) Parents often fall for this and look at it as a promotion for their kid, an opportunity for the player to get ahead, but it’s not. If it’s really about player development, we all know the smaller/tighter the space, the more touches and the faster the game is, forcing quicker play and decision making. The ironic thing is, the same clubs that use this premature move to the bigger fields are probably selling their players on futsal too… which is it? Bigger space is better or not?

As a professional coach, it was my job to know when each player was ready for 11v11, hint, they weren’t all ready at the same time. I let the players/team dictate how much 11v11 we played during their U12 season, every player and therefore every team was different. I had 1 team that was ready for 11v11 during their spring season, so I scheduled friendlies and went to post season tournaments to prepare them for tryouts, but that team was exceptional. They were actually the 2nd team in U12 and we beat our top U12 team that spring 2-0 11v11.

Lastly, I believe the advantages for playing small sided greatly outweigh the disadvantages in terms of player technical and tactical development. One of the LAST concepts my 12s would grasp was transitioning at speed and playing high pressure defense… when we win the ball, we all spread out and go forward at speed as a unit, and when we lose the ball we condense the space and get behind the ball at speed, closest player applies immediate pressure on the ball. It is MUCH easier to achieve this when the field isn’t giant… many 12 year olds don’t have the ability to cover a full field in this manner for 15-20 minutes, let alone an entire match. Just my two cents…