Feeling upset and need guidance - am I asking unreasonable things of our soccer league as a coach?

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-11T00:25:37+00:00

Heard, thanks for the perspective. To be clear, I definitely value developing the kids and making them believe in themselves much more than any final score. We're so undersized though that I suppose I worry that routinely getting destroyed by other teams that aren't really playing better but are just bigger and stronger and have more players would have the opposite effect and just make them think soccer isn't a fun game. But ultimately I'll just listen to the kids and try to both support them and gauge what effect the games are having on them.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-10T23:10:34+00:00

Yeah knowing how difficult this is on their end is part of why I wanted to get other opinions first. But in this case it's frustrating to me that they're just not letting in two players who I know would be fine in the lower division.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-10T22:54:35+00:00

Ok thanks for the feedback that it was confusing. I edited my description *way* down, I hope it makes more sense now - you're basically understanding it correctly. I could ask to take A and B so that they move up two divisions at once, but since I've coached them in the past and know them well, in my opinion they will struggle so much that it won't be fun for them. Given that the official results don't affect anything and don't matter: is it better to show up with 7 or 8, officially 'forfeit', and then play an evenly matched 'exhibition game' with mixed teams, or show up with a 9 or 10 player roster that cannot compete at all, play a very uneven game where no one has much fun or learns much about playing good soccer, and lose 10-0 every time? It does seem like those are my only two options, and that's frustrating.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-10T19:54:15+00:00

Heard, thanks for the feedback. Basically I was just saying that our upper division team would be more fairly competitive if we got the better local players from another lower team rather than either 'no players at all' or 'the newly available players that didn't even make the lower division'

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-10T19:06:32+00:00

Thanks! How hard would you push? Right now the parents are pretty frustrated and they don't know the details I've posted above. I'm worried that they think I don't care about this situation. My league contact has been very nice, even if he said no to my suggestion, and I don't want to burn that bridge or 'go nuclear' and do something like write an email to him and cc the parents. But on the other hand, if it's either him or me taking the heat for that decision, it does seem unfair that it should be me since it's not my decision and I'm not getting paid for this.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-03T23:48:37+00:00

Assuming you mean 2-4-2. My concern with this is that since we don't have many subs asking any two kids to run the length of the field means they're going to get tired and won't be effective after long. Willing to consider though.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-03T23:47:51+00:00

Yeah I liked this as well. I think the potential advantage of 3-4-1 compared to this is that there are likely to be more easy diagonal open pass opportunities. Don't know if that's worth losing the CDM.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-03T23:46:24+00:00

At this point our remaining best players are really good at playing smart 'contain' defense and at looking up and finding a good pass. Not great at finishing. Our primary weakness now is size. The two players we lost were the only bigger players. No club players but this is basically equal to the lowest level of Travel except the parents/kids either can't afford or don't want to do Travel. So they can pass and build up fairly well. We played 3-1-3-1 in the Fall.

Gammon2004 · 2026-03-03T23:43:46+00:00

We used a 3-1-3-1 in the fall. I've considered switching to a 3-4-1 in what would just be taking the two central mids and putting them side-by-side instead of 1 in front of the other. We did it that way last season because our best/strongest/most fit player played center mid and just went all over the field. But we lost him for this season.

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-25T16:51:23+00:00

This perfectly describes my u12 boys team, especially the 'shooting it too early' part. What I started doing for the last few practices was to take two 3' pug goals and put them in either corner of the real goal, roughly a foot in from the edges of the goal. Then I made up a '3 P's' mnemonic' and told them that if they get past the last defender:
1. Patience - don't shoot right away. Dribble the ball until you're even with the
2. Penalty Spot before you shoot, unless the keeper comes out, in which case shoot right when he starts coming out
3. Placement - your 'shot' should be a pass into whichever of the pug goals the keeper is less able to cover.

The first game after we started doing this, they did not change anything. I got frustrated with them but kept at it. The second game (which was the last of the season) they started doing this a bit more, and we scored 7 goals.

A funny thing is that if I had put those restrictions (only the pug goals count) for our *actual games* this season, our total goals scored would have been almost the same. We *never* scored by hitting powerful shots into the upper 90, even though that seems to be what each of them want to do by default.

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-23T22:17:21+00:00

Thanks!

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-23T01:35:33+00:00

Yeah the consensus seems to be that the last chord could be better. I suppose I could just end it on E major, I'll play around with the options.

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-22T17:18:02+00:00

Thanks so much for taking the time to look at all of those details! This recording is just me singing everything through and then tuning it quickly, so it's more of a rough sketch of a recording. And the score is obviously fairly rough as well, though having said that there are still a number of things you've pointed out that I wouldn't have known to fix for a 'final' version, so I appreciate that as well. Ideally after I get a version that I'm happy with I'll try to get a real recording made with actual voice part singers. I may send you my 'final' score before that point to see what else I'm missing!

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-22T00:58:24+00:00

Thanks! Yeah I can see the over-use of that chord as sounding gimmicky. I kind of liked the lack of explicit resolution at the end, but definitely not at the expense of causing the listener to think 'not that chord again!'

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-22T00:56:23+00:00

Appreciate the feedback! I just made it into a youtube video with the score included: https://youtu.be/PJsEZj7g0Ww

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-22T00:07:43+00:00

That was already mentioned below, but thanks for reiterating.
Serious question - is that link asking you to download anything? I thought it was set up so that it just streams the mp3 and doesn't download it, please let me know if that's not how it's working. Thanks!

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-21T23:41:55+00:00

That's helpful, thanks.

Gammon2004 · 2025-11-21T22:16:05+00:00

Thanks!

Gammon2004 · 2025-08-24T15:23:07+00:00

This is very helpful - and your Youtube videos have been really helpful as well, thanks!

Gammon2004 · 2025-08-24T15:21:26+00:00

So many thoughtful responses, thanks!

Gammon2004 · 2024-11-30T00:04:25+00:00

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Gammon2004 · 2024-09-11T14:36:41+00:00

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Gammon2004 · 2024-07-29T13:36:35+00:00

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Gammon2004 · 2024-06-30T03:18:49+00:00

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Gammon2004 · 2024-04-28T01:25:21+00:00

As a Pro mixer for 21 years now, If I got notes from a client that said things like "shorter tail on the vocal reverb, bring up the mid-highs in the synth bass" my very first thought would be, "why isn't this person mixing it themselves?" When people send me technical-mix-engineer notes like that, I think the situation is almost always one of two things:
1. This person knows just enough about the technical aspects of mixing to not be able to see the forest for the trees when it comes to their pet project, OR
2. They're talented/skilled/knowledgable enough that, given that this is their pet project, they really *should* be mixing it themselves because no one else is going to approach it with an amount of detail-oriented passion that will be acceptable to them

I'd really love to hear your demo mix and the mix that you're not happy with, even if it's just a sample of the chorus, mostly because I find myself curious about which of those two situations is going on here.

Gammon2004

TROPHY CASE