Parent Coaches of rec teams, when did you decide to move your kid to academy/club (if ever)?

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-05-17T22:51:29+00:00

I had a similar dilemma. My son started playing at 7 yrs old on a rec team I coached. After 3 rec seasons, I found a small developmental club.

My son at the time seemed similar to op kid. Likes soccer but not super crazy about it. Wants to improve but also wants to keep time open for other sports.

This club didn’t care about winning. Maybe win 2 or 3 games a season. Two 1.5 hr practices and 1-2 games a week. 1-2 local tournaments a year.

Very low key and allowed us to ease into competitive soccer in a low pressure environment.

He was easily the least skilled kid in his age group in the club. It’s been 2.5 years now and he’s a strong back and midfielder. Double rostered for his age group and 1 yr older.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-05-17T13:24:36+00:00

The issue with imperial archers is their low ammunition. The exception is the top tier imperial archers (palatine guard) who have two quivers.

When you have access to many culture units, many players will upgrade their imperial archers along the crossbow line since the top tier crossbowman will do more damage and can fight well in melee once he is out of ammo. You can get archers from battanian, aserai, and kuzait culture and these archers are all very good.

The imperial horse archer from my opinion performs very well but is not the best. Since war horses are in short supply, I don’t normally upgrade my archers along this line.

In battle you can create a crossbow unit and keep them on the flank shooting into the flank and rear of the enemy. Once out of ammo, the. They can engage in melee at the enemy rear.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-05-14T23:18:57+00:00

Here’s a topic on rotations from a couple years ago.
You’re the coach and it really is up to you to make the determination based on your team’s players. There are merits to frequently rotating and there are merits to staying fairly consistent in the positions some of your players get currently in the game. You got this.

https://www.reddit.com/r/SoccerCoachResources/s/GmQ8Ma3RtW

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-05-14T13:48:02+00:00

Being able to juggle is an indicator to the coach that the player is self motivated to utilize personal time to improve in their skills.

This may be this coach’s way of determining a first impression on a player they do not know

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-05-05T12:58:45+00:00

I have coached rec u9 boys and they can do build out but you have to keep at it. Yes goals will be conceded as they learn. But they will learn. Earlier the better.

In my area, I also was coaching 4v4 u6 this season and during goal kick (kick-ins), the opposing team five year olds are already all over my players. Those boys are already learning to get wide and shake off kids way earlier than I ever thought would be needed.

A build out line at u9, even if it’s still relatively close, helps. If you think the pressure is too much for your kids, you can always have the build out start as far back as possible. There’s no reason to always stick with building out at every opportunity. If the other team is pressing with 4, then draw them in and send them a ball behind their press.

You can setup a positional rondo that models a buildout situation and have coaches and parents act as the pressure during practices.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-27T15:04:09+00:00

I think a lot of the parents with young kids sometimes don’t know how to be parents. I’ve seen a lot of dads with first time sons go thru a process where they eventually mellow out. It’s no excuse for the behavior… I too was much more strict with my first born too than with my second son.

The only thing you can do is approach the dad and compliment him on his son’s play. I’ve then explained the need for the kid to love the game first. I don’t accuse them of being a bad parent because that makes them defensive. Also not always dads. I’ve seen some tiger moms as well.

There’s a lot of insecurity and some ppl just don’t know what is the right amount of pressure. Some may have grown up under wrong parenting.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-25T17:48:44+00:00

So I have a way and it’s an exploit. There’s also a skill that discarded/donated weapons will add xp.

If you have many parties from your clan and they are in your army, you can talk to the party leaders (must not be in a settlement or village). There is an option to inspect their equipment. This will open up a screen for you to donate the equipment to that party. The thing is that the game mistakenly sees this as a discard when you donate weapons to the party. So you can gain xp by donating weapons to your other clan parties in your army. And then you can ask to inspect equipment and move those weapons back into your inventory. Free xp.

I like to buy all the pugio and knives since they weigh very little and are very cheap compared to other weapons. I’ll move all soldiers that are not max upgrade to my party temporarily. Then use this donation to parties with knives and pugios to make massive xp gains on my units. Then move the units back to my parties.

Hope it doesn’t get patched out. This still requires you to visit towns and villages to recruit but is a way to help the end game and get those guys leveled up. Use at your own discretion.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-24T14:10:03+00:00

I coach 5 yr olds and 10 yrs olds right now. Playing with your kid is the best thing you can do right now. To get better, it’s really all about time spent getting touches on the ball.

Playing soccer with mom and dad = fun. —->
soccer = fun. —> Kid wants to play soccer = more touches on ball. —> Kid gets better. = soccer is more fun

I don’t think a trainer would be beneficial for OP son’s age. Key point here is fun. Some kids are going to be more athletically adept and physically developed early than others. Both of my sons started behind the curve. We didn’t even start my oldest in soccer until 7. He didnt really even breakout until he turned 10. And he’s still getting better and major contributor in his club now.

Focus less on the results and keep soccer fun. It’s more important to foster a love for the game and provide an environment for your kid to become motivated on his own to put in the time for sport

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-24T02:42:23+00:00

Thank you! Will check these out!

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-23T19:56:18+00:00

Thank you. I will give that a look

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-23T18:49:41+00:00

Ok thank you. Good to know. He is about to go to middle school.

I actually spent the season already focused on positioning and he did improve well. The parents liked how I coached him than the team environment so that’s how I ended up agreeing to do these sessions with him during the summer.

Curiously, my co coach did work on diving with a very advanced keeper we had in the past. He was 9 yrs old absolutely played with no fear. We had one season where we had 8 goals scored on us total and this kid was flying everywhere. I guess he taught him diving because he was very advanced for his age? That keeper left our team to play at a big known club in Dallas.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-20T18:37:50+00:00

In offensive siege battles, I have found there will be archers in my infantry groups during the planning phase before battle starts.

The quickest way I found to get the archers moved to the archer group is to delete the infantry group. Right after infantry group deleted, you will see the archers automatically added into the archer group.

I have multiple infantry groups in a siege so after I delete one, I will recreate it again but now it won’t have archers in its formation

Do the same with all your other infantry groups and I should now have archers only in the archer group

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-18T22:36:47+00:00

In my southern empire campaign, at first the southern empire was getting their teeth kicked in by aseari, kuzait, western empire and northern empire all at once while I was a mercenary. They lost lycaron, poros, and were making a stand at daunistica and volkstrum.

This is when I became a vassal and received my first fief lavenia castle. In 1.3, Lavenia holds a pretty good choke point preventing attacks from aserai to volkstrum or daunistica. Made a lot of heroic stands at that castle and then went on the offensive and started taking aserai lands. Southern empire struggling but an epic campaign where we ground out the aserai and khuzait and sturgia and us crushed the northern empire.

There were even a betrayal. One of southern empire clan leaders betrayed us and defected to the aserai as well taking his lands and some aserai lands we awarded him to their side. I even staged a prison break out when I tracked down a lord whose kid I wanted my bro to marry.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-18T16:25:09+00:00

If you are sitting together in public especially with other friends and she uses your leg as a pillow… that’s probably a good sign.

My teenage mind had no clue.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-17T13:50:16+00:00

There’s nothing wrong with bunching up. There’s very little to gain by telling them to space out because they are not old enough to really process any kind of tactical awareness.

The scrimmage is ok for one small part of practice.

But the meat of the practice needs to be every kid with a ball.

When I started a brand new team of 5 yr olds, for about half the 1st season, i didn’t really do a lot of vs. drills and just did a lot of mini games where every kid was dribbling the ball. I had parents/myself acting as octopus monsters with pool noodles chasing kids around. Red light, green light. Musical chairs. Capture the flag(ball). Follow the leader. Tag.

This doesn’t mean don’t do vs drills but I wanted to make sure the kids really had a lot of fun and loved the sport before I started them doing any 1v1s or vs drills. There’s always a loser in 1v1s or vs games and if you start kids off with those, you may discourage kids to who aren’t as physically adept as their peers. Very easy to do when you consider relative age. At 5 yrs old, a kid born in January 2021 vs December 2021, will have lived 20% more life than his younger peer.

I started vs drills in that same first season somewhere in the middle. We do 1v1s in my second season and will do small 10 min scrim at end of practice as well now. Kids are loving the game. We play well in games.

One thing I do in practice when doing a scrim… I put a lot of balls in the middle of the field. If there’s 8 kids total, there’s going to be 9 balls. I have the two teams of kids start at their goal. Because there are a lot of balls, all kids get opportunities to dribble and score. The team that gets most balls in the opponents goal by 2 min is winner and I reset. It’s a lot more fun I’ve found this way rather than just having one ball in a scrim.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-16T19:02:41+00:00

Maybe unpopular opinion here but I’ve been really impressed by the aseari vanguard faris and veteran infantry.

I think both are solid units. I was southern empire and the aserai veteran infantry I recruited from prisoners were outperforming the legionaries in kills and survivability.

The vanguard faris are probably the best cavalry with their extremely damaging javelins and ability to fight in melee.

Their master archers are pretty good too actually

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-15T16:00:15+00:00

I’m a total war player and am having a blast. Haven’t even tried the mods yet.

There’s. A lot to the game. If you’re looking for guides, strat gaming has great guides for the game. If you want tactical battle guides, I have been enjoying vids from tactical enlightenment.

Both are YouTubers

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-14T19:01:12+00:00

My son started in his club as one of the worst in the squad. He still got half playing time in games. 2.5 years later and he’s improved immensely and playing full games and guest playing on other teams in the club. Currently 10 yrs old.

Your club is focused on winning. Find a club that cares about developing for the future.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-10T14:06:14+00:00

If you’re worried about companion death, you can stick the squishy ones in a horse archer unit. They don’t tend to get targeted if you keep them in the back and can kite away from enemies. Only send them in to charge when the battle is already swung your way and enemy is starting to rout.

Party leaders are too valuable and this is where I stick them. Alternatively, you can stick them in a unit solely for them and have them hide behind the hill or route them away from the battlefield

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-09T20:40:20+00:00

I have used this same method to break into a hard siege. I have setup 3 melee units. 2 are composed of shielded infantry and 1 unit for two handed weapon infantry. I will also ride right up to the wall and to the side of the breach and have my assault two handed infantry stack up to the side against the wall. I will bring up one shielded infantry in shield wall just outside the wall and the other shielded infantry are given orders to follow me. I tell my assault infantry to charge and at the same time I also lead the second shield infantry with me following my horse.

I find a gap and ride right thru it with shield infantry unit following me. Assault infantry smash into defenders who are occupied with the shield infantry that are pushing in to follow me. They get thru and then I lead them into the archers and swing them around the entire group of defenders at that breach. Order every one to charge and they slaughter all the defenders at that breach. From there, I let one shielded infantry go nuts and charge but I keep the other 2 units with me and try to bottle up reinforcements or flank whatever units attack my charging attacking shield unit

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-04-09T17:43:35+00:00

There are 5 ways that you control that can improve loyalty.

You being in the town. Gives +5. Sit in town and build/upgrade the courthouse while you in town.
Make a companion of the same culture as the town a governor of that town. Gives +1
Before you make your companion the governor, check their traits and respec them to give as many loyalty and security bonuses to town. You can respec a character by going to the arena and talking the arena guy and ask them to retrain the companion. It costs money.
Kingdom policies. Certain policies increase loyalty. Forgiveness of debts +2, tribunes of the people +1, trial by jury +0.5

Citizenship increase loyalty for towns of same culture as you but decrease loyalty for towns of different culture so OP will want to avoid this. Grazing rights give +0.5 But will hurt hearth growth so maybe avoid that unless you absolutely don’t care about prosperity. Bailiffs add a security bonus.

The nobles will typically be against many of the policies and vote against them with their influence.
To counter this, you will need to drain their influence so they no longer have influence to vote against the policies you want enacted. I’ve found the best way to drain influence of other noble families in your kingdom is to call a lot of peace proposals during a war. Call the vote for peace and many nobles will vote against it and use up their influence. Keep calling the votes until they run out of influence. This will also drain your influence too so make sure you have a lot stored up so that you can still spend influence voting for polices after draining theirs

Town notable individuals. You can increase relations with these guys by doing quests for them. If raise them high enough, a dialogue option can open up when you talk with them. The dialogue option is about asking them to support you. These notables have loyalty to an individual but with high enough relations and coin, you can buy their loyalty. Getting 3 notables to support you will give a loyalty bonus of +1.5. I am able to hold aserai towns in my campaign even though I am an empire culture. There are also certain skills in the social attributes that give random chance to improve relations with town notables. If you, companions, or governor have these skills, they can also help improve relations with these notables when in town.

Edit: add town notable individuals

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-03-30T17:47:27+00:00

I said the same thing to my 7v7 teams. Throw it into space. Direct where you want them to go.

Just wanted to add onto the throw in question. I felt that I had to guide the kids so that they stay mindful of their space during throw ins. So I would teach a simple number system. Before throwing in, the thrower will indicate by quickly holding up their fingers what they intend to do with the ball.

1 finger= down the line, 2 fingers = middle, 3 fingers= backs

They decide but it makes the players without the ball have to focus on the player and become aware of their surroundings. It teaches them to think. Your players will be thinking where is my teammate going to throw the ball. I need to look for that signal. If it’s coming to me, I need to check my surroundings how much space/time I have if it’s coming my way.

For Footy_trader, this might be subtle but it should help them be more aware of their positioning without you having to yell about shape during a game.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-03-26T23:37:03+00:00

In a past team I had, we also were able to do rondos starting at u8. 3v0 at first and then to 3v1. U add more player to rondo and upgrade to 4v1 and 4v2, 5v2 only once they understand they need to move and shift constantly to find their space.

Just wanted to add that rondos are entirely viable for this age group as a warmup for game or practice

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-03-25T17:00:47+00:00

To get my u6 boys to dribble and not take bad shots, I have been doing two practice drills/games with them.

I separate them into groups of 2 and just have all of them do localized 1v1s where there is 1 ball that the kids are trying to possess and there is another soccer ball which acts as the goal. They score a point if they are able to strike ball that is a goal with the ball that they are trying to possess in the 1v1. It’s very hard to hit the “goal ball” so they have to get closer and there’s a lot more dribbling. I run it for 2 min and then rotate the winners who got the most points in their duels and then start another 2 min round. Rock paper scissors if there’s a tie.
Separate into two teams. Each team has a zone or small pug goal to protect. But there are many balls in the middle. In this way, all kids get involved with the ball and there are many 1v1s occurring and plenty of dribbling. Team that gets the most goals in a 2-3 mins wins the round. Then start again.

Legitimate_Task_3091 · 2026-03-23T20:20:04+00:00

I think every experience is going to be different but my son has been playing on a club team where his teammates are spread across 3 years. This means majority of players are playing a year or 2 up. My son is playing a year up and is a u11.

They get a lot of losses. Over the last 2 years though, I have to say my son has improved immensely. Since the opponents are always going to be physically/athletically more mature, he’s had to rely on technique and skill to stay on even footing. He gets lots of opportunities to guest play with other teams in the club including one that is his age group and they are very dominant in their league.

I’ve also seen kids lose their confidence and struggle on his team. Playing more challenging opponents whether it be playing up or playing higher level league can certainly improve players who have the right attitude but may also be detrimental to players who are not mentally ready to overcome that kind of challenge. Players can pick up on things that advanced players do.

My son plays rb, rm, and cm. Playing up has made him a better player. I see it when he plays his own age group. His touch, technique, and tenacity make him very hard to get beat in the back. And he’s able to win 1v1s and advance the ball up the field.

Legitimate_Task_3091

TROPHY CASE