What Should the Kids Be Learning at Soccer Practice?

(It's rained all weekend and all the games were canceled. I guess I'll wax philosophical.) Many times I've asked myself, "What should the kids be learning at soccer practice?" Of course, there are the big picture things like sportsmanship, teamwork, always trying your best. But if you get down to the details of playing soccer, what should they really work on in the short time we have them for practice?

I see it breaking down into two categories. 1) Individual skills 2) Team tactics

Individual skills: If you read the documents published by the higher ups in US Soccer, they are pretty unified in saying that we should be coaching skills, skills, skills. There are many sound arguments; the most convincing is that a child's brain just doesn't develop the ability to really understand teamwork for several years. Even after that, you don't find a lot of articles emphasizing tactics. Now I have always emphasized skills myself (following their advice). I even had another reason; I think kids should learn to be confident with the ball at their feet while the defenders are really pretty bad and the social consequences of errors are almost zero. As the kids get older, the defenders start getting much better and the teammates can really start to exert some peer pressure. These things are enough to keep me focused on skills while they're young. However, I have a concern.

Team tactics: I was watching a men's college soccer game the other day. These guys all had good skills, but their team tactics were terrible. All they did was launch the ball from one end of the field to the other and hope to get a lucky shot on goal. There didn't seem to be any effort at all to move the ball through the midfield and try to maintain possession. Now this could be because the referees seemed to allow just about anything. I think some of the tackles were more dangerous than the ones you see in American football. I'm not sure I'd want to try and hold the ball in the midfield under that kind of assault either. However, I'm wondering if maybe this is also a result of coach's never teaching proper tactics, but instead just telling the backs to kick it forward and let the forwards chase it down and score with their individual skills since this resulted in winning the games. Hopefully the small-sided / small field games we're playing now will help.

Teaching tactics is tricky. I can hardly claim to be an expert, but I've learned enough to know better than to try and teach tactics by assigning positions. If you make them worried about where they are on the field above all else, you'll end up with a disaster. I won't go into details right now, but my experience so far is to teach dynamic responsibilities like those of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd defenders (pressure, cover, balance) and the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd attackers (we call it getting on the V's). Any kid could end up in any position at any time. We sometimes end up with all of our players in the other team's penalty box, but you know what, I'd rather have that than players worried more about staying back than getting into the game.

I know skills are #1 at the young ages, but some direction from the top on dynamic tactics instead of positions would be nice as well.