Some youth soccer coaches fear that by pulling their linemen, they will leave large gaps on their offensive line that defenders can easily fill and cause negative yardage soccer plays. At first glance, that argument may have merit, but when you look at the details, it just doesn’t have it if you use some very simple techniques. 3 yards, throwing would drive huge gaps in your line. However, on my offense, our linemen are standing by foot. There are no splits and with shoulder height stances and the space left by a youth soccer lineman shooting is 1 yard or less.

Defenders don’t know the snapshot count, so any offensive lineman has an advantage over defense in terms of having an advantage in the center. We also have all of our offensive linemen with the exception of the center, outside the line of scrimmage. This allows them to shoot much more easily and our other offensive lineman easily cut off any penetration from any defender by taking a simple step inside, something we represent every day in soccer practice with our linemen. Since our backs also know the count and defenders don’t, our backs are generally gone by the time a lightning defender enters our backfield. In fact, despite playing against every garbage-yard and standard defenses known to man in the past 6 seasons, our first-team offense has had only one negative-yard play.

Even if there is a defender right above your shooting linemen, a very simple blocking rule like GOD; the inside space, lit, down will put another offensive lineman on top of the defender covering his shooting player. If a defense decides to cover everyone on their offensive line or go to a GAM-type defense, then don’t shoot. There wouldn’t be a defender to block if your shooter got to the point of attack with those defenses anyway. If a defense bombs a linebacker, most of the time they are on or close enough to the line of scrimmage to be blocked by rule or legally cut or crabbed. If the blitzer is coming from somewhere outside the line of scrimmage, there is no way it will be fast enough to make the play, unless it is a Lawrence Taylor clone. We love it when our opponents play those kinds of defenses, we don’t have to bother shooting, we’ll still have a double team at the point of attack and block the unlocked defensive lineman with an ejection block from one of our backs.

If you have an extremely slow, unattitudeous lineman who has trouble covering linemen’s pulling gaps, ask them to do a simple but effective crab block. See the posts on crab blocking for more details about it here in the tips section. Gaps left by shooting linemen are not a problem in youth soccer if your team uses the above techniques.

150 Free Youth Soccer Coaching Tips Here: Youth Soccer