There are many differences between youth football players and college, professional, and high school players. To say that the difference is night and day would not do justice to how different they are. It would be like the differences in beauty between Miss America and the 1,000-pound bearded lady at the State Fair.

College, professional and even high school players practice 6 days a week and play their games on the 7th day. Most of these guys practice 20-30 hours each week, youth soccer teams practice 4-8 hours each week. Professional, college and high school gamers have been playing the game for 7-25 years, they know the basics, they know the game. Youth soccer players have 1-2 years of experience and many youth teams are made up of a majority of kids who have never played before. Most youth soccer players don’t know the difference between a technique 3 and a foot peg. Professional, college, and high school kids are between the ages of 16 and 35, can move faster, control their bodies better, and retain and process much more information than young soccer players. Professional, college and high school teams weed out the weak players, they are the best of the best. The pro and college teams cut every day the kids who were the best players on their respective youth and high school teams. Even high schools drop weaker players, they also send weaker kids to JV or Reserve teams.

Professional, college, and even some high school players are being taught by coaches who coach for a living. Most spend 50-70 hours a week learning their trade and have 10-15 years of gaming experience. This compares to the amount of experience and time a youth coach can spend developing as a coach, which for most doesn’t even allow the time to go to a single weekend coaching clinic or purchase a single training book or DVD. . The difference in the experience levels of the coaches is huge, but will a youth coach with no experience in blocking complex zones teach it to others?

Simply put, pro, college, and even most high school teams are made up of great players athletically compared to your typical youth football player who will never play high school football let alone even sniff college or professional football. Youth teams are made up of a very limited number of players, you can’t send kids to JV, Reserve, or Frosh teams, and you can’t drop them. In fact, you’re going to play them, some will probably even start on your offensive line. While I’ve been blessed with talent on some of my teams, others had offensive lines that resembled characters from the “Land of the Misfit Toys.”

By the time kids get to high school, most of the really weak players have already stopped playing, realizing that soccer isn’t their game. But today on their youth soccer team, these kids are still playing, still trying to figure out how to play and if this is their game. At the youth level in most leagues, everyone has to play a little bit and most of the time you’re going to have some unathletic players playing offensive line. That of playing, not being cut or lowered to another team.

Professional, college, and high school teams are not required to play all of their kids, most youth teams require you to play everyone for at least a handful of snaps. Are these less athletic kids playing a position that has a big impact on every play (offensive line) and are they going to zone block? Okay, that’s great if I’m the other team’s defensive coordinator, but terrible if I’m the running back or the father of the poor running back on the zone blocking team.

This is how perfectly good youth football players get sour about the game and quit and become part of the 70% of youth players who never play a little football in high school. It’s a real shame and it’s the main reason I wrote the book, did all the clinics and developed the DVDs. Too many good kids are kept from playing soccer by poor coaches and terrible schemes, it’s no wonder so many high school and youth soccer programs have love/hate relationships.

On the technical side, the cornerstone of zone schemes is the “combo” block, where the offensive lineman gets an initial push on a defensive lineman, then comes off the block once a good move has been made, then blocks to a linebacker. This locked mind is locked based on the type of defensive front offensive linemen see and can recognize, which often involves line calls. This would be a lot to ask of a 9-year-old youth player who might play his first game. Most kids that age still have a hard time figuring out how to hard block a player within 1 foot of them and make sure they remember to block on offense and tackle on defense.

Most high school teams can’t even zone lock down well with Spring Football, year round football practices, great offensive line coaches and practice 6 days a week. And are you going to do it successfully with the youth players? With team sizes of 24-25 for many teams, their worst athletes are playing offensive line. So you’ll ask this weaker player to recognize the front correctly, make the correct line call, make an effective double-team screen, get movement on a double-team screen, spy on the linebacker at the same time, and then know when backing out. on cue and block the fast, strong running linebacker “in space” on the same play?

So one of your less athletic sons is going to spy and track and block the fastest, most athletic player on other teams (linebacker) in open space after taking on other linemen? Wow, that will be quite an accomplishment similar to building an atomic bomb out of some leftover juice cans and some old mothballs, good luck pulling it off. If you can teach that at the youth level, you have a select football team, you should be playing in the National Championship game, and as a coach, you should be coaching the O-Line in the NFL. Zone blocking requires GREAT training, lots of time, great athletic linemen, and experienced, smart soccer players who can recognize fronts and have impeccable timing, none of which are in abundance in youth soccer.

Simple rule blocking using overwhelming numbers and angles in a limited space is what works within the constraints of youth soccer and is what we teach in the book and DVDs. Zone blocking will fail and frustrate kids and coaches. It didn’t surprise me that this zone blocking suggestion came from one of those one dimensional youth coaches who always fail and use such failed and useless tactics like “attack the middle”. He probably uses the famous line “Hit somebody” and kills kids at soccer practice, then wonders why his teams can’t win any games.

No doubt, when this team of guys loses, he’s the one who blames it on a lack of talent (every year) or “the kids just didn’t like it enough.” Geez, I’ve had enough of these types of guys, they ruin so many kids and teams. Unfortunately, we see way too many coaches like that in our game and it’s one of the biggest reasons why over 70% of youth football players will never play high school football, it’s a shame to see.

When coaching youth soccer, it’s your job to choose a scheme that works with the talent levels, athleticism, maturity, practice time, and coaching capacity you have available. Playing in a youth soccer team trying to zone block would be like shooting a fish in a barrel, the poor running backs, the horror, the horror.

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