It was brought to my attention the other day that one of the scores recorded in this year’s President’s Cup was 19 (nineteen) to 0 (zero). This being despite the tournament point system that awarded maximum points to a result of 4-0. Scoring more goals than four is thus deemed relatively worthless.

It doesn’t matter whether you coach a premier, a classic, or recreational team: running the score up to double figures is counter productive to both teams involved. The winning team gets sloppy as it requires little effort to score and the team on the losing end gets demoralized. Why would players ever want to play the ‘beautiful’ game again? It defeats the purpose; the game is no longer fun under these circumstances!

It was suggested to me by a veteran recreational soccer coach recently that a rule change is possibly necessary: something like, if a team has a goal differential of six, then it takes a player off the field. Each additional goal scored, increasing the winning goal differential produces a further reduction in the leading team’s personnel by one. This is not a bad idea but I believe it is up to the individual coach to assess the situation and react accordingly. This is certainly a question that I will raise at recreational coaching clinics in 1999: what would you do as a coach if your team were winning 5-0 with 30 minutes to play? In this area, judging from results and reports, we as coach educators need to do a better job in addressing this. It would, however, be interesting to poll the coaches that do run the scores up to see whether they i) have ever attended a coaching clinic, or ii) have ever read Goal Lines. I myself have, in different winning situations as coach, asked players to work on a deficient part of their game or pulled a couple of players off in order to challenge other individuals on the team.

When formerly coaching a premier team, if my team led by 4 or 5 goals, I always knew it was time to take the starters off and even restrict players to scoring with their left foot or with a header! Taking that thought process a step further, it is always a good idea to practice (within the game conditions) what you did in your previous training session. For example, a few years ago when my premier boys U18 team were playing in a tournament, we were coasting at 4-0 when I restricted my team to scoring with a header from a ball crossed from a wide position. The previous practice we had worked on penetrating wing play and crossing due to a deficiency in these areas in a prior game. My players, as a team continued the game working on overlaps and wall passes in the attacking third in order to create space and delivering quality crosses. I think we maybe scored another goal before the end, but my team wasn’t that good in that area which is why I wanted them to practice it! The point being that this forced the players to concentrate on and practice a weaker part of their game under match conditions. This is called player development.

In addition, taking off two free-scoring strikers in a game will challenge all players to work a little harder, the midfielders to create scoring chances and the defenders may even have to defend heaven forbid, rather than stand around with the goalkeeper doing nothing! Also, if a team racks up a basketball score on the field the losing players get increasingly frustrated and in these situations, injuries to the winning team tend to increase! Funny that…

The message that both coaches and players must accept, is that continuing to score until you hit double figures is not ‘for the good of the game.’ Fair play and sportsmanship must preside and players should be challenged at the correct level of ability, otherwise kids will continue to drop out of the game of soccer. We as coaches should want everybody to play the beautiful game as long as possible.