Saturday the kids faced the remnants of my old team which is now coached by a hyper competitive angry man, who is blatantly juicing but refuses to buy clothes that will fit his new bloated physique. It makes for an entertaining sight.
The guy is bitter that HE hasn't achieved the same success with that team that my kids did when I was there. He doesn't seem to get it that it comes down to what you teach them. His son is a good solid player. His best friend's son is an awesome little left footer who needs some more objective coaching. The coach's only training is for everyone on the team to get the ball, pass it to his son or the left footer to shoot. That's it. Those are the only two who he pushes forward. Evaaar. Oh yeah, he doesn't want to have two games and two practices each week so he has also put his just turned five year old on the team. (did I mention that this is the same guy who complained about my unfair advantage with field time?)
Lil Lookout had already played his club game and his allergies were acting up so I started him in the goal with one strong and one weak defender in front of him. My two weakest players in midfield and two tall but slower kids up front. My goal was to get the other team out in front of us to make for a more entertaining game. Unfortunately, 30 seconds into the game the other coach's younger son ran straight into one of my taller girls and they both fell. No harm, no foul, they both got up but from that point on the coach screamed at the ref about the foul he missed. The ref turned to talk to him and missed calling a real foul. That set the coach off even more. It snowballed from there. The ref was making bad calls in both directions, more accurately he wasn't making any calls - but my kids keep playing unless they hear a whistle. His kids get all agitated when he yells. The ref started coming over to me and saying "I know I just missed something but what should I do next time"
Uh for starters don't admit that to anyone but me, the other guy'll eat you alive. For the rest of the game anytime someone fell he'd look at me for guidance. Not fun. At one point after I moved Lil Lookout from goal to midfield he deflectd a ball out of bounds and the ref gave him the ball to play in. LL looked at me with the big WTF? face so I told him to turn possession over to their keeper. I had my kids turn possession over 3 times trying to appease the other coach but he just got worse so I decided to just let it go.
From that point on I didn't direct my kids at all, I just subbed them in and out and told them what position to play. I decided that if the coach can't stop screaming long enough to coach his kids enough to compete with an undirected team that was his problem, not mine. I didn't say a word to a player on the field from the 15th minute on. I played with one forward and 3 mids (diamond shape) and 2 defenders for half the game. The coach got mad that Lil Lookout scored a few and yelled at his keeper. OK, LL was hitting the top corners of the net - how is a 7 year old supposed to levitate and block those? He assigned two of his players to shut LL down in midfield so LL would get the ball and wait til they closed in on him and pass to his now open teammates who would score. Then the coach lost all brainpower and put all three of his best players on LL with the sole instruction being to make sure he didn't touch the ball.
That left my other players free to dribble and pass at will. Even so, LL got mad after he was knocked down for the umpteenth time and dribbled through all three of them to score. The final score was 17-1. Every player on my team scored. Lil Lookout had 5, C -3, C, -2 and B-2 and they were limited to left foot shots, long distance shots, or assists for the second half. The club director stormed up to me and let me know that parents had complained about my team running up the score. I told him that he could direct them all to me and I'd be happy to explain what happened and even provide them with a video of what was happening on our side of the field. Not one of them approached me and he didn't say another word about it. Seriously when a bunch of 6 and 7 year olds without direction can beat your coached team, you've got bigger problems than the final score.
Of course, while the other coach was screaming and trying to file a complaint against the ref his kids and my kids were playing keepaway on the field, laughing and having a grand old time.
Idiot.