Not running up the score is not only good sportsmanship, it's smart coaching. My experience is that if you run up the score and it seems easy to your players, then watch out for a let down the next week, because your players will get cocky, lazy and not hustle. I found it best to win, but keep it close. There are several ways to do this:

-- Moving the Fullbacks and Midfielders up to Forward, and Forwards back to defend or to the Midfield, is probably the best approach

--The 2nd best approach is to "play short" by taking one or 2 players off the field. This is good because it will force your players to work even harder and to hustle even more.

When we got 4 goals ahead, what I did was to first move my players around, and if that didn't even it up, I would take one off and then a second.

Putting constraints on your players such as that they must make 5 passes before shooting is artificial and is contrary to the hustling, score-if-you-can attitude you want to encourage, and I think it can possibly be confusing to players and cause them to pass when they should shoot. I think it's better to use an approach that still encourages them to play hard and do their bes

David SoccerHelp

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