The Scrimmage Isn't a Reward. It's the Best Coaching Tool You Have.
Walk around any youth soccer training session towards the end of the night and I'll tell you what you'll see.
The scrimmage is happening. Players are out there playing. And the coaches — the ones who were deeply involved in every moment of the session up until this point — have disengaged. They're talking to each other. Sitting on the bench. Watching from the side. Mentally done for the evening.
Or even worse: the scrimmage has been turned into a carrot. You worked hard tonight, so you get to play. You didn't match expectations, so the scrimmage is shorter. Which means the message players receive is that playing the game is the prize, not the point.
I think we've got this completely backwards.
We're Creating Players Who Can Train But Can't Play
Last night I ran a 7v7 for our grassroots session. During the core portion of the training, we were working on 1v1 defending. I watched this happen: a player attacked, took a shot — and immediately stopped. The defender, who had been defending hard the moment before, also just stopped. Walked behind the goal. Started mentally preparing to take their turn as the attacker.
Nobody told them to do that. Nobody blew a whistle. They stopped because that's what training has taught them to do. The ball leaves play, the coach calls the next pair, you wait your turn. That's the rhythm of a drill-based session. Everything is cued by cones and whistles and rotations.
Then we say: go out there and play a game.
And coaches wonder why the players look blank. Why they don't react. Why they stand around waiting for something to happen. They've been trained to wait. We've taken the game out of practice and we're surprised it doesn't show up on game day.
I've run ODP tryouts where coaches asked whether we should change the format because the players looked bored. All we were doing was playing 7v7. The players weren't bored with playing — they genuinely didn't know what to do with the open nature of it.
Your Players Don't Play Enough
Here's the reality. A typical youth player gets one or two games at the weekend, usually during a 12-week league cycle. Maybe some tournaments mixed in where they cram a lot of games into a short window. Outside of that? If training doesn't include meaningful game time, they're just not getting it.
That's why I started taking pickup soccer to schools in San Francisco. Take the game to where the players already are, without the structure, without the stigma of what a training session is supposed to look like. Get them playing. Because they're not getting enough of it anywhere else.
And if your training session ends with a throw-it-out scrimmage while you chat with the assistant coach, you're not solving that problem. You're contributing to it.
What the Scrimmage Should Actually Look Like
If I've spent the session working on defending the goal in a 1v1, the scrimmage at the end should connect directly to that. I might set it up as two defenders against two attackers — a two-and-a-two — central goal, both directions. The players are in the same positions they just worked in, dealing with the same demands, but now it's live. No cones dictating movement. No coach calling the next rep. The game is asking the questions.
If I've got enough players to run a full 7v7, we play a 7v7 in the formation we use at the weekend. I set it up, I tell them how we're lining up, and then we play. The goalkeeper builds out because at the weekend, the referee doesn't say "just play from the back, it's fine, don't worry." The kickoff happens after every goal because that's how the game works.
I know that sounds basic. It is basic. But walk out to your next session and count how many of those game realities get skipped in the scrimmage phase. No corners — we just keep going. No build-out line — don't worry about it. Throw-ins — just toss it in anywhere, doesn't matter how. And every time we skip one of those things, we're making the scrimmage a little less like the game. And our players a little less ready for it.
One of the moments that stuck with me most was watching coaches during a 6v6 session we ran recently. One team had seven including the goalkeeper, the other had six with a pug goal to defend. First half, coaches called no corners and no throw-in rules. I understood the instinct — keep the flow going, not much field space. But by removing those things, they'd turned the scrimmage into another coaching activity. The game has corners. The game has throw-ins. If your players don't have enough experience with them in training, you'll get to the weekend, lose possession off a foul throw, and then spend 20 minutes on throw-ins the following week. Which you'll do once, and then not again.
Practice them in the scrimmage. Use what you have.
You're Practicing Coaching in the Game Too
Here's something coaches rarely think about: the scrimmage is also where you practice your job.
You get to coach in a real game once or twice a week during the season. Tournaments are about results — that's not the place to try things. The league game at the weekend is where you apply what you've worked on. And if you spend the scrimmage phase of training disengaged, you've cut your opportunities in half.
If you train three times a week with a proper game phase in every session, plus two games at the weekend, you've got five opportunities each week to practice coaching in the game. You learn your team's shape. You see how the two center backs communicate. You find out how the team transitions after a goal. You learn to challenge a player individually without stopping play — pulling them to the side for a question while the game continues, then sending them back in.
I told my previous club: Thursday is game day. Every single Thursday, all we do is play. No core session, no drills, no patterns. We just play. The players get game experience. I get to coach in the game. We all get better at the thing the weekend is actually going to test us on.
Keeping Every Player in the Game
One more thing — what about the players who seem switched off during the scrimmage? The ones doing cartwheels when the ball goes out, leaning against the post, not really engaged? I hear coaches say they don't let those players drag the scrimmage down. That's the wrong instinct.
Don't reduce scrimmage time because of two or three disengaged kids. That punishes the rest of the team. Instead, give those players individual tasks. Can you touch the ball four times this quarter? Can you intercept once before we call time? Can you take three throw-ins in this half? You're not lowering expectations — you're giving them a specific purpose, something achievable that pulls them into the game.
The Ollie Watkins approach. When he was in the lower leagues of English football, he was given individual tasks that got him involved rather than waiting on the wing for something to happen. It works with your players too.
And then manage the parents. Because if a parent is watching their kid stand in goal, seemingly not doing much, they're going to have questions. Get ahead of it. Explain what you're doing and why. The environment looks messy. Players fall over and laugh. There's noise and chatter and moments that don't look like "serious" coaching. That's the point. That's what game experience looks like.
At Least Half Your Session
If I coach for 90 minutes, I want at least 40 of them to be scrimmage. Not scrimmage as a reward. Scrimmage as structured game time that connects directly to the topic of the session, mirrors the formation we play at the weekend, and is played with real game rules.
Your players need to play the game. You need to coach inside it. The scrimmage gives you both at the same time.
Stop treating it like a filler. Start treating it like the point.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 72 — Play 2: Scrimmages & Games
@LeeDunneSoccer