"Quicker" Isn't a Coaching Point
Quick, quick, quick, quick. Go, go, go. We need to play faster.
I hear it every weekend. At ODP sessions, at club games, at parks where parents are coaching from the sideline. Coaches and parents absolutely convinced that the answer is to play quicker. And they're not wrong — speed of play matters enormously in soccer. But the way it's being asked for, and the way players are interpreting it, is causing more problems than it's solving.
Here's what happens when you yell quicker: your players get the ball and go. Head down, direct, get it forward as fast as possible. And then they lose it, or they misplace the pass, or they take the touch that puts them under pressure instead of out of it. And you yell quicker again.
Because that's not speed of play. That's rushing. And rushing only makes it worse.
Speed of Play Is a Decision, Not a Speed
Here's the thing that reframes this for me: speed of play is a key quality. And if you look at what US Soccer actually says about key qualities, it comes back to reading the game and making decisions. Not just going faster.
Watch a Pep Guardiola team. Watch what happens when his goalkeeper gets the ball and a center back steps on it and stops play completely. Every youth coach on the planet would lose their mind. But that pause — two, three seconds — allows every player ahead of the ball to reorganize. To dismark. To interchange. By the time the ball moves, the team has completely reset its shape, and they're now in a better position than if they'd just played it quickly off the back line and hoped for the best.
Speed of play can mean slow it down.
Now, I know U14 players probably can't do that. Yet. But the understanding underneath it — that quick doesn't always mean fast, and that sometimes controlling the tempo is the most intelligent thing you can do — that's what we're trying to develop.
Quick vs. Rushed
Let me separate those two things, because they get confused all the time.
Quick is a good first touch and an immediate intention. I know what I'm going to do before the ball arrives. I've already read my options. When the ball comes, I play it — fast, clean, in the right direction.
Rushed is panic. The ball comes and I haven't read anything yet. So I just kick it, or I spin without knowing where I'm going, or I force the long ball because it feels like something is happening.
Rushing comes from uncertainty. Players who don't know where they're supposed to be, what the options are, or what the word "quicker" is actually asking them to do. We haven't taught them. We've just yelled faster.
Teach It Through Set Pieces
One of my favourite ways to introduce quick play — especially with younger or less experienced players — is through set pieces. Specifically, those cheeky moments where the opponent isn't ready.
The referee has given us a free kick. Two or three of their players are still arguing about the call. The rest of their team is wandering. My player knows: tap and play. We go. Now the opponent has to scramble.
I don't shout anything from the sideline. Not "they're not ready!" Not "go, go, go!" That just tells the other team to get set. My players have to read it themselves. They have to learn to see the moment and make the decision.
One or two players pick this up naturally. Those are the ones who take the quick free kicks. Over time, more players start to develop that read. That's the goal — not players who go fast because I told them to, but players who know when it's time to go fast and when it isn't.
The 4v4 Four-Goal Game
For developing quick play in a training environment, I keep coming back to the four-goal game. Each team has two goals to attack — placed wide on each side of the playing area. The game forces players to shift the ball quickly, because if the whole defense crowds over to protect one goal, the other side is wide open.
Your player wins the ball, sees three defenders shifted left, makes a quick decision, and plays it right. That's speed of play. That's reading the game and acting on what you see.
To reinforce it: if you can score within a set time frame of winning the ball, it's worth two goals. Quick transition, well-executed, earns a bonus. Not the only way to score — just like in a real game — but a really nice incentive for your players to be looking for that moment.
And here's the piece I love about this: when you connect it back to the game on the weekend, you can say to your players and their families — "we scored that from the other side of the field six times today. That would have been twelve bonus goals." The actual score of the game doesn't define whether you played well. Whether you applied what you worked on — that's the measure.
My key word for this is break. "We're going to break from here." When our players hear that word, they know: space in front, opponent out of position, get forward now. We train it, they recognize it in the game. The coach doesn't need to shout it — they've already gone.
That's what speed of play actually looks like.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 85 — What is Speed of Play Anyway?
@LeeDunneSoccer