12/23/2025
Episode Three – Car Lanes
(from Coaching Youth Soccer Without Losing Your Mind )
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Lanes, like the Mexican flag, help with positioning and space. It’s a map the kids use to visualize the field and how play occurs.
I teach that, just like traffic, you can change lanes, but only one at a time. Swerving wildly across the highway is dangerous. The same principle applies to soccer.
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Why Lanes Work
• The ball should move across the field with safe, controlled switches, not wild cross-field kicks.
(I can’t be the only one who thinks shouts of “SWITCH THE FIELD!” for U8 players are silly.)
• Staying in lanes prevents bunching, one of the biggest problems in youth soccer. I’ll shout,
“Scan the field, are you in the correct lane?”
as a reset tool during play and with nearly every goal-kick restart.
• Defenses “funnel” attackers from the middle lane to the outside, where danger is lower.
(We’ll talk funnel in the defense section.)
• A winger who dribbles across the face of defenders from outside to inside can cause chaos, and that is exactly what we want when attacking.
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Wraps and Swaps: The Beauty and Flow of Soccer
(As opposed to invisible force fields)
This is where lanes become powerful.
I encourage my players to wrap and swap positions. Why? Because soccer is not baseball. You do not just stand in the same spot all game. Soccer should flow like basketball.
There are areas, but those areas shift based on circumstances.
Think of it like this: in basketball, if a guard drives through the middle, the whole defense has to react. Everyone rotates. Everyone adjusts.
Soccer works the same way.
When kids understand wraps and swaps, it will feel like you have extra players on the field.
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The teams locked into “stand here” coaching look frozen, like invisible force fields are holding their players in place. Meanwhile, your team looks alive, flexible, and unpredictable.
Even in middle school games, every weekend I see teams steal a ball and have an absolute breakaway, only to dribble a few steps and pass the ball away for no reason other than they feel like they’re getting out of position.
If there is nothing but green grass in front of you, take it.
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The Rules of Flow
That said, there are rules:
• One lane at a time.
A right defender cannot sprint all the way to the far-left attacking lane. That is chaos, not flow, and it is common in youth soccer, where one kid will literally run miles thinking she is helping.
• Swaps must balance.
If one player slides into another’s lane or position, the teammate adjusts and takes that spot.
• Overloads are intentional.
Sometimes I will call for an overload, sending two or three attackers into the same lane on purpose. But that is a strategy, not random freelancing.
The point is freedom with structure.
Flow, but not chaos. Experiment, play free, and use lanes to create an advantage without leaving holes behind you.
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The Combo: Flag + Lanes
Once kids know both systems, you can give a full instruction in one sentence:
“Win it in the white zone, then switch lanes and overload the left.”
Suddenly, even 10-year-olds look like a real team.
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Stories From Practice
One of my U8 groups looked like a rugby scrum every game. The moment the ball moved, everyone crowded in.
Just watch. It’s tough to score in youth soccer because there are literally 16 shins on 8 bodies in the way when the ball gets close to the goal. It is more pinball than skill.
Once we painted the car lanes, everything changed.
One practice, we scrimmaged with a modified rule: all players had to stay in their lane.
During play, only the kids assigned to that lane could chase the ball. At first, it looked silly. But within a week, spacing clicked. They were yelling at each other, “Stay in your lane!” like Mario Kart.
Parents saw the difference immediately.
It looked like real soccer.
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And here is the bonus.
Excited parents yelling “Kick it! Kick it!” suddenly did not matter anymore. The kids knew that was a poor idea and that they had options.
They learned that kicking into space, not just blasting the ball at the nearest shin, creates good things.
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Coach Cues
• “Let’s run an overload into the right lane for one attack. If it breaks down, reset, scan, and get back to shape.”
• “Hey team, look around. How are our lanes?”
• “Great defense. Great takeaway. You’ve got time, Ricky. Run the ladder. Out of the red, through the white, into the green.”
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Why This Matters
Zones and lanes give kids a mental GPS. Instead of guessing, they know their role in every part of the field.
For new coaches, it is one of the fastest ways to look organized and bunch less.
For kids, it makes soccer fun, understandable, and most importantly, repeatable.
