Power Question #22: What did you do off the ball?

Most of a soccer game happens when your child doesn't have the ball. Most of the conversation about it happens about the few moments when they did.

This question fixes the imbalance.

Why is this a power question?

A player has the ball for roughly 2-3 minutes of an entire game. The other 87 minutes are off-ball — moving, positioning, communicating, supporting, recovering. Off-ball play is most of the game, and it's where players separate themselves at every level.

Yet kids almost never get asked about it. Parents ask about goals. Coaches sometimes ask about pressing. Nobody asks about the steady, invisible work of being a player without the ball.

By asking, you're telling your child that off-ball matters — which is a piece of the game most players don't internalize until much later, if at all.

The question also surfaces things your child might not have realized they were doing well. A player who "made the run even though the pass didn't come" is a player developing in ways the highlight reel will never show.

What to do if you are uncomfortable asking the question

The risk is that your child says "I don't know, I wasn't really thinking about it." That's a normal first answer. The question is doing its work even when the answer is short.

Try a specific prompt to help: "Were you making runs? Talking? Defending? Staying connected to your teammates?" Three or four categories help kids find an angle.

If they shrug, accept it. Ask again next week. Slowly they'll start paying attention to themselves off the ball, because they know you're going to ask.

What you might learn

The answers can be quietly impressive:

"I kept checking my shoulder so I knew where the back forward was." "I made overlapping runs even when she didn't pass to me." "I tracked back every time we lost the ball." "I talked more than usual."

That last category — communication — is often the most underrated. A player who talks more is making everyone around them better, even when nothing in their stat line changes.

How you can probe for more if your player is interested

"Did the coach say anything about it?" — gets at whether the work was noticed.

"Is it something you usually focus on?" — turns it into pattern.

"What would the best version of that look like?" — invites them to imagine a higher standard.

A takeaway

Most of soccer is off-ball. Most of soccer's development is off-ball. "What did you do off the ball?" is the question that quietly tells your child the right part of the game matters — long before most parents even think to ask.