Soccer Coaching Tips

When coaching high school soccer, it is the behavior and approach of the coach that has a major impact on the performance of the players. Coaches cannot expect to have a mentally tough team unless they plan a program that emphasizes and reinforces positive winning attitude.

In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. The coach’s body language, mind-set, and expressions can shape, strengthen, or harm the player’s confidence.

In relation to coaching youth soccer, mental strength is about meeting the challenges with a positive attitude. Thus, in both practice and competition, the coach should be the starting point.

After the match, the coach should follow a disciplined routine to help him or her staying away from getting too high or too low. A competent coach will draw on ideas, narrative, and symbols, videos, and like that to shape the collective outlook of the team and ready them to be mentally strong on the playing field.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach should aim at building a mentally tough team by demonstrating his or her ability to cope with emotional setbacks in spite of personal feelings.

As a result of the coach’s total belief in the ability of the team to reach their goals regardless of the barriers, the team gets a structure to build a mind-set on the same lines.

In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important area of responsibility for the coach. One of the keys to a player’s motivation and the wish to work towards correcting mistakes is the coach’s response to failure. There are two choices available to the coach.

One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Persuade them to recommit themselves to the effort with renewed motivation.

The player’s dearth and attestation that he cannot meet the expectations can be used as an evidence of failure. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.

To make players mentally strong, one way which can be adopted is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. While soccer coaching, the coaches can help the players by questioning and listening them rather than always telling the players of their mistakes. The players can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. The coach can take part in this by always encouraging the players to self reference. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

The players should think all the way through and account for his or her version of reactions which are a fundamental part of the learning process.

So go ahead and apply these methods in coaching high school soccer that you’ve just learnt.

Hence, you must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as it information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters in abundance which will help you in being a better coach.

Andre Botelho is the author of “The Expert Youth Soccer Coaching Guide” and he’s a recognized expert in the subject of youth soccer coaching. Learn  how to explode your players’ skills and make coaching sessions fun in less than 29 days! Download your free pdf guide at: Kids Soccer Drills.

Like any other sport, in coaching high school soccer too, confidence is the prerequisite that each players need to discover and instill in him or herself to get successful. As a coach, when you declare that your players are under pressure, you are really identifying in them a lack of confidence to deal with a situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. In coaching youth soccer, use the behaviors of two parrots perched on either shoulders to demonstrate this point.

One is a positive parrot that pushes the player to accept and conquer every challenge coming his way by repeating “You can do it.” The other parrot has the tendency to de-motivate the players saying “You can’t do this.” Without a doubt, it’s the player who has to choose which parrot to take note of.

Once the players have made up their minds, teach them to become liable for their acts. The players may have to make this decision on a daily basis. Develop successful players in your team by helping them build strong inner confidence by focusing on their contribution to success or failure.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Train the players of the fact that in soccer coaching that putting the blame on something or someone else is a mark of insecurity. In fact they should be taught to see setbacks as a part of the learning curve and not let it shake their confidence.

Similarly in coaching high school soccer, the most important self-conversation for any player missing an opportunity to score is the phrase “I’ll get the next one.”
This instantly ensures that the distress of the miss has not affected the confidence for the next strike.

In a team, caliber, mental strength and judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition, hold the key for its success. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

Such a judgment needs clear messages. The spoken and unspoken messages of the player should be taken into account to ensure his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail” is a phrase often used to motivate players.

Confidence is built on experience. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. It is always felt that he or she has the knowledge, has practiced it before and knows what to do next.

Make no mistake about it. While coaching high school soccer, building confidence is worked out on an everyday basis so, the players should echo upon the certain key steps to determine what works for them.

It is advisable to subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as lot more can be determined by the newsletters, videos and articles which keep you updated about the latest developments in soccer.

Andre Botelho is known online as “The Expert Youth Soccer Coach” and his free ebooks and reports have been downloaded more than 100,000 times. Learn how to skyrocket your players’ skills and make practice sessions fun in record time. Download your free ebook at: Soccer Coaching.