Soccer Practice Games

I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in coaching high school soccer. The art of communicating to the team is what coaching truly is. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Even then they have to deal with many issues in coaching young players. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.

These have been described one by one.

Coaches generally allow their emotions to become involved while watching their kids play. They forget that they have the duty to observe the players analytically rather than merely watching them play. They fail to notice the important points that could better their team’s performance. Here, they miss out on the important part of having a professional conversation aimed at getting a win.

Even though the coaches are well versed with the technicalities of the game, they are not trained specifically on communication. For example; in soccer coaching, many coaches are not aware of the utility of a flip chart or a video. It’s important for the coach to know the game well but if he is unable to communicate his thoughts, the training gets repetitive.

Coaching Youth Soccer

It is even more important in case of coaching high school soccer because the players are not new to the game. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

You’ll be amazed to know that coaches tend to forget sometimes that it is people who carry out the trainings. They tend to get carried away in the process of coaching and training. When a coach tries to instruct something to the play but does not use that player’s name, it creates confusion and is an apt example of bad communication.

There are certain guiding principles in football coaching which are as follows:

• Every message from the coach is equally important. So it’s necessary that they are deduced correctly.

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Challenge them to be better rather than punishing them for being poor.

• Spend equal time with all players. Research in this filed shows that coaches tend to spend comparatively more time with the best players (up to seven times more!).

• Communicate the potential issues that could arise and have a solution ready.

• Reinforce the player’s self esteem by balancing praise with criticism. Tilt the balance a little more towards praise with respect to coaching high school soccer.

Accept as true. Application of these simple strategies to your training programs will have far reaching results for your team.

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Andre Botelho is a recognized expert in youth soccer coaching. He influences well over 35,000 youth coaches each year with his unique coaching philosophy, and makes it really easy to explode your players’ skills and make training more fun in record time. To download your free youth soccer coaching guide visit: Coaching high school soccer.

When it comes to coaching high school soccer, of all the things that influence a player’s performance on field is the conduct and attitude of the coach. The coach can build a mentally tough team only when he has devised a plan that supports a positive attitude aimed at winning.

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 coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is about meeting challenges with positive self control. Therefore, the coach must be the starting point in both practice and competition.

The coach will find that a disciplined post-match routine is helpful in ensuring that he or she does not get either too high or too low. A successful coach will use ideas, stories, and metaphors, videos, and so on to shape the collective mindset of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in performance.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach who wants a mentally tough team must demonstrate a controlled way to deal with emotional setbacks despite personal feelings.

When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.

In coaching high school soccer, handling mistakes and failure is another important area of responsibility for the coach. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. A coach has got only two choices.

One is to use failure as an opportunity to give the players feedback on how to improve. Convince them to recommit themselves to the endeavor with renewed enthusiasm.

Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. This poignant 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. They should be encouraged to talk about what they could have done better.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. The coach can discuss the situation by asking the players their reaction rather than giving them a definition of the situation. In order to explain, we can take the instance “How do you feel you played?” or “Why do you feel you behaved that way?”

This way the players must think through and account for his or her reactions which are a vital part of the learning process.

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

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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.