10 Mistakes Soccer Coaches Make When Coaching Youth
For many youth coaches, improving the soccer skills of their players fast, motivating them the right way and making training more fun and interesting can be a really tough. But that doesn’t have to happen, especially when you know, first hand, the most common mistakes youth soccer coaches make. This article will help you avoid those mistakes by laying out the most typical youth soccer coaching
1.Over Load
In youth soccer the training load is the most important thing to be looked at. As endurance is neutral age ability, it can be developed at any time .So more focus is be on techniques and tactics or you will face an early burnout, lack of interest or quitters from soccer. In my opinion hard training for small children is worse than child labour
2: Not Making Training FUN!
If your players have fun playing and feel a sense of achievement while practicing, they will look forward to coming back. A way to keep training fun and avoid boredom is to ensure that players get adequate possession of the ball.
You can do that by simply keeping fewer players to a side and keep your fields small. This ensures that the ball is shared between fewer players and everyone stays involved. Also find ways of making your players warm up without making it sound like a military drill. Maybe you could have short dribbling sessions around the cones or make them play a light game of catch instead.
3: Not Knowing How to Keep Player’s Interest, Focus and Attention in Practice
Children who are enthusiastic during a game can become moody and restless when they have to do drills, running without ball especially if they aren’t much fun. This can lead to loss of interest and indiscipline during training sessions. The best way to keep your practice sessions interesting is to have a plan. That means you need to make your drills as fun and creative as possible and most important prior preparation for the session
Make things a little competitive as well – pitting small teams against each other in passing or dribbling drills makes the kids encourage each other and work as a team. A reward system can also do wonders in kindling interest in soccer practice. A good incentive for most children is to promise them some game time at the end of each practice session.
4: Lack of Motivation
Motivation can have a major impact on the performance of your players. You need to strike the balance so that your team players work towards a common team goal by making their individual contributions. You have to find ways to motivate them and build their self-confidence so that they actually believe they can succeed.
You should try to make your training sessions interesting and fun, set goals in advance (both short term and long term), show a positive attitude, and always be supportive. Also don’t forget to show confidence in your players, encourage them often and talk to each one individually and regularly on the ground and off the ground
5: Teaching Players at Different Skill Levels in the team
You have a mixed bag of skill sets. The first thing you need to do as a coach is watch the practice sessions carefully. It’s important to recognize the potential in each and every player and to ensure that no one feels they are better or stronger than the rest. Don’t single out the stronger players for simple coaching tasks or make an example of them.
Don’t assign the same drill to all of them with varying degrees of difficulty, as this can also cultivate a feeling of inferiority among players. Having them all work on different drills will make it clear that different players are good at different things. Make it clear to your players that they need to work together, as a team. No player is better or worse than the other – each player has his own strengths.
6: Not Building Teamwork and Playing As a Team
Have a team meeting before practice and get everyone to comment on previous activities. Before the first ever practice of the season, spend some time setting goals that can be achieved by your team. These goals must be constantly monitored and discussed by the group. For every mini goal that is accomplished, don’t forget to reward your players. It will tell them that you care about how well they are doing.
A short trip at the end of your season can be something to really look forward to. The togetherness promotes team spirit. When you go on these camping trips, it can be great if you can organize a friendly soccer match with a local team. This keeps your players busy and builds their self-confidence and friendship.
7: Not Developing Passing Skills
Passing is a fundamental skill in soccer and you must come up with a variety of drills in your training sessions to make sure every player in your team becomes expert at passing. Passing also involves the creation of space to receive the ball. Most importantly the players should able to do the technique fast, under pressure and in tight space.
The player must put himself in a position to make the pass while keeping an eye on the target. The right passing technique must be used, by approaching the ball from the right angle and the ball must then be kicked with the appropriate part of the foot.
8: Difficulty in Understanding and Teaching the Drills
Another big problem that coaches face is making drills simple so that the players understand it easily. For example, in order to make things much easier, you have to explain every drill with simple step-by-step instructions, diagrams , key points and demonstration by yourself
A good exercise is to imagine that all the kids are playing soccer for the first time, so you need to teach the drills in a way that they can understand the different procedures easily.
9: Poor Finishing Skills
Do you remember any games where everything goes right all the way up to the final shot from 15 yards into a goal with just the goalkeeper in sight? Chances are if the players haven’t been taught right, this is the point where it all comes apart. Your ace takes a shot, the goalie intercepts, by the time the attacker is able to do anything to the ball a second time, the entire team is in the box.
The important thing to be taught to your players is that the first or the second shot is not important, it is the shot that is converted into a goal that is important and till the whistle blows, your players have got to keep attacking.
10.Criticising and shouting
For improving young players Appreciation works more than criticism. Now modern sports psychology says you must avoid the words like No, MISTAKE, GOOD FOR NOTHING instead use words like AHA, YOU CAN DO BETTER etc
Solution
These 10 mistakes are pretty common among youth soccer coaches. Avoiding the mistakes will take you through the youth soccer coaching success path faster, and you will come out as a much better coach.
Deepak.C.M
Coach
Universal Soccer School
December 18th, 2009 at 1:08 pm
Thanks for these tips Deepak, they include some valuable advice.
However, I disagree with you on number 5. Artificially forcing all your players to perform the same task at the same level will lead to frustration in the better players and puts pressure on the weaker players to perform. You will effectively bring the quality down to that of the weakest player.
Rather than such a ’square pegs in round holes’ approach, sessions need to be tailored to the individual so that they are most motivated. This means including different challenges for different abilities, allowing every player to improve their skills regardless of their starting point.
There are some good examples of small-sided games with varying challenges at http://www.betterfootball.co.uk
I’d be interested to hear your thoughts?
December 18th, 2009 at 2:51 pm
Great tips, Deepak!
However, I do no completely agree with Point 5. It holds good mostly if you are running a recreational training camp. What i believe is when training players with the endeavor of them stepping into the big league in a few years, it is important to keep the players challenged.
The ability of the players to repeatedly perform physically demanding movements can be the difference between winning and losing.
But from what I hear, you are doing a great job!
Keep up the good work and look forward to more articles from you.
December 18th, 2009 at 10:52 pm
Great article. Universal have gained from your wisdom. I hope other youth coaches in Kerala read this. I completely agree that coaching kids should be about their enjoyment and the coach being positive at all times.
January 7th, 2010 at 7:15 pm
We have used your 10 coaching mistakes to our BTEC Sport students. Good work fella
Epping Forest College London UK
July 23rd, 2010 at 11:26 am
Great article Coach.This will be a eye opener for lots of coaches in India.I would like to visit your camp to learn more.
November 7th, 2010 at 12:45 pm
I think the statement in number 5 needs to be changed to something along the lines of
Not including Differentation in Lesson Plans
Diffentation is simply writing an objective for each of the groups that you well have in your session, those that will struggle, those that will excel and those that will cope.
If I am doing a 1st lesson on dribbling the objectives maybe
All: Can run with the ball.
Most: Can run with the ball close to their feet.
Some: Can run with the ball close to them using both feet.
You could possibly even add an extension for the truly gifted around introducing fients or tricks.
January 12th, 2011 at 12:21 am
thisis new knowlage me
thanku raheem vangali
January 12th, 2011 at 11:17 am
Great article Coach.This will be a eye opener for lots of coaches in India.I would like to visit your camp to learn more.plz…..
January 18th, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Very Informative article. Thanks for the share.
January 28th, 2011 at 6:12 am
Great article coach. My son plays competitive soccer here in California. Perhaps its important to applaud a player for hard work, rather than just talent, since talent is not something under a players control..but hard work and determination is. Yes its very important to make coaching fun for youth. Also there is a fine balance between correcting techniques and letting a player use his own creatitivty to come up with innovations that work best for him.
February 14th, 2011 at 3:53 pm
well sir , i respect u bt the following article was recd by me frm footy4kids.co.uk in thr newsletter many days ago. Its gud u posting ths bt u shud post d refrnce link too coz itsnt ur post
February 15th, 2011 at 9:01 pm
@chirag This article was originally published here on 18th Dec 2009. It has been republished by various other sources with our permission. If you find the article you received is the same please do let us know as we would like to know about it.
September 11th, 2011 at 6:47 pm
Deepak forgets ONE MAJOR THING TO DO ABOVE ALL OTHERS but it’s not down as the NUMBER 1
GIVE AN 8 YEAR OLD BOY A SIZE 4 FOOTBALL; let him have it to take home AND LET HIM JUST TRY ” KEEPY UPY ” against a wall.
NEXT JUST KICK BALL AGAINST A WALL, GETTING FURTHER AWAY AS YOU CAN DO IT BETTER.
NO ADULT NEEDED x 2 MONTHS. then ask the boys each week to show you what they can do. ALL BRAZILIAN CLUBS DO JUST THIS, once young boy is signed up for Academy.
NO BORING YAP/YAP/YAP Just 2 sides to play, ignore mistakes AND DON’T SHOUT they get this at HOME.
Once this is done and they still want to come training THEN ONTO EASY PEASY COACHING but gentle- THESE ARE LITTLE BOYS however they shout.
I am a dad & a grandad twice
December 21st, 2011 at 3:54 pm
Good work. How can i become a coach. Please reply me sir
May 29th, 2012 at 12:46 pm
Dear Bibin, Nice to hear tht u are interested to become football coach. If you are a graduate and national or university player then you can do a diploma course named NIS. Once u complete the Dipoloma you are eligible for Coach.
September 12th, 2012 at 4:28 pm
Hi all.
Please add any suggessions or comments.
December 4th, 2012 at 3:30 am
Regarding point 7, while its true that passing skills are very important for a complete development of player, there is a consensus emerging in the youth football community that passing should not be over-emphasised for younger aged players at the expense of developing ball control skills. The following is from a upcoming blog I intend to write: ” Just like the best time to learn a new language is young age, the best time to develop mastery over the ball (dribbling, striking, trapping, developing the weaker foot etc) is also young age. Young age is the crucial time during which a child can develop a high level of ball control, and if this period is not utilized, it becomes too late for a player to reach is full potential. The more young players are able to master ball control skills, the more they can direct their attention to tactical aspects of the game. If ball control skills are poor then the attention of the player is focused on the execution of the skills distracting him execution of the tactical aspects of the game.”