Coaching Soccer For Dummies

by Greg Bach

  Stop and Go: This twist on the ever-popular Red Light, Green Light game helps your players develop quick reactions and improves their balance. Give each player a soccer ball. Position yourself 50 yards away from the players, with your back to them. When you yell “Go!” the players begin dribbling toward you. When you yell “Stop!” you quickly turn around, and whichever players you catch still moving with their balls are sent back to the starting line. Continue the drill until you can see which players can successfully negotiate their way down the field without being stopped by you.

  Being creative with the older and more experienced kids is just as important. The youngsters who have been playing the sport for a few years typically embrace any opportunity to showcase their skills against the other players on the team. The competitive juices start flowing at ages 12 and above, so any ways you can come up with to meet their thirst for challenging competitions will aid in their development and the team’s overall progress.

  With older kids, try a version of Keepaway from the Coach. Youngsters love chances to compete against — and beat — their coach, so here’s a fun opportunity for them to try. Mark off a playing area with cones, and give each youngster a ball. The purpose of the drill is for each child to try to keep control of her ball while the coach and assistants try to knock the players’ balls out of the playing area. It’s ideal for learning ball control and shielding techniques, and it’s a great confidence-booster when a player is able to fend off a coach’s defensive moves. Another benefit is that youngsters gain insight into what defensive moves give them the most trouble or cause them to lose possession of the ball, which they can employ when they’re playing defense in a game.

  “When are we going to scrimmage?”

  Scrimmages are great to give kids a taste of what playing in an actual game is like. But be careful not to overuse them at the expense of skill-development drills. Scrimmaging reduces the number of touches that a child gets with the ball, so it should never be the foundation of your practice. A few minutes of scrimmage time at the end of practice, just to get the kids accustomed to performing the skills they’ve been practicing in a game-like setting, is fine.

  Rather than conduct a full-scale scrimmage, if your team is large enough, you can break the players into four smaller teams and run two scrimmages simultaneously on each half of the field. This trick increases the amount of touches of the ball a child gets. Also, with the smaller-scale game, each child is more likely to have to perform a variety of skills.

  You can also get really creative and turn an ordinary scrimmage into an exciting one simply by adjusting the rules here and there to mix things up for the kids. Not only do you increase the fun, but you also enhance the skill development of your players and leave them begging for more at the next practice. Here are a few ways you can improvise on traditional scrimmages:

  Passing Points: Getting the message across to children that passing is an important part of the game can be difficult. After all, kids love kicking and scoring goals, so the skill of passing to a teammate often takes a backseat — but not in this scrimmage. Set this scrimmage up so that the team that successfully completes a designated number of passes in a row while maintaining possession of the ball receives a point, the same as if it had scored a goal. The younger and less-advanced the players are, the fewer passes they must complete. This way, passing, receiving, ball control, and possession — all important skills — become as important as scoring goals.

  Lefty-Righty: During games, players are forced to make and receive passes and even take occasional shots on goal with their less-dominant feet, as the situation dictates. Developing this skill can often be overlooked during the course of practices, when players are naturally going to use their dominant feet whenever possible to pass, kick, and receive balls. A good way to break them of that habit is to conduct a scrimmage in which all plays on the ball must be made with the youngster’s less-dominant foot. Or you can conduct a regular scrimmage but award a bonus point for a goal scored by a player using her less-dominant foot or for a pass made by a less-dominant foot that results in a goal. Making these slight adjustments gradually helps the players become more comfortable and accustomed to making plays with both their feet and enhances their overall enjoyment of the game.

  Soccer Ball Mania: Getting kids a lot of touches with the ball is one of the biggest practice goals for all soccer coaches. Lots of touches lead to skill development. Holding a scrimmage in which two or three soccer balls are in play at the same time can be beneficial for several reasons. First, young kids love the action-packed game, with plenty of soccer balls bouncing around to keep their attention. Second, with the additional balls in play, your players get the chance to experience two and three times the action they see in a typical game. It also builds their timing, enhances their coordination, and improves their reaction skills. Bottom line, it’s a scrimmage that provides endless benefits and leaves the kids smiling at the conclusion.

  When designing your drills, try to make them game-like in nature. Doing so provides your team experience while reducing the amount of time you have to devote to scrimmages. For example, if all your shooting drills involve kicking a ball into an empty net and a player winds up to take a kick on game day and sees a goalie standing in his way, it’s going to throw him off if he hasn’t practiced that before.

  Letting kids help select practice drills

  As you negotiate your way through the season, make a note of the drills that the kids really seem to enjoy and that seem to be the most beneficial for them. For young kids, you can give each of the drills a fun name that gets their attention. For example, using the name Purple Bear carries a lot more meaning for them than simply calling it the 2-on-1 drill. As the season progresses, consider setting aside a segment of your practice each week for a different child to select his favorite drill for the team to do. This arrangement is a great way to include all the kids in the practice and really make them feel like a part of what’s going on. It also gives you a good idea of what types of drills the kids like. Obviously, you may want to discard drills that no child picks or rethink ways to make those drills more entertaining, if you continue coaching this age group.

  When you coach older and more advanced kids, you can ask them whether they fondly remember any other drills that they did with other coaches they played for over the years. Incorporating another coach’s drill into your practice certainly isn’t wrong. If it’s fun for the kids and effective in working on a particular skill, you can make room for it in your practices.

  Creating a Positive Atmosphere

  You can be a great teacher of skills and have dozens of well-crafted drills on your clipboard, but that doesn’t guarantee productive, fun-filled practices. You must be aware of, and attend to, a number of factors that impact how effectively you work with your players. The type of environment you create, through your words and actions — as well as how you go about providing feedback and assisting those kids who have difficulty learning skills — plays a large role in defining how successful your sessions are.

  Setting the tone

  The tone you set at the first practice of the season — and carry throughout — should be one built around praise, encouragement, and positive feedback rather than criticism, harsh instruction, and negativity.

  You set the tone for your practices with your mood and demeanor. If you played soccer growing up — or any sport, for that matter — you can probably recall those days when you showed up for practice and the coach was in a foul mood. What did you do? You and your teammates grumbled to one another about what a miserable afternoon was in store for you. How much fun and learning do you think those sessions produced? Probably none at all. In order to have the most effective practices, you have to arrive in a positive mood every day. Regardless of what’s going on outside your life as a soccer coach, you have to portray a positive attitude to your players. That means keeping your head up, walking with a spring in your step, and keeping a smile on your face. You won�
��t even have to say a word. By using this approach, your players recognize from your body language that you’re in a positive mood, and that translates into starting practice off on the right foot.

  As the leader of the practice, you influence whether your athletes look forward to or dread coming to practice. Good attitudes are infectious. Do your best to spread yours around for everyone to soak up.

  Keeping things consistent

  Kids benefit the most from practices that are run in the same manner all season long. If they know what to expect, they arrive at the field prepared and ready to participate. If they’re caught off guard because you deviate from how you’ve run practices in the past, you’re probably not going to get their best effort.

  Doing the same stretches and warm-ups at each practice provides kids a nice routine before they get into the heart of the practice. At your postpractice wrap-up chat, let kids know that when they arrive before the next practice, you want them to pair up and work on their passing and receiving skills, for example. Turn it into a fun contest to see which pair can complete the most number of passes in a row. You may be surprised by how many kids show up ahead of time, allowing you to start practice right on time with kids who are eager to get going. That’s a great environment for some quality learning to take place.

  You can also encourage the parents to take part in practice with their children. This involvement can help the parents, who may not be familiar with soccer, learn the proper techniques of a skill so that they can work with their child at home during the week. If the parents are interested, you may even want to give them some additional drills they can do at home with their child to work on various skills.

  How long and how often

  Sometimes coaches have a tough time curbing their enthusiasm. After all, when you see kids learning and improving — and hopefully having lots of fun in the process — you may want to spend more time practicing than they do. Normally, leagues have specific rules in place regarding how often and how long a team can practice. You need to be aware of this rule (an important league policy that we discuss in Chapter 2) before you begin creating practice plans for your team. If the league doesn’t have any policies in place, exercise your best judgment when devising the team schedule. We recommend one practice a week, for an hour, for younger children who also generally have one game a week to play in. As kids get older, you can bump up the schedule to include a couple of practices a week with the single game. Only at the older and more advanced levels should your practices last longer than an hour.

  Providing positive feedback

  We all love to be recognized for a job well done. When the boss points out that we did something well — particularly in front of our peers — it means a lot. Vocal acknowledgment yelled out for the entire team to hear can really have an impact on a youngster. That type of praise is powerful in the mind of a developing child who is probably unsure of her skills and maybe questions her ability to play soccer.

  Make sure you provide verbal accolades to every player during the course of your practice. Children know when their efforts haven’t been appreciated. You never want a child to leave the practice field without hearing a single word of praise or recognition for his efforts. If you have to, have your team roster on your clipboard, and as you move throughout the practice, simply mark an X next to a child’s name each time you give positive feedback. This way, you can easily monitor how your praise is being divvied up, and you won’t commit the coaching sin of failing to recognize a child.

  Establishing a positive learning environment is one step in creating a place where athletes like to be involved. You can be demanding while being positive. You can offer constructive criticism and still be encouraging. Good coaches find the balance between the two to help their athletes reach their full potential. Here are a few suggestions:

  Children love and relate to contact. A high-five is a great way to acknowledge a special play or an improvement of a skill. Be creative. Do low-fives, in which you and the player have your hand as low to the ground as possible. Kids really focus on performing a drill or skill the right way when they know you’re waiting to slap hands with them.

  Never shout negative comments when kids perform skills the wrong way. Reserve that tone of voice for when it’s really needed, such as when you have a discipline problem. (We discuss discipline problems in greater detail in Chapter 19.) A negative voice often makes the child afraid of making another mistake, which handcuffs her ability to play the game. Mistakes are a part of soccer, but if children feel they have no room for errors, they are less likely to make a play on the ball because they don’t want to make a mistake.

  Give specific, performance-based feedback to athletes rather than general comments lacking performance-related information. Comments such as “Thatta boy” and “Way to go” probably aren’t going to mean a whole lot to a child. Zero in on exactly what you’re applauding the player for. Saying something along the lines of “That’s the way to follow through on your shot” packs more of a punch and is more likely to stick in the child’s head every time he winds up to take a shot.

  Pointing out things that a child isn’t doing well is certainly okay, but be sure to sandwich some positive feedback around the comment. For example, you can say, “Sandy, that was excellent how you planted your foot, but I noticed you were looking down at the ball when you kicked it rather than scanning the field to see who was open. And I loved how you followed through on the kick. That’s the way to put all your power behind it.” This way, the child picks up a tip from the coach that she needs to be more aware of what’s happening on the field around her, and her self-esteem gets a nice boost because the coach recognized how well she kicked the ball.

  You want to praise kids who already have basic knowledge when they perform skills the proper way, but you don’t want to go overboard and begin to lose credibility with the team. You don’t want to overlook errors just for the sake of avoiding bringing it up to a player. After all, part of your job is to spot errors and, rather than dwell on them, work to help the child correct them and become more efficient in that area of his game. Children who are showered with excessive praise for performances that they know border on mediocre or aren’t their best will begin to tune you out. Also, their respect for you and your knowledge of the sport will drop a level or two, and that’s tough to get back during the remainder of the season.

  Helping players who need it

  Even if a child is struggling to pick up a certain skill after repeated tries, be sure to acknowledge his effort. Eventually, he’ll make improvements in this area of his game. In the meantime, the fact that he never gives up and is constantly working, even when things aren’t going well, are great attributes that are going to benefit him not only during his soccer career, but also into his everyday adult life. Reward effort as much as outcome. Repeated effort, especially in the face of failure and adversity, is one of the most important ingredients for future success.

  If a youngster just can’t quite get a handle on a skill, show her how she can correct it instead of telling her what she’s doing wrong. Demonstrate to her, and then let her copy your move. When you spot a player doing something wrong, you may be tempted to tell her to watch Jimmy do the drill. This instruction immediately sends the message that Jimmy is better than she is, so rather than helping the player learn this particular skill, you may have damaged her self-esteem. Take the time to show the player exactly what you mean, and acknowledge even the slightest improvement the next time she performs the drill to keep her headed on the right track.

  Do your best to avoid the ol’ paralysis by analysis that you have probably heard of before. Basically, you want to avoid giving a child so much instruction and information that his brain goes on overload and he isn’t able to perform even the most basic skills. Instead of helping him improve, you actually push him further back in his development.

  Taking time to look beyond sports

  As a youth soccer coach, the practices you
devise have a direct impact on each child’s development and enjoyment of the sport. Although you may not have given this fact much thought, while you’re at practice, you’re in a unique position to impact more than just each youngster’s ability to kick a soccer ball or deliver an accurate pass. By becoming the coach, you step into a special and important position of role model, teacher, and friend. The players on your team look up to you for leadership, guidance, and perhaps even advice in areas that don’t encompass the actual sport of soccer itself. By taking the time to observe, listen, and talk to your players about other areas of life, you can make a positive difference for them.

  With children who are a little bit older, you can use events in the news as teaching points. Perhaps a well-known athlete the kids are familiar with has been suspended for using performance-enhancing drugs. You can ask the kids what they think about this situation. Ask them whether they think this player is cheating and whether they’re disappointed that he was using illegal substances to gain a competitive advantage. Get the kids to talk to you about the issue instead of always instructing them. It can be a great way to get some good dialogue going. And during the appropriate time in the conversation, you can share your views on the issue and use them to reinforce the importance of staying away from harmful substances.

  Some topics that you may want to discuss with older kids that impact their performance on the field, as well as their overall health, include the following:

  Performance-enhancing drugs and supplements: Many youngsters may be interested in taking these substances because of their desire to become bigger, stronger, and better at soccer without really understanding the health consequences of their actions. Talk to your team about the dangers of using performance-enhancing drugs and supplements, and stress that players can receive the same benefits through hard work and dedicated practice, which is also a much safer route.