A question like how to coach soccer needs an answer as simple as the questions itself but we must make efforts to find a precise one. All said and done, soccer coaching is a daunting task and calls for a great deal of patience and skill on the part of a coach to keep the players motivated.
Let me tell you 5 simple tips that’ll help you improve your team’s performance significantly, when followed religiously.
1. Your plans should be comprehensive: Make complete and methodical plans if you wish to get the desired results in coaching. Have a heart to heart discussion with the players when you sit down to discuss and decide the team’s objectives and the timelines to reach them. Goals not met within the time frames decided for them, get in the way of a team’s progress.
Once you’ve finalized the plan, remain committed to it but allow flexibility for minor adjustments. Your plans may be foolproof but unforeseen situations calls for final changes in the plan.
2. Practice sessions should be a whole lot of fun: Boring and repetitive training drills are bound to bring down the enthusiasm of young players when performed regularly. It is possible to incorporate this in many ways. For example: encourage players to participate in games and activities for some time after practice so as to develop a feeling of team spirit in them.
3. Freedom and Discipline should be exercised together: For a coach, discipline in the team should always be a priority. Nonetheless, the fact that it is freedom form unnecessary control that motivates the kids to religiously follow the rules. You should never undermine the importance of freedom and relaxation in teaching soccer.
Allow time to players in between drills to do their own things, simply relax, or share stuff among them. In preaching how to coach soccer, it is also extremely important to venture out with the kids on a picnic or an outdoor get together.
4. Be Supportive and tolerant: Always inspire the team to experiment on new things and when they make mistakes, be tolerant. Keep their activities under observation. At times, if the mistake is grave, take action to correct it but without making the kids pay for it.
Bear in mind that when you retort, the kids feel intimidated and when you show compassion and encouragement, they feel motivated to do even better.
5. Balance things: It is in training sessions that kids get to know about their soccer skills and inherent talent. It is expected that in a team, there are some great players, some regular, while others are poor in performance. It becomes your responsibility as a coach to make the best use of your good players in inspiring others.
Group the bad players with the good ones so that the bad players learn from their good counterparts during and after the sessions. It is also vital that they players do not feel that a comparison is being drawn between them.
Your objective now is to make sure that you use these tips to improve your approach about how to coach soccer.
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Andre Botelho is a recognized authority in youth soccer coaching and has already helped thousands of youth coaches to dramatically improve their coaching skills. Learn how to explode your players’ skills and make training fun by downloading your free ebook at: Youth Soccer Training.
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