In coaching high school soccer, the first and the foremost quality that the players need to have or develop is confidence if they wish to become complete players. Often when you say that the players have to play under pressure in a game, it indicates your player’s lack of confidence to handle any situation. I say this because only confident players expect to win and get successful.
Confidence is a choice and your players have to first choose to become confident. 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 second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.
After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. Prepare a team of successful players full of confidence by directing their attention, energy, and enthusiasm in practice towards their role in past success.
Train the players of the fact that in soccer coaching that putting the blame on something or someone else is a mark of insecurity. Rather teach players to take the setbacks as an integral part of the learning curve and not something to deter their confidence levels.
When coaching high school soccer, condition the players to see every lost opportunity as a lesson and they should keep telling themselves “I’ll get the next one.”
Thus, confidence for the next strike is remains unaffected because of the distress of the miss.
One of the keys to managing a successful team is your ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive the demands of competition. 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 gives rise to confidence. When you are completely satisfied with your work that you have done and when you are ready to face a pressure – cooker scenario which is anytime possible, you achieve success in soccer. In order to make the players emotionally power-packed, a phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is frequently used.
Confidence is built on experience. Players must be conditioned to take in their stride all fears, mistakes, defeats, and criticism to build the foundation of experience they need. The feeling of he or she having the knowledge, a little more know – how due to experience and thus, the thought process of planning the next step, prevails.
Make no mistake about it. In coaching high school soccer, constructing confidence is a daily task and hence, players should intimate on the key steps to find out their positives.
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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.
Tags: Coaching high school soccer, coaching youth soccer, football coaching, soccer coaching