Archive for May, 2010

Coaching High School Soccer: 5 Ways To Be Mentally Tough

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Coaching high school soccer

Speaking of coaching high school soccer, the outlook and behavior of the coach are the most important influences affecting a player’s performance. A coach should prepare a course that stresses the development of a positive winning attitude with a view to have a mentally tough team.

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.

With respect to coaching youth soccer, mental toughness is all about meeting challenges with a positive outlook. Thus, in both practice and competition, the coach should be the starting point.

The coach can observe that closely controlled post-match schedule helps him or her in not getting either too low or too high. A competent coach will draw on ideas, narrative, and symbols, videos, and like that to shape the collective outlook of the team and ready them to be mentally strong on the playing field.

Coaching Youth Soccer

A coach should display control in football coaching, when dealing with emotional setbacks notwithstanding personal feelings, with a view to create a mentally strong team.

Only when the coach shows a firm belief in the team’s capability to accomplish in spite of the problems, the team will have an outline for developing the same mind-set and feel motivated.

Coping with failures and mistakes in coaching high school soccer is another area of responsibility for the coach. How strong the players feels motivated to correct the mistakes made is largely dependent upon the coach’s reaction to failure. A coach has got only two choices.

To give a response to the players in order to improve them, their failures can be used as an opportunity to correct them. The players should be persuaded to recommit themselves to the challenge with improved inspiration.

Making use of the failure as an evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that he cannot meet the expectations, can be the second choice. This emotional overreaction will de-motivate the players.

One way that players become mentally tough is by accepting responsibility for their thoughts, feelings, and actions and rejecting all possible excuses. During the course of soccer coaching, coaches can help by questioning and listening rather than always tell the players what they did wrong. The players can be motivated by having a one-to-one conversation with them and discussing with them about what they could have done better.

This exercise is known as self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. Instead of giving the players a definition of the situation, the coach can ask the player his or her reactions. 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.

If you want to be a better coach, you must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that has a lot of relevant information in the form of videos, relevant articles and newsletters.

 

 

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.

 

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Coaching High School Soccer: 5 Ways To Increase Confidence

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Coaching high school soccer

When it comes to coaching high school soccer, the first step towards success is the confidence building amongst players who have the potential to become brilliant players. When you declare that the players are under immense pressure, you as a coach are hinting to the fact that your players lack confidence to face a situation. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

Like many choices we make, confidence as an attribute is also chosen by players. In the course of coaching youth soccer, this point can be made clear to them by describing the behavior of two parrots that sit on either shoulder.

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.” Without a doubt, it’s the player who has to choose which parrot to take note of.

After they’ve made a choice, train them to take the accountability for their acts. This choice may have to made every single day. Develop brilliant players in your team by constantly reminding them of their participation in past successes to boost their confidence levels.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In soccer coaching, players should be made to know that blaming someone or something is a signal 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.

Likewise in coaching high school soccer, it’s imperative to teach the players to repeat the phrase “I’ll get the next one” whenever they miss out on any opportunity.
Thus, confidence for the next strike is remains unaffected because of the distress of the miss.

A team is said to be successful if you have the ability to make quick judgments regarding a player’s ability to survive in competition. Judging physical readiness in football coaching is relatively easier than judging mental readiness.

To facilitate this type of judgment, look for clear messages. Look for both verbal and non verbal messages that the player is sure of his or her ability to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. And success in soccer is more likely when you know you have done everything you could to get ready for situations that might build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”

Confidence is built on experience. The reservations, mistakes, losses and denunciation should be taken up calmly by the players so that their underpinning of experience can be built. It is the feeling that he or she has the knowledge, has been there before, and knows what to look forward to.

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.

It is advisable to subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community as lot more can be determined by the newsletters, videos and articles which keep you updated about the latest developments in soccer.

 

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.

 

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5 Simple Steps To Youth Soccer Drills

Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Youth soccer drills

Do you have any idea that it’s extremely important for you to create a training program that not only prepares but also supports your kid’s development? Youth soccer drills designed to augment player’s skills must be performed if the players have to reach a given level of success.

When it comes to youth soccer coaching, the players must first be taught the basics by way of drills in training. This calls for adequate stretching and warm-up before starting the practice sessions. These stretches and warm-up sessions are necessary to avoid any injury to players during the practice.

There must be an objective specific to each practice session. Therefore, classify just one or two drills and work upon those drills only. Devise the training program in such a fashion that allows you to complete a different set of drills each week. When players start with the practice matches, they should be made to perform such drills that show up their areas if improvement.

A common reason why most teams end up winning some matches towards finishing time is the fact that the other team wears out. For this reason, make sure that your fitness training include drills where a soccer ball is used a great deal.

Youth Soccer Drills

Your youth soccer practice can be conveniently divided into two different types. Cardiovascular resistance and muscular strength can be two categories that result in developing alertness, power, co-ordination, pace, and quickness in the players.

In relation to youth soccer drills, “running in formation” is one that is very interesting and efficient. This drill uses the full team. It is a fantastic way to build teamwork. The players get an opportunity to learn to stay in step with your guidance. Also, it is very impressive to see your team running around the filed in perfect formation, prior to the game.

“Following the leader” is another warm-up drill. This marks the start of the player’s ability to learn to dribble the ball. It also uses the entire team where each player has a ball.

Having full control over the ball, also known as “touch on the ball” is very important in soccer. Use the “roll over” drill for teaching this skill to your kids. This drill is total fun. The players may feel a little awkward at first because it may be difficult to keep the ball moving and going in a straight line. But it will go away with time and practice.

This drill is helpful in imparting the skills in balance, agility, and a touch on the ball.

The kids soccer drills should help the kids learn everything there is to know about soccer. “Karaoke” drill is the best for this sort of an exercise. Using this drill, the kids run, handle the ball, and keep their balance along with building cardiac endurance.

Do not take it lightly. When we talk of youth soccer drills, this drill takes the cake.

Our youth soccer coaching community has plenty of useful information in the form of articles, videos, and newsletters related to youth soccer and you can get all this by enrolling for it.

 

 

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: Youth soccer drills.

 

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The Career Of Roy Hodgson

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Fulham reached the final of the 2010 Europa League under the guidance of Roy Hodgson. Victories against the holders Shaktar Donetsk and the incredible victory over Italian giants Juventus were just part of a memorable campaign for Fulham and their supporters.

 

As a player, Hodgson was on the books at Crystal Palace but never made a first team appearance. Hodgson started to make a name for himself when he moved into management. His early career in Sweden saw him win the Swedish title twice with Halmstads in 1976 and 1979.

 

From there, Hodgson moved to Switzerland with Neuchatel Xamax before taking over the Swiss national team who he guided to the 1994 World Cup Finals and the 1996 Euro Finals. Hodgson’s next job was at the mighty Internazionale in Italy where he spent 2 seasons. In his final season as manager of Inter, they reached the 1997 UEFA Cup final before he headed to Blackburn Rovers. The move didn’t work out and he was sacked after 18 months.

 

For the next few years, Hodgson held a number of managerial positions but never really settled anywhere for long and in 2005, he took over the Finnish national team and took them tantalisingly close to the Euro 2008 finals.

 

At the end of 2007, Fulham offer Hodgson the managers job as at the time, they were struggling in the Premier League and needed a change of direction. Hodgson worked his magic as Fulham stayed up and the following season qualified for the UEFA Europa League by finishing 7th.

 

Fulham’s first season in Europe has been nothing short of spectacular. Fulham have met some tough opposition including Juventus and the German champions. Now, Atheltico Madrid stand in their way of glory in the final in Hamburg.

 

But what next for Roy Hodgson? There is no doubt that his influence on Fulham will have attracted the attentions of bigger clubs. Although Hodgson has been linked with the England job, Fabio Capello is doing an excellent job and will be in charge for some time. Perhaps it is a bit more realistic to think that Hodgson could well take over the English national team after the Euro 2012 finals.

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Reviewing The UEFA Euro 2012 Tournament

Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

The Euro 2012 tournament  will be jointly hosted by Poland and Ukraine. The competition is the last one to be 16 teams as the next one in 2016 will expand to twenty four teams. Poland and Ukraine beat Italy and Croatia/Hungary for the right to have the competition.

 

The fixtures will basically be split 50/50 between the two hosts. Polish cities to put on matches will be Warsaw, Gdansk, Wroclaw and Poznan. The Ukrainian venues will be Kiev, Lviv, Kharkiv and Donetsk.

 

The final will be held in Kiev which will also host a semi-final. This will be at the Olimpiysky National Sports Complex which after construction will be one of the premier stadiums and sporting complexes on the planet. The new venue in Warsaw is also being built and guarantees to be a state of the art arena.

 

The draw for the championships has already been made and qualifying fixtures will get going following the 2010 World Cup. Each of the 9 group winners and the best runner-up will be given direct entry into the tournament. Following that the remaining 8 runner-up will be drawn into two-legged playoffs.

 

From Group A you would consider Germany and Turkey would be too powerful with Austria and Belgium being the contenders.

Group B looks to be a 3 way competition involving Russia, Slovakia and Ireland.

 

In Group C it looks like it will be effortless for Italy and Serbia. France is the favorite from Group D with Romania looking at the one to take runner-up.

 

There is a northern European feel to Group E where it has to be Netherlands and Sweden.

 

Croatia and Greece are the likely challengers by way of Group F as are England and Switzerland for Group G.

 

From Group H it looks like Portugal and Denmark and in conclusion from Group I it would look like Spain and the Czech Republic.

 

Qualifying draws to a close in October 2011 by which time euphoria and expectancy for the UEFA Euro 2012 Championships will be well and truly underway.

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