Soccer Tactics

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.

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.

When it comes to coaching high school soccer, we must accept the fact that self-control is a choice just like confidence that players must make. In soccer coaching, it’s the relation between emotions and thoughts that concludes the self control strategies. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.

With a view to help the players in learning the skill and discipline of self-control, there is a 12 step strategy which I shall discuss with you. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for them.

Besides this, they must also assume total responsibility for their actions. The 12 step strategy is explained in the following paragraphs.

1. Awareness: Help the players figure out their weak points during the course of coaching youth soccer. Have them analyze where, when, and how they lost control on field during the past.

2. Understanding: Help the players acknowledge the feeling that changed their thinking and caused them to lose their emotional steadiness.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Let them recall various situations when they managed to maintain control and when he did lose control. Have them decide the differences in their attitudes, behaviors, and emotions.

4. Problem: Make an attempt to identify the exact problem in coaching high school soccer. For example: The player may be feeling guilty that he let the entire team down due to his actions.

5. Belief: Help the players raise their own expectations including self-control as one of the character. Persuade them that they can change.

6. Reinforcement: Behavior change is accelerated by reinforcement. So, as a coach, you must reward improved behavior of players on their way to permanent change.

7. Goals: Set a series of small goals for players that will lead them along the road to change. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.

8. Techniques: Build a series of behavioral techniques for maintaining confidence. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.

9. Plan: In football coaching, teach the players to pursue their goals in a planned and systematic way.

10. Progress: Teach them how to be patent. Let them know that improvement always comes in a series of ups and downs.

11. Setbacks: Train the players to accept that setbacks are bound to happen from time to time. Therefore, try to learn something new from every setback.

12. Remembrance: Last but an important point is to let the players identify the good reason behind the change. They must understand the importance of what they are doing. What would the change mean to them for their future?

It is well known that a soccer player must act swiftly and yet comfortably to be perfect performer. This simply means use of full energy without stress.

This is of utmost importance. Including relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and help players control their thinking so they can generate emotions that remove unnecessary tension and save energy.

You must subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community to get access to plenty of articles, newsletters, and videos to know new and improved soccer skillsyou’re your players.

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: Soccer Practice Drills.

In coaching high school soccer, you may wish to disagree but it’s true that communication is the most important aspect to get success. The actual meaning of coaching kids is the art of communicating with them. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. The reason why many of these issues show up is the coach’s inability to communicate. As a coach, you need to work upon certain communication related problems for effective execution of your responsibilities.

Let me explain them to you one at a time.

When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. Instead of acting as analytical observers, they become more of spectators. They ignore the important facets of the game that could improve the team’s performance significantly. The coaches fail to have an effective conversation that could help the players get to the winning post.

Even though the coaches are well versed with the technicalities of the game, they are not trained specifically on communication. For example; use of flip charts and videos in soccer coaching is not applied by many coaches as they aren’t aware of them. When the coach finds it difficult to communicate his messages clearly, it brings monotony to the game even if he has a complete knowledge of the game.

Coaching Youth Soccer

This is especially important in coaching high school soccer since the players have been into the sport for quite some time. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. And one of the ways to avoid the boredom of repeating important messages is to keep varying the format.

It may come as a surprise to you that coaches often forget that their training sessions are carried out by people. Only with a view to execute the training program well, coaches tend to ignore every other aspect of it. An example of ineffective communication by a coach is when he fails to use a player’s name while giving instructions which produces uncertainty.

There are certain guiding principles in football coaching which are as follows:

• All messages from the coach are important for players. So it’s necessary that they are deduced correctly.

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Challenge them to be better rather than punishing them for being poor.

• Pay equal attention to each player in the team. Research in this filed shows that coaches tend to spend comparatively more time with the best players (up to seven times more!).

• Adopt a proactive approach to identify the impending problems and solve them.

• Accentuate your player’s self worth by balancing praise with criticism. Tilt the balance a little more towards praise with respect to coaching high school soccer.

Trust me. When you apply these rules to your training sessions, the benefits will be much more that you’ll expect.

There’s lot more to know and understand about this aspect of soccer only if you wish to. Subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community and get tips, and tricks in form of articles, newsletters, as well as videos.

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: Coaching high school soccer.