Soccer Stuff is a collection of youth soccer coaching essays written to help educate novice soccer coaches that are trying to learn more about the great game of soccer.

How to win Youth Soccer (at any cost!)

Ya know… I'm a little worried about you. If you're a coach, and you didn't click on this article just out of pure curiosity, something's wrong with your priorities. This is an article about how to win at soccer coaching, not how to win soccer games. There's a difference.

I’m a big picture kind of guy. In my opinion, here’s your mission as a soccer coach.

Do everything you can to get your kids to enjoy soccer. You know you’re a successful coach, not by how many games you win, but if all your kids sign up for the next season. Sure, you have to teach them soccer too, but if they aren't having fun, they won't be back, and you can't teach them how to dribble, if they're home watching TV. Here are some of the things I do to assure contentment among the troops.

Kids love ice-cream, and so do I. The nice thing about ice-cream, is that it takes a while to eat. While the kids are eating, they have a chance to develop friendships with you and the rest of their teammates.

ALWAYS have something positive to say to the kids. Even if you're getting crushed in a game, whatever you do, don’t yell at, or say negative things to your kids. Kids are there to have fun, not to get yelled at. Yes, they make mistakes and they need instruction, but don’t be negative. You need to develop the art of smoozing the kids. If they screw up, find something positive to mention, and then include the correction. Example… At halftime you say - Sarah, your were doing really well out there on defense, but there’s one thing you need to work on… when you’re bla bla bla. In other words, always be positive.

Want to be the best loved coach In Peters Township? Never miss a chance you to praise an individual kid publicly. At halftime, say something to the group like. "Jill (best player on the team), did you see how Emily (worst player on the team) centered that last shot, wasn’t that great?" If Jill’s your best player, she’s had the praise that comes naturally when you’re the best player on the team. But for Emily, all of a sudden, she feels like a queen. In other words, don’t miss an opportunity to make a fuss over a player, especially if that player that doesn’t get much glory on their own. This practice of spreading out the praise is not only a nice thing to do, it's extremely useful as a coach too. It builds confidence. And don't underestimate the importance of confidence!

It’s important to build the confidence of all your team, especially your weaker players. I firmly believe that it’s your weaker players that make the biggest difference in a team’s improvement over the coarse of a year. At the beginning of the year, your more talented players will dominate. Later in the year, you will be surprised at how your weaker players will step-up to make some key plays. Just this last season, we won the championship U-10 Game. Only a hand full of people even realized that it was the championship, but to me it was a really big deal. Just by coincidence, we were meeting the only other undefeated team in our league, for the last game of the season. We had played this team one other time earlier in the season for a 0-0 tie! So to me, it was the championship. We were lucky enough to score early and were doing really well all game long. Then, out of the blue, they had this great "break-away" that zipped by all my layers of defense, except one. There was only one lone defender between the "bad guy" and my very frightened goalie. To make things even worse, my lone defender was the weakest player on my team and the girl with the "break-away" was THE best dribbler in the entire league, Rachel Thomas. It was one of those moments in a coach's life that can only be described with two words. "Oh.. #####...!" My player didn’t back down at all, and much to my surprise, she came up and killed the ball and probably saved the game! To me, she was the biggest hero of the game, and I sure let her know it! We won 1-0. (sorry, I forgot that this article wasn't supposed to be about winning) Another thing that you might want to remember is that when you’re heaping this praise, do it loud enough so that all the parents hear you too. Parents like that kind of stuff.

Teach Individual Skills . Even though you need to balance your practices and keep things fun, a coach should really concentrate on developing Individuals skills. There's nothing worse that a ball hog, right? Wrong! It's important do develop team skills, yes, but it's not as important as developing individual skills. After reading a few books and watching a few videos on the subject, I've come to except the idea that children are most capable of learning "foot skills" at an early age. This theory says that there is a window of opportunity in a child's life where "foot skills" come easier than when they are older. If you miss that window of opportunity, the skills are much more difficult to learn. And the funny thing is, the almost opposite thing is true regarding tactics. The older you are, the easier tactics are to learn. So… It makes sense to me to concentrate on teaching the foot skills at the time the children are most susceptible to learning them. Many of these foot skills are focused on "beating" an opponent, in other words, being a ball hog. I'm not saying that a child shouldn't learn to pass the ball or work as a team. I'm saying that children should also be encouraged to experiment, in game situations, with the skills they are working on in practice. Remember, as a coach of young children, you need to think long term. Longer than the next game, or even longer than this season. Your job is to give next year's coach the happiest, most skilled groups of kids possible. Next year's coach won't care how many games the kids won the year before, they'll care if the kid can trap the ball or not.

Teach them and yourself about winning and loosing. Life is too short to get worked up over a stupid game. I remember just last year when we lost our first game of the year. Before that day, our record was 6-0. We were on a roll. On the way home from the loosing game, I was really bummed out. I figured that we could have won the game if only I would have … Just then, I looked into the back seat of the car and saw my daughter and her teammate doing one of those obnoxious, irritating hand clap games. You know the kind, Da-da da, da da da da, Da da da… Then it struck me, she didn’t care that we lost. I was beating myself up for no reason. I was being selfish. I was the only one who cared. In other words, watch that you don’t get too caught up in the game. It's just that, a game.

Try to remember the following perspectives…

To a parent, soccer is about their kids running around having fun. As long as their kids having fun, they're usually happy, even if your teams loosing. To a coach, soccer is about working hard and getting better. It's about teaching skills and teamwork. It's about teaching the kids how to win gracefully and how to loose without making excuses. To a kid, soccer is only about two things, having fun and making their parents proud.

Good luck

Michael Ray

© Michael Ray 2004