Courtesy of some psychology literature that was written in the late 70’s.

After blowing some old dust from this little gem, I continued to read and couldn’t help relate some of these behaviours to youth soccer.

Lets begin.

Self-esteem is often seen as something that players have or don’t have. Where having self-esteem is a great thing and leads to good things, while lacking it leads to bad things or failures.

What do you think?

Personally, this couldn’t be further from the truth. This belief, myth or hypothesis comes from a very limited view of how self-esteem works and how self-esteem is developed.

Self-esteem is not something we give to players by telling them how good they are.

“You’re great at shooting”

“You’re the best player in your age group”

“My son is the best player in the team.”

The belief that self-esteem can be passed on to young players is the reason WHY WE LIE TO OUR CHILDREN.

We exaggerate positives or good behaviour and sugar coat all the negatives whilst lying about inadequate performances or effort. Sound familiar?

The parents worst fear (and to some extent coaches) is that negative feedback or criticism will destroy a player’s self-esteem. It’s as though we’ve bought into some secret society or bullshit theory in which players require constant success to feel good about themselves.

God behold if something went wrong or your child didn’t get a jersey. Constant attempts to boost players EGO’s instead of boosting their efforts is a sure recipe for disaster and the status quo proves it.

Why hide their deficiencies?

Why hide their weaknesses?

How about we help them overcome their weaknesses and try to reinforce EFFORT and HARD WORK to overcome these obstacles instead of teaching them to hide through the bullshit feedback.

What message do we give our players/children when we give them sugar coated feedback and praise?

The message is clear if you ask me!

We tell them that having ability and winning is the most important thing and anything short of this needs to be hidden and even buried to protect the self-esteem.

Before I continue let me add this, praise, encouragement and sugar coated feedback “WORKS” in most cases. Telling your child/players they’re the best sure makes them feel good and it definitely adds a few inches to their self-esteem.

But at what cost?

Sugar coating or lying leads to a type of self-esteem that I despise, the type we call ENTITLEMENT, sigh!

There is nothing more destructive than easy drills and exaggerated praise for minor effort. What benefit, if any, does this create?

It creates players that will quit the game in despair because they feel entitled to all that soccer has to offer without the blood, sweat and tears.

When will these players learn about the elbow grease or the significance of clenched teeth?

An entitled self-esteem is a recipe for anger, disappointment, failure and inevitably self-doubt.

What happens to these players after all the sugar coating and the lies dry up? What happens to these players when there is no one there to praise them? What happens when soccer throws a spanner into the works? Do these entitled; artificially sweetened players have the equipment, balls and thick skin to proceed?

God help us if they get injured, rejected or benched.

After years of lies and exaggerated praise how do these players respond to adversity? How can they possibly know what to do when they have never confronted their weaknesses?

You’d think most parents would recognise that anything worthwhile would require and involve failed attempts, heartache and tears.

What’s wrong with making mistakes, tackling your weaknesses or even losing?

How about instructing from the heart and with a different framework. A framework where EFFORT and challenges are expected and ENJOYED, while setbacks, weaknesses and losses are seen as informative and challenging.

Your child can handle the truth, the question is, CAN YOU?

“May the winds of destiny blow you to the stars.”

So why does this happen?

Who gives these coaches the power of delusion?

Most of the coaching supervision, I like to call it interference comes from fear. Fear of losing their coaching position.

A bad, incompetent coach finds weaknesses in his players, tells them he can help and then promises to rectify these weaknesses as long as they listen and remain obedient.

Remember this, fear is a great inventor. As my girlfriend pointed out, the Y2K bug was a big flop. What really happened in the year 2000 to all the computers that clicked over to 00 digits?

Hmmmm, absolutely nothing!

Sometimes fear is fertilised by stupidity and that’s what some youth coaches suffer from, stupidity.

Any youth coach that utilises fear should consider a new hobby. Perhaps marbles and enough time to realise how brainless they really are.

“May the winds of destiny blow you to the stars.”

• Jared Montz
• Howard Gray
• SoccerLens
• TheOffside
• Richard Whittall A More Splendid Life
• Better Football Pavl williams
• Two Footed tackle

93. Demand respect: Are you talking to me?
94. Work on your aerobic capacity: Run Forest Run.
95. Work on your anaerobic threshold: Breathe in from your nose and exhale from your mouth while trying to catch your breath.
96. Stay motivated: Keep your eyes on the Prize.
97. Throw away the Nintendo: Mario can wait.
98. Never Give Up
99. Go to games: Watch and soak up the atmosphere.
100. Enjoy the Ride and “may the winds of destiny blow you to the stars.”
101. Rinse and Repeat.

Before you create your training session, you need to take into account the players you will be coaching. Player’s age and capabilities are extremely important factors that need to be considered. However, most sessions should have the following structure.

Before you can commence any training session, you need to allow the players to warm up and stretch. This will allow the players to increase their heart rate and prepare their muscles for training. Also allow some time for the players to stretch before commencing the heavier loads of the session. The extra time will also allow your players to get focused on the session.

Once your players have warmed up and stretched, you can proceed with the session. Depending on the drill, you should personally show them a simple demonstration of the drill. That’s right, show them. If you can’t give a simple demonstration of a new drill or skill, should you be coaching? How do you expect young kids or players to perform the drill if you can’t? Is your training session suitable or too advanced?

Always try and make your drills fun and entertaining. Train hard but make sure all your players are smiling and enjoying themselves. Also provide adequate breaks between drills to allow for drinks and player feedback. Most of the times the players will let you know if the session or drill is too easy or too hard. At the end of the day you’re not Guus Hiddink are you? So listen up and try and understand the youth and respond accordingly.

• Once you’ve completed the technical side of training, always remember to try and incorporate the new skills learnt in a game situation. Always try and end the session with a small sided game that will allow your players to experiment with their new found skills.
• Never make your training sessions or plans too rigid. Your sessions need flexibility because some players might not be able to adapt to the new drills. Can you tell me what usually happens on those cold winter nights? That’s right! Half your team will not attend so you always need Plan B.
• Have you ever heard the saying, “variety is the spice of life”? Keep training interesting by mixing it up and using different variations of the same drill. By changing things you keep your training sessions fresh and eliminate players becoming complacent. Keeping your players on their toes and continually learning will guarantee you a hassle free and mischief free session. If you want trouble and problematic players make the training sessions boring and allow for 5 minutes. It’s your choice.
• The greatest mistake you can make as a youth coach is to starve them of the ball. Your role is to teach by showing and allowing your players to practice. Don’t preach or lecture them otherwise you might as well send them to school. But most importantly, allow your players to play without you trying to coach every second of the play. Also remember that more doesn’t necessarily equate to better. Don’t pack too much into your training sessions and concentrate on a few fundamentals at a time.

Okay, let’s use a scenario to illustrate the next point. You’ve carefully planned the next training session and you feel that it will serve your team well. Training begins and you can clearly see that your session is not productive. What do you do next? Most youth coaches will persist and try and enforce the session. After all the coach knows best, right? It’s not brain surgery, don’t preserve a plan or session that isn’t working. So the question still stands, “what do you do next Guus?”

The fact that you’ve planned the session doesn’t necessarily make it a good one. Always make sure you have Plan B and even Plan C. By observing with your ego-free hat on, the session assesses itself. Can you honestly judge yourself and your coaching abilities? I don’t think so! If you asked me to judge my own coaching abilities I wouldn’t hesitate to tell you that I’m the best. See what I mean.

Have you stopped laughing yet?

Another important aspect of youth coaching is respect. Treat all your players with respect! I don’t care if his the worst player in the world or the most frustrating. If you cannot guarantee respect as a minimum you have no right to coach. As far as I’m concerned you shouldn’t even be allowed on the green pastures to watch. Enough said.

Last but not least, don’t train your team on your own. Always get the services of an assistant. This doesn’t imply that your not good enough, but it sure is nice having those extra set of eyes, don’t you think?

“this is a good thing”

Soccer players these days have different skills and physical attributes. Some have lightning speed and can be seen burning up and down the flanks, others showcase their strength while man marking strikers and the strikers dazzle us with their short bursts and sharp turns. So what’s the point?  Although senior players play to their strength I would strongly suggest that the youngsters do the opposite.

Are you scratching your head yet? Coaches in Europe and in the Soccer Academies devise training methods that create a better overall player. Player development is based on working on your weaknesses. The training programmes create a balance between the strong and weak skills of a player. When Kids are left to their own devices at training, they will only train and work on the fun areas of the game. Give any young child a ball and an empty goal and they will spend the whole afternoon shooting the ball into the empty net. Is this a good thing?

In order for any player to significantly improve he must first eliminate all his weaknesses. So how do we combat this? Most players these days are designated right foot or left foot. Why? Most players have a psychological block that denies them the chance to strike the ball with the opposite foot. Why would you allow your child to only develop one foot? The best youth coaches in the world ensure that their players develop both feet. Not every child has access to these coaches so how do we tackle this problem? If you are aware of the problem you can easily fix it. Let your player strike the ball with his “natural” foot. Set a target and let your player try and hit the target using his stronger foot. Watch the player and study the approach and the striking technique. After a certain amount of repetitions, change feet. The idea of this training method is to replicate the same technique on the less desired foot. If the player struggles to use his opposite foot I’ve got three words of encouragement. Do you know what they are?

Practice, Practice, Practice.

With practice, encouragement and a lot of patience the player will develop confidence in his less preferred leg. The confidence will allow the player to use both legs efficiently and remove the psychological block that denies them the chance to use both legs. Could your players or child benefit from this? Absolutely, how many kids do you know that can kick with both legs? If you do know any, they are definitely the minority. Being part of this minority is a great way to get noticed and separated from the other millions of players that grace the green turf.

Has anyone heard the saying

Good things come in two’s

I couldn’t agree more, the left foot and the right foot.