Soccer Field Diagram

If you are like me, you probably know that in coaching high school soccer, the journey to becoming a complete player begins by building confidence. You tend to spot the player’s weakness in terms of less confidence to cope with a situation whenever you use the term “pressure” in the game. The reason being that confidence alone can ensure success.

Confidence is a choice and your players have to first choose to become confident. 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 of them is the positive parrot, always urging the player to face up to the challenge saying “You can do it.” Then there is the other parrot who is full of negativity and keeps telling the player “You can’t do this.” And it’s their choice to select which player to pay attention to.

Also teach them to take full responsibility of the consequences that follow their choice. This decision could also be an everyday task. Prepare a team of successful players full of confidence by directing their attention, energy, and enthusiasm in practice towards their role in past success.

Coaching Youth Soccer

Teach your players during soccer coaching that holding someone or something else responsible is a symbol of insecurity. As a matter of fact, players should be trained on taking every setback as a lesson to become even more confident and not to feel discouraged.

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.

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 mental readiness is often a bit tougher challenge than judging physical readiness in football coaching.

To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. It is necessary to deeply go through the player’s spoken and unspoken messages about his or her knack to succeed in the game.

Success and confidence share a parent- child relationship. Success in Soccer comes with the belief in yourself that you are well equipped and ready for every situation that may build pressure. The common stimulus used for motivating the players is “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail.”

Experience is a building block of confidence. Players must be conditioned to take in their stride all fears, mistakes, defeats, and criticism to build the foundation of experience they need. It is the feeling that he or she has the knowledge, has been there before, and knows what to look forward to.

Know this. Building of confidence in coaching high school soccer is an everyday task, so players should reflect on certain key steps to discover what works for them.

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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.

I don’t know a thing about you, but I’ll bet that the attitude and behavior of the coach in coaching high school soccer strongly influences the performance of the players. The coach can build a mentally tough team only when he has devised a plan that supports a positive attitude aimed at winning.

In a player’s career, the coach is an important and a prominent authority figure. The body language, attitude, and expressions of the coach can shape, reinforce, or damage the players self esteem and confidence.

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

In order to make sure that the coach does not get either too high or too low, he or she should pursue a disciplined post match routine. An experienced coach will apply ideas, chronicle, and descriptions, videos, etc to shape the collective approach of the team and prepare them to be mentally tough in their game.

Coaching Youth Soccer

In football coaching, the coach must show the ability to deal handle emotional setbacks regardless of personal feelings in order to build a mentally strong team.

When the coach exhibits a strong belief in team’s capacity to achieve the goals notwithstanding the hindrances, the team will get an agenda for developing a similar attitude.

In coaching high school soccer, another critical area for which the coach is responsible is handling mistakes and failure. How coaches react to failure decides the player’s motivation and his desire to towards correcting the mistakes. There are two option for the coach to choose from.

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.

Second, use failure as evidence of the player’s inadequacy and proof that they cannot meet expectations. This poignant overreaction will de-motivate the players.

Players can be made psychologically strong by accommodating the accountability for their judgment, stances, and actions and rejecting all probable excuses. In soccer coaching, players can be questioned and listened by the coaches rather than always being accused of their mistakes. 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.

Such an exercise is called self-reference. Self reference can be encouraged in the players by the coach to motivate them to perform better. The coach can discuss the situation by asking the players their reaction rather than giving them a definition of the situation. For example; “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.

Whatever methods that you’ve just learnt, go ahead and start applying in coaching high school soccer.

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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.

Let’s face it that like confidence, self-control in coaching high school soccer is an option that players can choose. In soccer coaching, the connection between emotions and thoughts establishes the self-control strategies. We are all aware that our feelings influence our emotions and this consequently boosts our performance.

I’ll share with you a 12 step strategy to help players learn the ability and discipline of self-control. Nevertheless, it’s imperative that players agree to these steps after that are sure that it holds a lot of importance for them.

Also, players must be ready to take full accountability for their actions. The strategy has been given below in 12 steps for your reference.

1. Awareness: In coaching youth soccer, lend a helping hand to players in identifying their weak points. Allow them to investigate when, where and how loss of control happened on field in their past.

2. Understanding: Let the players find out and admit the reason that influenced their thoughts and resulted in them losing their emotional poise.

Coaching Youth Soccer

3. Differences: Let the players recall situations in the past when they did and did not lost control. And then they should determine the difference in their emotions, attitudes, and behavior.

4. Problem: When it comes to coaching high school soccer, try to point out the real problem. 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. Encourage them to change.

6. Reinforcement: Reinforcement has the potential to accelerate a change in behavior. Therefore, you must not forget your duty as a coach to recognize and honor the improvements of players so that they stick to these.

7. Goals: To improve the skills of the players, you must start with several small goals. Assist the players in identifying the relationship between opinions, outlook, and actions.

8. Techniques: Set up multiple performance based methods to boost the confidence level. For example: Players must know which path to follow in a certain situation.

9. Plan: In football coaching, train the players to systematically and considerably follow their goals.

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

11. Setbacks: Let the players understand that setbacks are there to stay. So, the best way is learn from them and become even stronger.

12. Remembrance: Finally another important point is making the players understand the importance of the reason for they are trying to change. They should always bear in mind why they’re doing this. How important the change is for their future?

We all agree that a perfect performance state for a soccer player is that of a relaxed promptness. It signifies the ability to use energy without any fear.

You must not make any mistake about it. You must include relaxation techniques in coaching high school soccer and train the players on how to control the thought process so that they can keep themselves stress-free.

Subscribe to our youth soccer coaching community that has lots of relevant information in form of articles, newsletters, and videos to help you become a better coach and your player’s champions.

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.

You might disagree, but hear me out on this when I say that in coaching high school soccer, communication is the first step to success. The art of communicating to the team is what coaching truly is. It enables you to let people understand exactly what you wish them to do and in what sense.

When it comes to soccer coaching, I’ve observed that most of the coaches often are the ex-players. Then also they have to face a number of issues while coaching young players. Most of these issues are a result of lack of communication. You must recognize that there are certain issues related to communication that need special attention if your job is to be made easier.

These are described for you one at a time.

In the course of watching the young players on field, coaches often get emotional. They forget that they have the duty to observe the players analytically rather than merely watching them play. As such they are not able to see the key points that could make all the difference in their team’s performance. Here, they miss out on the important part of having a professional conversation aimed at getting a win.

Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. 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

It is even more important in case of coaching high school soccer because the players are not new to the game. They have been doing these soccer drills for some time but at different levels. You can do away with the monotony of repetitive messages by frequently changing the layout of training.

The coaches have a tendency to just forget that training sessions are being executed by human beings and not machines. Only with a view to execute the training program well, coaches tend to ignore every other aspect of it. When a coach tries to instruct something to the play but does not use that player’s name, it creates confusion and is an apt example of bad communication.

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

• Every message from the coach is equally important. So make sure that they are interpreted correctly.

• Use positive language that encourages players to give their best shot. Let them become better players with every passing day rather than pointing out their weaknesses.

• Spend equal time with all players. It has come to light through various studies that coaches spend much more time with their top players (up to seven times more!).

• Be proactive in communicating the problem the moment you see it coming.

• Add force to the player’s confidence by harmonizing criticism with praise. Tip the balance more towards praise with players in coaching high school  soccer.

Believe my words. Your training programs will be immensely benefitted as a result of adopting these simple exercises.

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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.