Coaching High School Soccer: Uncover Ways To Increase Confidence

by admin on Friday, June 11th, 2010 | No Comments

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.

The players must promise themselves and accept confidence as an attribute to develop. When coaching youth soccer, illustrate this point by telling them the behaviors of two parrots sitting on either shoulder.

Out of the two, one has a positive behavior and he keeps telling the player to face the challenges head on by saying “You can do it.” The second one is a negative parrot that is always cautioning the player “You can’t do this.” That’s why it the player who has to make a choice between which parrot to follow.

Once the choice has been made, teach them to take responsibility for their actions. And this may be an everyday decision. 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

When it comes to soccer coaching, let it be known that blaming somebody or something else is a symptom 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.

When coaching high school soccer, condition the players to see every lost opportunity as a lesson and they should keep telling themselves “I’ll get the next one.”
Automatically, the confidence for the next strike overshadows 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. While football coaching, it is relatively easier to judge physical readiness than judging mental readiness.

To make such judgments easy, there is a need of searching clear messages. To check player’s capability to thrive in the game, it is necessary to browse their verbal and non verbal messages.

Confidence is the fruit of success. When you are completely satisfied with your work that you have done and when you are ready to face a pressure – cooker scenario which is anytime possible, you achieve success in soccer. The phrase “If you are not preparing to win, you are preparing to fail”, is used over and over again to trigger off the players.

Confidence is built on experience. The players must be accustomed to their doubts, mistakes, defeats and condemnation so as to establish the experience they need. The feeling of he or she having the knowledge, a little more know – how due to experience and thus, the thought process of planning the next step, prevails.

Make no mistake about it. 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.

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.