Some Thoughts on Coaching Youth Soccer

When I was just starting out as a soccer coach - fall of 2005 was my first season, I believe - I literally knew nothing about how to teach anything - let alone the game - to young players. Furthermore, my knowledge of soccer was questionable at best.

My first coaching stint, so to speak, was as an assistant to a former coach of mine with a U12 boys recreational team. I had no idea what I was doing and my former coach basically did all the coaching - I was there to demonstrate and to connect with the kids.

My lack of education and experience handling a group of young players was very intimidating, and I quickly found myself overwhelmed. I decided to assist with an older select team - one that my brother played on - and also included a couple of former teammates as this was a U19-U15 boys team.

This was equally overwhelming at times, as I found myself caught between my role as a coach and my relationships with the players who were close in age. But I persisted, and soon found myself in a head coaching role a couple of years later.

It was at this time that I began to discover a multitude of resources out there to help coaches. Reedswain was the first, then as I began to connect with other coaches in my home town, I discovered Success in Soccer. Finally, when I took my National "D" License through California Youth Soccer - North, my instructor recommended World Class Coaching.

I had an embarrassment of riches. All these books and magazines, coming to my front door every month. It was AMAZING!

BUT, looking back, I still had no idea how to coach.

I thought that coaching was about putting a session together and letting the players experience the game with certain restrictions on the play designed to achieve a specific goal or training theme.

I was wrong.

I have learned a lot since then. My hands-on experience as a coach has helped me learn and refine my craft. Additionally, my educational experience in the fields of psychology, education, and kinesiology has provided an empirically backed platform for my current methodology.

Probably one of the most important things I have learned is that it isn't the session you put together, so much as the quality of the feedback you provide during that session. Coaching is more about observing the game, and stepping in to provide quality (over quantity) bits of advice to players to help them see and understand the game in a more advanced way.

For example, you CANNOT run a session on maintaining possession without correcting the little details like how to receive the ball, weight of pass, where to move off the ball to support teammates, and so on. Letting the players play a possession game by themselves will not necessarily teach possession. In fact, poor habits like receiving the ball with the wrong foot or not opening their body to the field might even be reinforced, especially if some of the players are athletic enough to get away with technical mistakes.

Yes, the game in itself without parent or coach involvement can be a very good learning tool. However, in order for young players to truly understand the game, we must strive for perfection (which means we always have room for improvement) from the early stages of development.

I have seen examples of many types of coaches in my time coaching. Some give fantastic coaching points to players and demand a high level of play; others are content with letting the small details go - the very things that will make a HUGE difference! Others have a great understanding of the game, but spend far too much time stopping play to give long winded coaching points.

During my studies at California State University, Long Beach while I was pursuing my masters, I came across a number of studies that supported the points below. These points are related to the feedback or "coaching points" that all soccer coaches should be able to provide for the players that they work with, as well as the structure of the sessions themselves.

In order to produce successful players, coaches must be able to competently do the following:

• Give feedback relating to the topic at hand. Furthermore, this feedback should focus on the process, rather than the result (Young & Schmidt, 1992). If your session is on possession, then all feedback should relate to technical (quality of first touch, the pass, etc.) or tactical (where to move to help your team maintain possession, where the pressure from the defending team is coming from, etc.) aspects of soccer.

• Provide quality, CONCISE coaching points. Keep it short, so that the message is clear and make sure that any information given is understood. You don't have to take five minutes to illustrate your message. That time is better served with actual activity. Too much information can actually serve as a crutch, and cause players to rely on outside information to make decisions, rather than developing into players who can read each situation on their own and respond accordingly (Anderson et. al, 2005).

• Allow mistakes to happen, but be prepared to paint the picture for the players so that they can understand WHY you want them to do something a certain way. For example, SHOW the players what can happen if they close their body to the field when receiving a pass (they can only play back the way the ball came from) and what can happen if the allow the ball to come across their body (they can play in multiple directions). In order to be successful, players must develop and strengthen soccer specific concepts or "schemas" that govern how their body receives and responds to information during various scenarios (Schmidt, 1975). The mistakes that happen during the trial and error involved in the formation of those schemas are crucial to that process.

• Challenge the players. Each player will be at a different stage in development. Something that is easy for one player, may be difficult for another. Even your top player can be challenged if you ask him or her to use the weaker foot. Schmidt and Bjork suggest that more challenging "practices" allow for great retention of the task at hand (1992).

Some quick thoughts about training sessions (based more on my experience, rather than being empirically supported):

• Ask questions. Keep the players engaged by asking them to think critically of the game. WHY are we doing this? WHAT can you do better? 

• Even at the older ages, players need to be participating in the activities. If you have players waiting their turn to participate in parts of the session, ask yourself if you can set up another grid. If the space doesn't allow for that, choose an activity that allows for maximum involvement.

• Just because a session is breaking down, doesn't mean it has been a waste of time. You can change something to make it better. Increase/decrease space, touches, or numbers. Move on to a different activity. Have a backup plan in case the numbers are different than what you planned for.

I am proud to say that I have not "made it" as a coach. While I might be miles above where I was back in 2005, I still have a long way to go.

I learn something new every day, whether it is from coaching resources or simply watching other coaches. Social media has provided me with a great network of quality coaches who are not in my local area, who I am learning from every time we interact. While I might not always agree with everything I see or hear, I go into everything with an open mind.

As the great Albert Einstein once said, “The mind that opens to a new idea never returns to its original size.” I wonder if he ever played soccer...


As always, I welcome any feedback or discussion.


Sources:

Anderson, D. I., Magill, R. A., Sekiya, H., & Ryan, G. (2005). Support for an explanation of the guidance effect in motor skill learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, 37(3), 231-238.

Schmidt, R.A. (1975). A schema theory of discrete motor skill learning. Psychological Review, 82, 225-260.

Schmidt, R. A. & Bjork, R. A. (1992). New conceptualizations of practice: Common principles in three paradigms suggest new concepts for training. Psychological Science, 3(4), 207-217.

Young, D. E. & Schmidt, R. A. (1992). Augmented kinematic feedback for motor learning. Journal of Motor Behavior, 24(3), 261-273.