About five years ago, I went to the local park to play basketball. There was no one at the courts so I decided to watch the rec soccer games at the adjoining field while I waited. One of the games involved a bunch of really little kids, 6 and 7 year olds I imagine. Every time one of them touched the ball, their coach would yell out instructions. "Pass it to Tommy," "Dribble, okay now shoot," "Try and get the ball." I'm not sure if he even paused to take a breath. He was yelling every second. Not angrily, perhaps, but he was yelling constantly nonetheless.
This was a salutory moment for me. I decided then and there that if I ever became a coach, which eventually I did, this guy was going to serve as my model. My model on how NOT to coach kids.
This man, however well-intentioned, was not coaching. He was giving instructions. There is a significant difference. He was not teaching his kids how to play soccer. He was teaching them how to follow orders.
And that, I think, is the fundamental problem with the way we deal youth sports in North America. We put too much emphasis on winning and losing and too little emphasis on the kids having fun and improving as individual players and team players.
Some people think you have to choose between letting your kids have fun and them getting better as athletes. I hold the opposite position I firmly believe that if a kid is not having fun, he will not get better as a player. He will find it dreary and will not be motivated to improve himself. If someone's ordering you around all the time, you're going to get tired of it.
I challenge you to find any great athlete that truly loathed his or her sport or dreaded it. Becoming a great athlete requires a lot of time and committment and motivation. If you come to hate your sport or if you despise going to practice, what kind of motivation do you have? Great athletes become great primarily because of something that comes from inside of them. Not because of coaches and not because of parents. Parents and coaches can help channel the athlete's desire, but they can't make the athlete great if that desire isn't there.
To me, it's imperative that practices and games be enjoyable. Maybe not every single second, but kids shouldn't dread coming. If they are misery, then what's the point of the whole exercise? Enjoyment is the motivation to work hard.
Soccer is a sport. All of my kids are there because they want to be there. In youth leagues, they actually pay to be there. I don't understand the mentality of some coaches that thinks that yelling and screaming and belittling kids (or anyone not being compensated for the task) is going to motivate them. It's one thing to get annoyed once in a while; I think all coaches do at some point during the season. But to consistently be a ranting and raving lunatic... on the off chance it motivates one kid, it's going to alienate the rest.
I push my soccer players to become better at what they do. I believe I do that by sharing my knowledge of the Beautiful Game and showing my love of it. In doing so, I hope they develop the same passion. It's that passion, not me saying they suck just because they make a bad pass, that's going to help them improve. One thing that many coaches don't realize that if a kid doesn't want to get better at a sport, you can't force him. You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink.
Americans play a style of soccer that's very dependent on hard work and athleticism and less on ball skills and creativity. It's getting better. American soccer is certainly light years ahead technically of what it was 10 years ago. But we have a century long tradition of disinterest in soccer and that's not going to be overcome in a fortnight.
One of the things I emphasize to my kids, especially the attacking players, is to not be afraid of mistakes. Fear breads caution and caution makes for some boring, ugly soccer totally devoid of any flair. Fear means you play not to lose rather than playing to win. Fear is the enemy of skill.
I remind them that they have only played for a few years, if that, and that they are only 12 or 13 or 14 years old. I assure them that I don't expect them to be Pele or Maradona or Maldini. If they were, they'd be much higher in the system than on my team. I tell my players that if they go through practice without making a mistake, they're almost certainly not trying hard enough.
I never get furious at my kids for anything other than unsportsmanslike behavior. If they make a technical mistake or a bad decision, I explain to them, privately where possible, their mistake and what they should do the next time. I may get frustrated, but I don't get overtly angry at missed shots or bad passes or turnovers. Because if they do those things, it means I need to do a better job teaching them. I want them to respect me. I don't want them to fear me. I think they respect me precisely because they don't fear me.
Sometimes I give general instructions like 'use the wings' or 'keep the passes short,' but I don't yell out specific instructions like who to pass it to or when to shoot the ball or when to overlap. If they make a wrong decision, then I take them aside and say, "Next time, you might want to try x" or "You've got to shoot quickly in the penalty area." Once they've made the mistake, they're more receptive to the correction.
I want them to learn to think for themselves. Any pet dog can follow orders, but I want them to feel the game in their bones. If I can become superfluous during a game except for making substitutions, then I've done my job.
I also give all of my players a significant amount of playing time every game. It's an integral part of my philosophy.Some coaches disagree with this school of thought. But to me, there's nothing more disheartening than watching a soccer game where a couple of kids never play unless their team is winning by a ton or losing by a ton. Playing time is the carrot/stick you use to motivate your players to work hard in practice. If a kid works hard in practice and doesn't do anything else to screw up, then he or she deserves at least a modest amount of playing time. Certainly at the pre-university amateur levels.
Some coaches contend, "They can learn as much watching the game from the bench as they can playing." This rationalization is self-serving garbage. I do agree that you can learn SOMETHING from watching the game for a little while, but that becomes worthless if you never have an opportunity to apply what you learned in a real game setting. Practice is no substitute for what you can learn in game situations. When you play in a game situation, it's the ultimate challenge and you learn about yourself because games have an intensity that no practice or scrimmage can match.
This mentality is also counterproductive for the coach. A coach can also learn something about his players by giving them, even the lesser regarded ones, playing time. And I mean real playing time, not just in the last five minutes of a soccer game when the score is 6-0.
Every season, at least one kid that I don't think will be that good ends up making a far greater impact than I expected. Maybe it's because necessity forced me to play him in a position neither of us thought of using him in. Maybe it's because when faced with the challenge of a real game situation, he rose to that challenge and showed something he didn't show in practice. Maybe he worked so hard in practice and at home, he improved significantly. If I hadn't given those kids much playing time in competitive situations, their talents would've remained hidden and the team would've been weaker for it.
These thoughts occured to me after two events. The first was when I read of an idiot basketball coach in New Jersey who gave one of his players a "Crybaby Award" trophy at a so-called awards' banquet. The kid's heinous crime: always pleading to get into games. Rather than getting brownie points for determination, a love of the game and a burning desire to play, the kid (an honor student) gets humiliated in front of his teammates. The coach, who should never work with kids again, apallingly blamed it on his "lack of experience as a coach and as a teacher." Or maybe a lack of experience as a decent human being?
The other event that triggered these thoughts was my kids' game on Sunday. The other team had a couple of those coaches who were shouting instructions ever 0.56 seconds. It was annoying the heck out of me and I felt bad for their kids. In the second half, one of their forwards had a breakaway and didn't get a very good shot off. The other coach, a master of the bloody obvious, yelled out the most illuminating 'advice' imaginable: "Don't shoot it right at the goalie."
Now that's great coaching, isn't it?
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