I don’t know if you know this but communication is the most important element to succeed in Coaching high school soccer. The term coaching signifies the art of communication. It explains what you want of people in such a way that allows them to perform it.

In soccer coaching, I’ve come to notice that generally the former players have assumed the responsibility of being coaches. Yet, there are a number of issues that they are forced to handle. Majority of these issues come up due to communication lags. There are some major communication issues that you must understand as a coach to make your job easy and more effective.

These are described for you one at a time.

When coaches watch their kids playing, they tend to become emotional. They tend to become spectators rather than analytical observers. They ignore the important facets of the game that could improve the team’s performance significantly. They therefore lose the opportunity to have an objective conversation aimed at winning the game.

Though the coaches today are complete professionals fully acquainted with the game, they lack communication training. For instance; most coaches don’t use videos or flip charts in soccer coaching because they don’t know about them. The daily practice gets monotonous when there are communication gaps even though the coach may be technically very sound.

Coaching Soccer

In coaching high school soccer, communication becomes all the more important because the kids start to understand the game quite well. They have been performing soccer drills on the same lines for quite some time, although at different levels. One effective method is to continuously vary the format of training in order to avoid the repetition of boring messages.

It’s a fact that sometimes the coaches completely forget that it is people who perform in the practice sessions. They get so absorbed in the training and coaching as a process that they lose their ground. 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:

• All messages that come from the coach are very important. So ensure that they are understood completely and correctly.

• Your messages should have a positive impact on the players to put their best foot forward. Allow them to grow and become better players instead of highlighting their flaws.

• All players should get an equal opportunity to sit with you and learn. Studies indicate that coaches spend relatively more time with star players in team (up to seven times more!).

• Don’t wait for the problems to arise to sort them out.

• Add force to the player’s confidence by harmonizing criticism with praise. In coaching high school soccer, the balance should be a bit more towards the praise.

Accept as true. Application of these simple strategies to your training programs will have far reaching results for your team.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

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: Soccer Coaching