When you’re coaching a team of young football players it’s great to encourage players’ individual skills and abilities but make sure you emphasise that no one player will win the game because winning matches requires effective teamwork!
Key soccer coaching tips
The first and most important rule to coach your players is that Teams Win Games. These are three simple, but very powerful, words that lie are at the heart of successful youth soccer coaching.
Once each player understands and remembers this, your job as a youth soccer coach will get a whole lot easier.
Coaching your players to understand this concept will help counteract the media messages and headlines they’re exposed to all the time in magazines, on the internet and on TV implying that individual celebrity players are the winners of a match.
This rule sets the record straight about how games are actually won – through the efforts of the whole team.
What to say to your players:
“Soccer is a team game. No one player can win a game on their own. Even if it seems like that, from what you read or from what you see on TV.”
“You can, and should, make a big difference to how well your team plays.”
“You can’t win games on your own. Only teams can win games.”