Youth Soccer Coaches Horror Stories
Most youth soccer organizations are started and operated by volunteers. There are many like the Utah Ute football conference in Salt Lake City, where the League and the Clubs are very well run, very well organized and where they place a lot of importance on coaching. On the other hand, there are other organizations where the leadership is self-centered, with many clubs having priorities that make little sense.
An obvious example comes to mind. I got a desperate call last week from a trainer in Florida. His club had four teams. Two of the organization’s teams didn’t score a touchdown last season. The other team had very bad results. On the other hand, our hero’s team ended up going to the playoffs, narrowly losing only 3 games all season. His team had only 14 very average players and he had to compete against much better teams that had between 25 and 28 players. The team our friend took over had very similar results to the other 3 teams at the club the year before he took over this team. . His parents loved him, 8 different kids scored touchdowns, all 14 kids carried the ball at least once, everyone who played for him last year signed up to play again this year. You’d think the managers would give this trainer a medal and parade down Main Street, right? If not, at least find out what he was doing differently from the other 3 teams and try to replicate his success, right?
What are those people thinking?
The head of this organization felt that the reason the organization’s teams had done so poorly was because they “were not tough enough.” This man requirement for the upcoming season is a universal practice plan for all 4 teams that places great importance on “hardening” players. Now, according to our friend, the 3 teams in this club that did so poorly last season, all they did was ‘toughen up the kids’ during practice. While our friend was working on form and freezing football plays, power hour, and birddog drills, the other teams were running their kids until they were sick or playing most of practice.
Keep in mind that the only team in the organization that had any success was a team that used my practice system and methodology, which places great importance on progression and teaching the perfect fundamentals. As many of you who are using my system know, we do a significant amount of shaping, tuning and freezing work during our practices. We strongly believe that children will only play aggressively if they first know exactly what their responsibility is for each move in each circumstance and secondly if they feel 100% sure of the technique they are supposed to execute at that moment. Put them in a scheme like mine where even players of average skill can add value on every play and even excel and you have a winner. Confidence in role, responsibility, and technique puts children in a position to be potentially aggressive. Add in a method where you facilitate contact for the kids to gain confidence in their techniques and ability to play physical soccer, and you have a team that plays “tough” and aggressive. Obviously, we cover exactly how to do it step by step in the book.
The study
In my two-year study of the best and worst youth soccer teams in the area and the country, I consistently found that the underperforming teams almost always spent about half of their practice time scrimmaging at full speed. In a good deal of the rest of their practice, they often did a lot of full contact “drills” at full speed or “hardening up” or conditioning type drills. On the other hand, successful teams almost universally made few fights at full throttle, instead working hard to hone fundamentals and accountability.
what really worked
My personal teams over the last 8 seasons have gone 78-5 and we do very little full contact and full speed scrimmage drills after “bleeding” the kids’ noses to get the feel of contact in the first few weeks. We use our valuable practice time to hone technique and responsibilities, without slamming kids to the ground “hardening” them. In those 83 games we were only beaten once. We were never outhit in any non-league or non-state tournament game. Our kids love contact and crave contact because they have great technique, we limit it and only give it as a “reward” and because the kids can “play fast” because they know their work in our forward, backward, and forward scheme. to the sides. Children speed to and through contact because they know that with proper technique they will not hurt themselves and will succeed. You don’t get that by rushing kids into contact before perfecting the basic form. Once you’ve perfected the base form, you move on to adding speed, angles, and changes of direction, but you do it in a progression with adjustments. Everything is explained in the book and the DVDs.
Great example of what NOT to do
Here is an example of what some youth coaches are doing, this person I am sure is a very nice and well meaning person BUT he is not a very good football manager. Can you tell me what’s wrong with this image? The Bad Training Example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WB0X-G4A-Ic
What’s wrong with that image?
The coach has obviously not taught the kids how to execute a form tackle, their heads are on the wrong side 70% of the time, their heads are down 60% of the time, their knees are not bent 75% of the time . time, they don’t finish 80% of the time, they don’t have a consistent touchpoint 100% of the time. They throw the ball back instead of running it back with only one ball in the drill and run through the drill instead of around it, using up to 30% of the drill time. They get a repeat every 45-50 seconds. This drill should be done with one repetition every 10-12 seconds with multiple balls or no balls, to the point where the kids and you, the coach, are breathing a little heavy. The kids are bored and the drill takes a lot of practice time, but it could be easily corrected. Obviously, these kids have never been through a tackling exercise in the form of an angle snap and freeze.
the greatest sin
The worst thing in my mind is that coaches praise kids who are obviously doing the exercise incorrectly and in many cases unsafely. I am all for praising kids for every little thing, right down to tying their shoelaces correctly, BUT it is dangerous and counterproductive to praise them for incorrect boarding. This is a great example of not doing a drill and a great example of wasting practice time with little to no tangible results. At least those reading this post can benefit from how NOT to do a tackling drill.
I realize these kids are very young, but I’m not sure what they learned during this “soccer practice.” These kids can’t tackle well or do anything soccer related well.