Successful Coach

Below are some basic guidelines I wanted to share with coaches to help have a successful season. Although there are very few concrete rules about how things should be done, these ideas will help a coach have a bigger impact on the players and provide a tremendous experience for everyone involved with the team. Like anything, a change or adjustment of the coach's approach must make sense for the coach, the players, and the parents and help the players learn, grow, and have fun playing the game.

It is Not Your Team

This might sound strange, but it is not your team. It is the kids’ team. It is the players’ team. As a coach, your responsibility is to manage that team to give the kids the best experience possible throughout the season and help each kid learn as much as possible about the game. In doing so, the hope is to deepen their love and passion for the game, and help them become life-long players and fans of soccer.

The fastest way to direct the team in the wrong direction is to try to do things that benefit the coach, but do very little to help the players. This can be anything from canceling practices due to your schedule, adding more games than training because it is easier to manage, or making decisions about playing time or positioning to try to secure wins to fill your trophy case or pad your ego.

Also, this approach makes the team something the players’ take ownership of through the season. When the kids know it is their team, they are more likely to go above and beyond to do what is best, not just for themselves, but for those around them to help everyone be successful. With that ownership and responsibility, it keeps the kids focused on what is important throughout the season… each other. They will focus on working together to achieve more than could be done alone.

Teach for the Season – Not Week to Week

We are all guilty as coaches of coaching week to week or practice to practice. We recognize things the kids need to work on during a game or training session, and plan our next training session to address those concerns. This is a very short-term way to plan your training sessions and manage the season for the players. Instead of going week to week with your team, can you plan what they should learn and develop over the course of the entire season or year?

Like a teacher in the classroom with learning goals or targets for their students, a coach should develop the learning goals and development process for the team. Where do you want the kids to be in 6 months? 12 months? Learning and developing skills cannot happen randomly each week by focusing on this topic, than that topic, than this other topic, and then maybe back to first topic again at some point. That is not the best way to help anyone learn anything.

Of course things will come up throughout the year that need more attention and should be built into the training sessions, but you can begin the year with a plan of what you will teach the kids during the season. Where do you start? How do you shape the path? And where will that path lead?

Know Your Players

As coaches, we all strive to learn more about the game. We seek out new activities, training exercises, and coaching techniques. This is very important to stay on top of the “best practices” used by the elite coaches around the world, and to stay on top of how the game changes over the years. This is critical to helping your players.

But none of that matters much if you do not know how to best reach your players. One of the most important things to learn as quickly as possible when a season begins is who your players are? Collectively and individually, who are they, how do they learn, what motivates them, who can be pushed one way versus another way, what do they do outside of soccer and how does that affect or relate back to the soccer field?

All the answers to these questions, and many others, are important information for a coach to have in order to properly prepare how to approach each training session and the way to manage the season. The more you know about your players the easier it is to build rapport and gain their trust which helps you be a more effective teacher of the game.

An important part of this is knowing, based on the players’ age and ability levels, how to plan an appropriate training session that fits their developmental and cognitive needs, strengths, and limitations. If you coach a U8 team or U16 team, there should be a stark contrast in the focus and approach with both of those age groups.

Know Your Parents

Every parent group I work with has been very different, and all needed to be handled accordingly. I do not mean that in a negative way, but knowing your “audience” helps you know how, when, and why to communicate with that audience to effectively keep everyone on the same page throughout the season.

All parents have different expectations for a soccer season, for their child, and of their child’s coach. Understanding these expectations and getting out in front of any issues before they become issues, helps the season run smoothly for everyone. I am not saying change your coaching style or do things differently on the field with the kids than you think is appropriate, but understanding how your parent group sees or perceives your actions can help you communicate more clearly the purpose of your actions throughout the season.

Parents can, and should, be allies during the season to help make the experience a great one for the kids. This process starts with the coach being completely transparent and open to dialogue with parents creating a collaborative effort to give the players what they need to be successful.

If you take a “them against me” approach to your parents, you can expect to have a very long season, and you will lose a piece of the puzzle needed to provide the best playing environment for the kids.

Know You

Look in a mirror and ask yourself, “Who am I?” Seriously, it may sound funny, but it is important to have a good understanding of the type of coach and person you are when it comes to managing the season. As coaches, we try to pull things from other coaches to try to use during the season. Whether it is a training session, team building activity, a way to communicate with the parents or players, or how to manage a game, no matter how great an idea or process it may be, it will ultimately fail if it does not fit who you are, your demeanor, and personality as a coach. Those great ideas, that you see work for other coaches, work for those coaches because they created them with themselves in mind.

Am I saying do not try to grow or adjust your coaching style as a coach, improve, or change the way you run a season? Absolutely not! We all should change and grow each year, but that growth and change has to be something that works with who we are as people too. Don’t try to fit a square peg in a round hole, but definitely try to find a better round peg and the best way use it.

Often coaches try new activities or management ideas that are good, but are not adjusted to fit the coach (or players) in order to use those new ideas effectively. As it is important to design training sessions that best fit your players’ needs, it is just as critical, that the training session allows the person running it to use their strengths to their potential to reach the players.

Arrive Early – Stay Late

If there is anything that shows the parents and the players that you are organized and planned out, it is being at practice early, with the field set up, waiting for the players to arrive. It shows another level of dedication and commitment to making sure each training session is meaningful and well-prepared for the players. Although it is not a reality all the time for some coaches with other work schedules, do your best to work out a way to be at practice before it starts.

Think about the visual image to the players and parents of two different scenarios. First one, the coach is at the field waiting for the kids to arrive, and the field is set up and ready for the session’s activities. As the kids arrive, the coach greets each player and gets the session started on time. The second one is vastly different, practice should be starting but the coach is racing from the parking lot to the field. The kids are already there and are waiting on the coach. The coach quickly drops his bags, hurries to set up the first activity, and calls the players in to get started. Now, even if the coach has a session prepared, how different do you think the session would go based on the way it was started when compared to the coach who was early?

When training is over, it is a bad image to see a coach race for the parking or beat the kids off the field. As practice ends, debrief the session with the players, and make yourself available to the players if anyone needs to ask questions or discuss anything. Make yourself available to the parents too. It is a great time to answer questions about the training session or their child. It may actually save you time versus having to receive an email later and respond (probably more than once).

Being early and staying late sends a great message to both the parents and the players about your commitment and dedication to your craft.

Communicate – ALL THE TIME

I’d prefer to be accused of over communicating versus under communicating with my players and parents. The more open and continuous the chain of dialogue between everyone involved with a team the more information everyone has about what is going on with the team and parents are knowledgeable about how their child is doing.

A coach’s biggest mistake, with both players and parents, is ASSUMING something done or said makes complete and total sense to everyone else, and it was interpreted exactly how the coach planned. Frankly, it is never the case. The more information provided to explain what is being done with the players and team over the course of the season, the less room there is for assumptions, or players and parents filling in the blanks with their own answers about what should be happening.

Most of the time, it is never a good situation with a coach that either refuses to openly communicate with parents and players, or just assumes what is being done should make sense to everyone else so there is no need for additional clarification.

Be Flexible but Don’t Break

With all that said, start the season with a set of guidelines and standards for all involved, including yourself. Both the players and parents should have a full understanding of what they should expect from you over the course of the year. Now guidelines and standards rarely work when they are chiseled in stone. With the standards and guidelines in mind, when presented with different situations throughout the season the decisions you make should be in line with the goal of those principles.

If you are too rigid, you may make decisions in line with what you set forth at the beginning of the year, but really does not make a lot of sense based on a situation that you did not foresee. You should always be trying to do what is in the best interest of the players and team. When sticking to rules that force a decision that is not in the best interest of a player, the unwillingness to be flexible will actually create a situation that goes against the reason for having the rules in the first place.

This does not mean to cave on everything. In fact, that would be grossly ineffective on the other side of the spectrum of team management. I am just suggesting that is prudent to analyze each situation and make the best decision possible to help the player and team. This may force a coach to be more flexible, but it should never force the coach to break away from a core belief in what is best for the player and team’s learning and development.

...Before the next season begins, consider some of these key areas about how you will manage the team and players’ experience. Hopefully some of these items will help you plan a season that is meaningful and enjoyable one for all involved. With all the above in mind, one of the most important things a coach can do is have fun with the season. Show the kids how much you enjoy the game, how much you enjoy coaching, and how much you enjoy watching them play and learn. Your passion and enthusiasm, the fun you are having, will permeate throughout the team.