Coaching Soccer For Dummies

Greg Bach

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780471773818
• eBook ISBN: 9781118052815
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Biological Sciences
• Subtopic: Sport & Exercise Science
• Index: Biological Sciences

Packed with drills and tips for practice and game days

The fun and easy way(r) to kick-start your soccer coaching skills

Volunteering as a youth soccer coach can be a great experience, both for you and your squad. But what if you've never coached before? Don't worry! This friendly guide explains soccer rules, shows you how to approach coaching, and gives you practical pointers on improving your team's soccer skills and encouraging good sportsmanship.

Discover how to

• Understand soccer rules
• Develop a coaching philosophy
• Teach soccer fundamentals
• Run great practices
• Lead your team during a game
• Communicate effectively with parents

Part I

Getting Started Coaching Soccer

In this part . . .

B efore you take the field with your young troops for the first time, do yourself, and your team, a big favor by diving into some behind-the-scenes homework that will lay the foundation for a smooth-running season. The homework includes outlining your coaching philosophy, understanding how your league operates, and learning the basic rules of the sport. You find all the information to get your season headed in the right direction in this part.

Chapter 1

Teaching Soccer to Children

In This Chapter

Preparing to coach

Planning for your practices and games

Coaching your own child

Congratulations on your decision to coach a youth soccer team this season. You’re embarking on a wonderful journey that will be filled with many special moments that both you and your players — regardless of their age or skill level — will remember for the rest of your lives.

Before you step on the field, you need to be aware that you’re taking on a very important role. How you manage the youngsters on your team, and the way you interact with them during practices and games, affects how they feel about the sport and even themselves for years to come. How you handle the lengthy list of responsibilities that comes with the job either helps them develop an unquenchable passion for the game or drains their interest in ever participating again.

All you need — besides a whistle and clipboard — is some good information to guide you through the season. In this chapter, you find useful, straightforward insight and tips to help you and your team have a safe, fun, and rewarding season.

Doing Your Homework

Whether you volunteered to coach youth soccer this season because you want to spend more time with your child or because the league has a shortage of coaches and you’re willing to step forward, you’re accepting a responsibility that you can’t take lightly. Before you roll out the soccer balls at your first practice, you have plenty of work to do behind the scenes to ensure that the season gets off to a smooth start.

Working with — and not against — parents

The overwhelming majority of parents with children involved in organized youth soccer programs are a supportive and caring group who want only the best for their children. Of course, parents in the minority can turn out to be a source of season-long aggravation that you may be forced to deal with. You can head off many potential problems by gathering the parents together before you begin the season and laying the ground rules on what you expect in terms of behavior during games, as well as their roles and responsibilities.

Coaches and parents finding ways to work together — the adult form of teamwork — is a formula that produces tremendous benefits for the youngsters. Coaches and parents who clash over everything from playing time to why Junior isn’t getting to play sweeper spoil the experience for that child, and quite possibly others as well, when the negativity seeps into the team’s practice sessions and envelops game day.

With parents, keep the following in mind:

Be proactive with them. Outlining your expectations and coaching methods before the season paints a clear picture to parents about how you plan to handle the season. When parents hear firsthand that you’re committed to skill development over winning and that you adhere to the league’s equal-playing-time rule, you leave no room for petty squabbles over how much playing time their children receive. If you don’t clarify these issues for parents well in advance, you’re asking for a heap of trouble — and you’ll get it, too. In Chapter 2, we help you develop your coaching philosophy and become familiar with your league so that you can clearly communicate these points to the parents.

Involve them. Parents invest a lot of time and money in their child’s soccer experience, and being included (instead of simply watching practice from the car or dropping their youngster off and then running errands) makes it far more worthwhile to them and their child. Parents can do more than bring treats after the game, too. Find ways to involve them at your practices, and recruit the right ones to assist you on game day; doing so helps you turn the season into a rewarding one for everyone involved. Throughout the book, you can find tips on boosting parental involvement, from practice drills that have team parents sticking around (see Chapter 6) to working with parents when you take a step up the coaching ladder and graduate to travel teams (see Chapter 20).

Communicate with them. Besides a preseason parents meeting (which you can read all about in Chapter 4), keep the communication lines open all season long. Talk to the parents about the kids’ progress; share your thoughts on where they really make improvements; offer suggestions for things they can do to help their youngsters develop in other areas; and check in from time to time to find out whether their children are having fun playing for you. Including parents in all facets of the season is the right thing to do and the smart thing to ensure that their children have positive experiences. In fact, we suggest that you meet 1-on-1 with each parent as part of your midseason progress review (see Chapter 8).

Despite your best efforts, problems may arise with parents. Our advice is to remain calm and in control of your emotions, and never allow situations to escalate. Check out Chapter 19, where we help you troubleshoot this issue and other problems coaches are most likely to face throughout the season.

Deciphering rules and mastering terminology

You’ve taken the job of teaching kids the world’s most popular sport, and if you’re like many volunteer coaches today, chances are pretty good that you never played soccer growing up. Therefore, to fulfill your responsibilities, you have to get a good handle on the basics of the game and be able to explain rules, introduce terminology, and teach strategies to your young players. Sound complicated? It isn’t; it just takes a little time and effort on your part to learn some of the quirky rules (like offside) and some of the terms (like corner kicks and indirect free kicks) that are at the heart of this great game. We open up the rulebook in Chapter 3 and cover all the terms that you need to know. And we concentrate on the skills, techniques, and strategies that you need to pass along to your kids throughout Parts II and III of this book. Whether you need to brush up on fundamental skills for a beginning team or work out a defensive formation when you play against that high-octane older squad, we have you covered.

One of the most important steps you can take is find out what special rules your league operates under. Quite often, the rules that leagues utilize vary depending on the age and experience level of the players. Everything from the size of the field to which rules are enforced changes from community to community. Knowing these rules — and sharing them with your players — makes a tremendous difference in your players’ enjoyment of the sport.

Taking the Field

Coaching youth soccer is all about the kids, their smiles, and their eagerness to get started learning from you and developing skills under you. What you say and do from day one through the course of...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Getting Started Coaching Soccer
• Chapter 1: Teaching Soccer to Children
• Chapter 2: Getting Organized
• Chapter 3: Getting Up to Speed with the Basics
• Part II : Building Your Coaching Skills
• Chapter 4: Meet the Parents
• Chapter 5: Getting to Know Your Team
• Chapter 6: Running a Great Practice
• Chapter 7: Getting Your Game On
• Chapter 8: Refining Your Approach at Midseason
• Part III : Beginning and Intermediate Soccer
• Chapter 9: Teaching the Fundamentals
• Chapter 10: Fundamental Drills
• Chapter 11: Coaching Offense 101
• Chapter 12: Coaching Defense 101
• Chapter 13: Coaching Restarts
• Chapter 14: Taking Practice Drills to the Next Level
• Part IV : Advanced Soccer Strategies
• Chapter 15: Coaching Offense 201
• Chapter 16: Coaching Defense 201
• Chapter 17: Implementing Advanced Drills
• Part V : The Extra Points
• Chapter 18: Keeping Kids Healthy and Injury Free
• Chapter 19: Dealing with Common Coaching Challenges
• Chapter 20: Taking Your Show on the Road
• Part VI : The Part of Tens
• Chapter 21: Ten Ways to Make the Season Memorable
• Chapter 22: Ten Ways to End the Season on a High Note