Soccer Edition 53

Welcome to the Soccer Newsletter.  Today’s subject matter is the willingness to take chances and be successful.

I have been working at camps much of this summer and am amazed at how many of the players are afraid to take chances because of the fear of making a mistake.  We work on individual moves to beat a player and rather then being willing to try new things and possibly fall and look foolish, they would rather not try the moves at all.  It’s such a marked contrast to some of the international players I have worked with at the college level who try new things and if they don’t work, they just shrug it off till the next time and are willing to try them again and again.  They don’t stop and become even more conservative because of the fear of looking “funny”.

Not only is a players unwillingness to try new things a great inhibitor of the game, but their unwillingness to exaggerate things really hold them back as well.  While some players will try a new move, they are not willing to really do it to the extent that is necessary to be successful because of the fear of looking wrong.  In many moves like a cut catch or V move, a shifting of the hips is necessary for them to be done correctly.  However, for whatever reason, players think that by really pivoting their hips, it makes them look funny and therefore do the move at half speed or without the correct movements.  In my opinion, they look funnier, doing the move incorrectly then they would if they did it the right way.

How can a coach overcome this fear of humiliation?  I think the first thing we need to do is laugh at ourselves as well as at the players.  If you want players to take chances and risk failure then we as coaches must do this as well.  If we want them to exaggerate a move, then we must be willing to do so in a demonstration as well and if we fall over or make a mistake, rather then making excuses for what happen, we must laugh at ourselves.  If the players see the coach make a mistake and laugh at himself, then it will be easier for them take this same chance of “failure”.  Also, when a player tries something and is not successful at it, rather then start right into telling them what they did wrong, congratulate them on taking the chance in the first place, then make whatever corrections are necessary.

The biggest reason that players don’t take more chances is that when they do, they are so accustomed to being benched or yelled at, that they don’t take any more chances.  In other words, the reason players don’t take more chances is because the coaches put them in a position to be afraid of failing.  Every time you see a player take a shot and then get yelled at for not making the right decision or for not getting their knee over the ball, we are discouraging them from taking any more chances.  Most players know what they did wrong when they hit a bad shot, rather then yell at them, encourage them to try it again another time.  Put them in an environment where they want to take chances and succeed and they just will do it.  Pull them out of the game for making a mistake or a bad decision and then will not take any more chances. 

In other words, if you want players to take more chances, then it is up to you as a coach to put them in an environment that encourages risk taking.  Lower the consequences of failure and you will see much more rewards in the future.

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Have a great day

Lawrence