Youth Soccer Psychology

The psychological needs of a youth player are different from the older player … but they still exist and need to be considered.

The older player may be worrying about upcoming tryouts and making the team, or a girlfriend watching on the sideline or any number of outside factors.  This usually means a more complex psychological reality for the older player that must be dealt with.  The youth player, on the other hand, usually has fewer needs … but they are just as critical to that player.

I am no psychologist, but I have had extensive experience with and have done much research on developing the youth player.   In my experience, the youth player desperately needs two things … reinforced confidence and the “always do your best” attitude adjustment.

Reinforced confidence.  One of the unique things about coaching a youth player is that they don’t yet have enough experience to judge themselves properly on the field.  This is both the source of some frustration and the source of a coaches’ (and parents’) greatest opportunity to help them develop confidence and grow their skills.

Confidence in the youth player is a very shaky thing because they usually aren’t sure if they should be confident or not.  They will compare themselves to others and often not in a very helpful way.  They will either tend to compare themselves to the lowest common denominator and therefore think they are absolute geniuses and don’t need to work on anything further.  Or they will compare themselves to the absolute best (like Ronaldo or Messi) and think they will never be able to do anything right.

The coaches job is to teach skills and then reinforce confidence through specific praise of correct use of the taught skill.  As coaches, we should also prepare the “environment” of teaching to find those opportunities as much as possible.  As an example, think of your weakest player.  Do you praise their effort as much as you do that of your strongest player?  You should be praising them AT LEAST as much as your strongest player.  You might think that that is impossible … they simply aren’t as good.  That may be true, but you can shape your teaching environment to praise them far more than you likely are.  Give him smaller goals that are more attainable, and then jump on it as soon as you see successful application.  Instead of wanting all your player to be able to strike a banana kick to the top right corner, be content and delighted when a few of them kick a “dribbler” that barely rolls into the goal.

This kind of built or reinforced confidence actually works.  The player will get excited about learning new things and actually succeeding.  The growth curve for your weakest players is almost always more rapid and steep than with your strongest players once you get them moving on it.  In this way you start to “even out” the overall skill set of your team and find that everybody is having more fun and winning more games.

I have personally seen this happen time and again.  One of the clearest examples happened just this year when one of my bottom 3 players catapulted himself to become one of our top 3 most valuable players by the end of it … in just 1 year!  We started with more manageable skill set attainment and once he got the taste of success … he couldn’t wait to keep on going!

“Always DO your best”.  I don’t mean to “always be your best” … that’s too much pressure.  But “giving it your all, right now” is not only doable … it’s fun.  Too many youth players are afraid to even try if they think a loss (or humiliation) is imminent.

Playing the top team?  ”Coach, I bet we lose this game.”

Going against the top player in a practice drill?  ”Coach, why are you making me go against him?”

As the coach, you have to stop that kind of defeatist self-talk.  It does not do them or the team any good.  Encourage them to see the challenge in every obstacle they face.  It’s fun … and it’s only a game, after all.  Help them understand that if they do their best, a loss doesn’t matter … it’s simply an opportunity to see what the next step in the evolution of their skills is likely going to be.  After all, if you do your best and still get beat … what does that mean?  Only that other team has developed more advanced skills than us and how great is it to see what we can become with a bit more work!  Playing the top teams can become a challenge your boys will want at every opportunity.  And pretty soon they’ll be asking you to set up some friendlies with the top teams in older divisions, just to see how they do!

And that really is about it for the youth player.  Help them build confidence and encourage them to see the fun in challenge.  Do that for a year or two and you’ll have a premier team on your hands!