How to Become an Effective Soccer Coach

If you love soccer, you are one of millions of people around the world with the same passion. Soccer is considered the most popular sport in the world, especially among children.

Because soccer is relatively easy to learn — you really only need to know how to kick the ball in the beginning stages — children love to play this sport. As they learn soccer moves and advance their skills, they often attend summer soccer camps, become part of youth soccer leagues, and compete in youth soccer tournaments.

But no soccer league or camp can run without proper coaches. Being a coach, you learn how to teach kids soccer, the ins and outs of the game, and how to effectively manage a team.

Here are a few other things coaches must know how to do in order to be successful.

• Inspire. All players will come to a camp, league, or team with varying degrees of interest, skill, and passion. It will be the coach’s duty to take all of these differences into consideration, and ignite a spark within each player to want to improve, and become the best player possible. This ability to inspire other players is what sets great coaches apart from mediocre ones.
• Support. Players are often concerned that they are not good at particular skills, or that they will never get to the level they want to reach. Coaches must be able to help players feel as if they will always be able to reach their potential, and provide them with the necessary support to achieve those goals. During games and practice, this type of support will be necessary to boost a player’s self-confidence. The higher a player’s self-esteem is, the better he or she will perform.
• Discipline. Not only should a coach be able to provide players with understanding, support, and patience, but he or she should be able to instill a sense of discipline in students. Coaches must insist that players go through sufficient training, and push their players to continuously practice their skills in order to improve. Essentially, without a little tough love, a coach may not see improvement in players.

So, learning how to teach kids soccer is only one part of becoming an outstanding coach. It takes effective communication, practice, and a willingness to cooperate with all types of players.