I never thought that being a football coach for my 11-year-old son’s team would take up so much of my bandwidth. I can’t help it. It affects me and not always for the better.
I can’t get out of my head what one of the other coaches said to me yesterday at the end of a friendly match against another team from the club that we ended up losing 10:0 or more because I stopped counting the goals. “You have a lot of work ahead of you with this team.”
We are in the somewhat chaotic
Phase of change where new teams have to be formed. Not all the players were there yesterday and we haven’t played or trained much yet. But neither was the other team that beat us and we are supposed to be at the same level.
If you think about it with a cool head, losing 10:0 in training doesn’t mean anything and even less if you haven’t even started the season phone number library preparation. Being a person with emotions and competitiveness affects you. It’s not the players’ fault, it’s their coach’s fault in this case me.
I have understood one thing although I already knew it
At this age you have to keep working on the foundations. Football is passing and stopping the ball perfectly. Little else. At 11 years old and how to become a game developer? with the access to media that they have today at that age, they focus on the most glamorous part and think they have to master tricks without having that base. It is boring to train passing and stopping the ball compared to what they see in YouTube videos, TikTok or what their parents let them watch…
In the end, training a football team is very similar to forming a team in a company.
The bases have to be there
Personal organization: It is something line data that no one has ever taught us. Why do we assume that everyone knows how to organize themselves? Why haven’t they taught us this at school?
Knowledge and experience: This comes with “doing”. Also with delegating, training or at least giving time to self-train.
Motivation: How do you motivate teams? Through small victories. Everyone has to perceive that there is an improvement, that progress is being made. The perception has to be that one is right where one should be and that the alternatives are worse.