Whether you are just a new coach or you have just started to
consider the idea of coaching soccer, there are a few tips that you
are going to find helpful. For one thing you have to work on
your personal skills. You need to be friendly, outgoing and
caring if you want to coach soccer. You need to be friendly
and outgoing so children will be interested and want to be more
involved in their soccer lessons.
When you are teaching the kids on your team different drills,
make sure that you do not try cramming everything into their brain
all at once. This is going to force too much information on
them and they will just end up overloaded. Kids have a lot
going on in their lives with schoolwork and other things so you
want to make sure they have time to breathe outside of their soccer
lessons. Usually having practices just once or twice a week
is best so they will have time for everything else in their lives
and will end up enjoying soccer practice more as a result.
You also have to consider that the children have their school
work and other things in life going on so you do not want their
soccer practice interfering with that. The group of youth
soccer is the most popular because this is when most parents get
their child into the sport. This group consists of children
aged 9-12 and is one of the most important groups for soccer
because is where the children learn most of their skills.
There are a few really effective drills that should be included if
you are coaching soccer for this age group of kids.
This is a drill that works on the defending, midfield and
attacking principles of the players. These are all key areas
that youth soccer players need to be strengthening. Using
only their feet to maintain control of the ball, the player needs
to work on their defensive skills by keeping the ball from other
players doing whatever they can. The “pirates” are the
players that are set up in a sort of line and who are trying to
take the ball away.
For another effective drill you want to have two groups of
players, with an equal number of players on each team. There
must be the same number of players on each “team” and then one will
work the offensive while the other works the defensive. Now
one group will work offensively to try and pass the ball around to
different players while the other team tries to work the
defensive. This teaches the players to work together and also
allows them to learn different passing techniques that are
effective and which they can use in their next game to beat their
real opponents.
