The best teams have a number of things in common:
1) Nobody is more important than the team!
2) Everyone believes in each other!
3) They do not beat themselves!
Our philosophy is to try to develop these characteristics in our coaching style.
Success in any endeavor in life is rarely achieved without a systematic plan that provides you with guidance in your journey. This is our, ‘Coaching Philosophy’. In effect it is the systems that we will implement in order to ensure that everyone in the team is working towards a similar goal. It provides our players with consistency and direction and provides us, as coaches, with a mechanism to fall back on in difficult times.
Reinforcing Our Style of Play
A crucial aspect of coaching is selling our game plan to our players. The players must believe that the way we want them to play will bring them success as individuals and as a team.
Positive reinforcement when our players get results from sticking to the team structures is the best way to encourage them to reproduce their performance.
Most soccer players respond best to coaching that involves ‘doing’ or performing an action. This is why the way we plan our training sessions becomes so important to teaching our players the style of play required.
While we could direct a separate article to the importance of our training sessions, it is important that the following principles are applied:
– Our training sessions must be well planned so we gain maximum benefit from our time with my players.
– The training drills we design must reflect the way we want the game played.
– Our training sessions must emulate match conditions as much as possible.
– Our players must be continually exposed to the type of decision-making they confront in a game.
– We must use this training opportunity to teach players how they can do things better and provide positive reinforcement when required.
– Review the success of our training sessions in achieving our goals. This will provide us with a springboard to plan future sessions.
It should be our intention to keep the instructions to our players brief and to the point. When selling our message it is unwise to clutter our player’s minds with too many instructions at once. Therefore on the day of the game, or indeed at training, we must emphasize only a few key points if we are to have any effect. We must decide the most important areas that need to be communicated. Our discussions will, in essence, provide reinforcement of how we want the game played. We may emphasize the ball movement patterns whilst attacking and defensively may concentrate on how to restrict the opposition’s opportunities. Whatever the emphasis we make at these times, it will be a reflection of our coaching philosophies.
Our coaching philosophy is made up of core values that we wish to employ in our day to day dealings with players.
Core Values:
- Honesty
- Feedback
- Ownership
- Confidence
- Decisive
- Positive
- Tempo
- Team ethos
- Enjoyment
- Pleasure to watch and be involved in.
Our coaching philosophy will promote player confidence; players should be comfortable and confident when in possession of the ball. They should also be confident and decisive in their decision making with the ball at their feet. Soccer should be played at a tempo that suits the game and the situation within the game. When in possession our team will be coached to play positively and be given the confidence to play the pass/shot with the best interest of the team as the first and foremost thought in our player’s minds.
When not in possession our team will be coached to work as a unit to regain possession, this will be done through coaching the values and benefits of staying compacted and decisive, and that is backed up with positive communication.
Creating a good team ethos and a desire to work hard for your team mate will be a vital part of our coaching; all players, coaches involved will be encouraged to take pleasure from working as a group, all working towards the same successful goal.
Within our coaching sessions we should create an environment that promotes confidence and expression, we want our players to work hard on and off the ball to create space so their team mates make decisive divisions for the better of the team.
Through our coaching we will create a team that plays a style of soccer that can adapt to all environments and situations it encounters.
Our philosophy on coaching is one that allows player to be expressive, decisive and confident while at the same time creating a team ethos in that the team is more important than the individual.