Humble Coaches key for Player Development

Humble Coaches key for Player Development
May 3, 2011

As part of his charge to oversee and reform youth player development in this country, U.S. Soccer Technical Director Claudio Reyna traveled to observe some of the legendary professional setups in Europe and South America. He found some things that may be missing from our typical youth club soccer setups.

Now this concept of humility may not be too familiar to people who have been around the elite youth game in this country. Reyna mentioned in his presentation at the U.S. Soccer Summit last month at Nike Headquarters (which is where we interviewed him), that this may in part stem from other sports popular in this country. There is a lot of emphasis on coaching decisions, where a coach calls a key timeout, or draws up a play or something, and Reyna surmises this enters into the cultural psychology of American coaches, thinking they have to be very visible and vocal throughout contests.

So at a lot of youth fields you will find coaches shouting instructions for nearly every kick of the ball. What Reyna is saying, based on his study of the best examples worldwide, is that this is not a good example of player development. It tends to be coupled with coaches manipulating the game situation in order to win matches (defend with 8 guys in the penalty area so nothing gets through, put a fast guy up front, boot the ball downfield and win lots of tournaments).

I’m sure a lot of this has to do with the business model in youth soccer which in the past has rewarded coaches being charismatic enough to recruit a lot of players (through their parents). There again winning games is the candy put out before the paying parents, most of whom have no background in the game, as a way for them to see if the coach is any good. By the time they figure out they are not really learning much in the way of how to play the game at a high level, it’s usually too late in the player’s career.

For the few American players who have gone to really excel at the international and professional level, I’m often surprised to find out the early influences they cite are coaches we really haven’t heard of. They are scattered around and not really involved in the highest profile clubs. That is an interesting point to me.

When you think about these things it may tell us that while the Academy is a very positive initiative in our soccer history, there still needs to be serious reform among the actual individuals who are coaching in it, as well as at other clubs and in younger age groups. To be sure a number of them are embracing  the new initiatives and working to grow in their profession. But there also is a percentage that are not really interested, for whatever reason. I’m personally not that interested in determining or declaring which is which, but if you’re a paying customer at a youth soccer club, or a player trying to be as good as you can be, you should be.

TOMORROW: Building the right environment for development

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