BIGGEST YOUTH COACHING MISTAKES - U10/U9/U8

did you just start coaching a u9 team maybe you've been coaching for years either way stick around because today we're going to be talking about the most common mistakes you soccer coaches make so let's go [Music] hey guys welcome to the channel if you're new feel free to hit that subscribe button that would be great so today we're talking about coaching seven year olds eight-year-olds nine-year-olds let's be fair it's not for everybody but there are some things you can do to make it both an enjoyable experience for them and a more enjoyable experience for you i've made these mistakes coaching you soccer for the last eight years i've gone through the pain that are some of these mistakes so hopefully you don't have to standing in line dribbling a ball mindlessly through cones or training sticks is nobody's idea of fun kids at this age come to your training sessions because it's fun they want to score goals they want to play with their friends mindless technical drills going through cones standing in line is not the way to coach at this level there are certainly a role for technical activities but for the most part these kids want to play the game along those same lines your players come to your sessions to play avoid as much as possible having them sit down and listen for a prolonged period of time to you give lectures understand i'm not telling you not to coach not to give advice but there are other techniques that can be used like coaching in the flow where you actually coach as they're playing and you don't have them sit down and listen to a speech or a prolonged lecture this age group they want to play and the more that they can do that the better they're going to be don't be mr freeze stopping play every single time you feel that you need to make a coaching point the more that you stop play especially if it's continuous the more it hurts development and them learning and look you can absolutely freeze uh if you see a mistake that's happening over and over again but understand at this level they need to make mistakes and learn on their own and try to figure some of it out on their own that can't happen if all you're doing is stopping play every five minutes some coaches are so worried about winning games at the u9 u8 u10 younger levels that they do things that hurt development so this is a highly debated topic in all of sports all of youth sports not just soccer how important is winning and i want to make sure i'm really clear because i think it's very important to teach competitiveness and to teach teams how to win especially at the older ages but i'm talking about you ten and under here and i see youth coaches i coach against youth coaches all the time that do things in the spirit of winning for example yelling at kids um joy sticking which i'm going to talk about later yelling at referees doing things on the field that will give you a better chance to win for example booting the ball down the field to the biggest fastest strongest player you have that doesn't teach the game it doesn't develop players and it hurts the kids overall and it's all done in this guise of having to win games at this level a mistake i see very commonly is coaches who either do not engage their parents or engage them in a way that is not helpful if you don't engage your parents you are one step behind from the start of the season i see coaches all the time who don't want to talk to parents or who try to avoid certain parents and that is just a recipe for disaster your parents can be your best resource they can get your players to train at home you can give them the tools they need to make your player better and there are certainly boundaries there are certainly rules of the team and rules of engagement on how parents need to behave towards you but what i see from coaches is lack of even wanting to make that engagement or when they do make that engagement it just doesn't go in a productive manner [Music] so this one's tough because getting help and sources of help can be very difficult especially in america's youth soccer seat but one mistake i see is coaches who are not doing well and don't ask for help so where do you go for help if you go online and you search for youth soccer exercises 5 000 different drills will come up hopefully you have a mentor somebody at your club who can help hopefully you're watching my channel for help and and please feel free to reach out to me through email through the comments i would love to help but if you need help ask for it because you will find so many great people in the coaching community especially at the local youth level that you might be surprised but don't try to do it all on your own ask for help aside from coaches who yell at players or yell at referees this is probably what frustrates me the most when coaches joystick they tell their players what to do every second of every moment on the field as i've mentioned before the kids to some degree need to figure it out for themselves they have to develop they have to make mistakes and if they're only worried about you shouting out instructions that's what they're going to listen for they're going to listen for your instructions they're not going to learn to read triggers and to develop into players that will understand the game and read the game also there are things that you can do and things you can say that helps them without without actually telling them what to do for example you can say something like get your head up now you might have a player who is dribbling down the field and has a wide open player running down the sideline for an easy goal that player you could say pass it to tom right pass it to logan pass it to or you could say get your head up because then they get their head up and they actually look around and they see and think about what's going on sometimes when a player gets in trouble and they get caught by a defender oftentimes i'll say where's your help where's your help i don't say pass it behind you to dylan like you can guide players without giving them the actual answers so i have a video talking about why i like one formation over another at the 7v7 level that's not what i'm talking about with this mistake something i see all the time even from very experienced coaches is poor positioning of their players so what do i mean by this poor positioning well there's two examples that i can give you that i see all the time number one i see coaches who put their weakest least skilled players in the back uh either with two in the back or three in the back it's always their least skilled players and that is a big mistake i would actually argue and i'll do a whole video on how i put players in certain positions i would actually argue that either your strongest or one of your strongest players needs to play in the back if if you do that what you end up seeing is um very easy goals that are scored and you you have a hard time building up out of the back because your weakest players are in the back the second most common example of this that i see is the most developed player the the tallest the fastest kid gets put up top and i think this is a mistake sometimes uh because that player doesn't get the chance to necessarily play the position that maybe they'd be best at at least to start and of course at the youth level you know people are going to be in some different positions but when you always put this player up top it really in many cases hurts their development because they don't get a chance to play anywhere else one thing that i hate to see is teams that are playing at the wrong level and oftentimes this is the decision that the coach makes or the club makes but playing at the wrong level can developmentally hurt your team you want to play in a league where it's competitive and your players and your team is getting better there are many factors that go into deciding what league you're going to play in how much travel is involved what's the commitment of the parents but the most important thing is how competitive is the league a lot of times coaches and clubs will make decisions on picking a league based on something that has nothing to do with how competitive they think the team will be it may have to do with purely how prestigious the league is well if your team can't compete in that league it's not the right league for you lastly guys let's remember they're kids they want to have fun they want to play with their friends and they want mentors they want to learn from you they want to learn the game and you can do all of this in a competitive environment that is structured that is disciplined that is incredibly well suited for development if indeed you want to well guys what do you think what did i miss let me know in the comments i would love to hear your experiences and your thoughts on mistakes that youth soccer coaches make especially at the u10 and under level so thanks for watching

Channel: Coach Rory Soccer

Views: 230,615

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Id: M0GUWzEk4C0

Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Sat Dec 11 2021