| In soccer games mistakes of course happen all of the time. Often coaches and parents get mad / coach technical mistakes, like a missed shot or a too big of a touch. In most cases that’s the wrong thing to do. When the reason for a failed action on the field is technical and not the decision itself, criticizing the action is a very bad thing to do. The player will associate the criticism with the decision instead of the execution. Example: A goalkeeper runs out of the goal and tries to punt it before the striker can reach the ball. While trying to shoot the ball the goalkeeper misses the ball and the ball rolls behind him. The striker realizes the opportunity sprints up and shoots and scores. The coach is furious yelling at the goalkeeper for the mistake. In the next play the goalkeeper decides not to sprint out again and instead waits in the goal. The striker gets the ball first and scores.The decision of the goalkeeper to run out of the goal was good. Just the execution was bad. Situations like this are very common and fatal! Kids that need to improve technical skills can do so in training. And the coaches job is to figure out what to work on and how kids can get better at it, but criticizing good decisions because they were executed badly leads to kids making worse choices. Instead: Instead kids should be praised for doing the right thing and be reassured that it was a good thing to do. In the long term this will lead to much more success because when the technical skills catch up to the right decisions, success improves dramatically. Coach decisions: Decision making on the other hand should be actively coached during games. Helping kids understand what another option could have been and how it would have helped the team makes kids smarter and better players. Often kids make a wrong choice but get awarded with a goal due to technical mistakes of opponents or simply by luck. This can be misleading because as the play level increases the bad choices will not end successful anymore. Summary: Coaching technical mistakes is harmful and should be avoided. Coaching decisions is important and very helpful. |
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