Performance vs. Effort - What do we want from our little soccer players?

My wife had a couple of questions for me after Saturday's game. The first is simple. The second is very interesting:

1 - Q: When is the ball out of bounds?

A: When the ball is completely over the line; this is true for the goal/end line as well as the touch/side line. See page 29 in the FIFA Laws of the game (click on the pdf link toward the bottom of this page: FIFA Laws of the Game) If the ball is mostly out, but still touching the line, it is still in.


2 - Q: Why weren't our players (U6) marking-up the other team on their goal kicks? The other team positioned their players on each sideline for their goal kicks while our players tended to be more in the middle leaving their players unmarked.


A: This question seems straight forward, but it is actually a complicated question. The complicated answer is below. The simple answer is: our kids haven't figured out what to do in that situation...yet.

I could have told our players to mark up the other team. Problem solved. Instead I was asking them, "Where's he going to kick the ball?" The other question they need to ask themselves is, "Where are my teammates?" As a coach, my job is to make sure our kids learn and love soccer. We do this by rewarding their effort. If they are giving it their best effort, I'm happy. When the other team was doing their goal kicks, some of our players were really paying attention to what the other players were doing and trying to figure out what to do. The trying is success! Whether they thought they should mark-up, or wait until the ball is kicked, or whatever, is beside the point; the game itself will teach them which method works best. Our job is to make sure they're trying their best.

Telling them exactly what to do would certainly give us an immediate tactical advantage; it would make me look like a better coach. "Look how well trained these boys are," they'd say. "They look like a real soccer team." However, telling the boys where to stand is not the best thing for the boys. If we can guide them down the path of figuring out for themselves the "right" thing to do, then we've really accomplished something. We want the boys to:

1. try their own solutions,
   
2. evaluate the solution's effectiveness, and
   
3. then try a new self-developed, solution.

For them to use this process effectively is not easy, but it is the process that will make them successful in soccer and many other things. It requires the self-confidence of knowing that they are allowed to "fail". It requires the training to say to themselves, "I can figure it out if I just keep trying." They say to become an expert, you must fail at that thing 10,000 times. If you're afraid of failure, you'll never reach your potential. Failure is the path to growth. In other words, growth is through failure, not avoiding failure. If I told the kids the "right" thing to do in each circumstance during the match, we'd probably win and our children wouldn't learn a thing. I want our kids to grow and that requires that we let them make mistakes.

Praise our children for their good effort! Don't worry if the result wasn't "right".


This is good article discussing an emphasis on performance vs. an emphasis on effort:
The Effort Effect


-Bill