Tough Results | Don’t Worry

Dear Rage,

I know that the team has had tough results this season so far but I want to remind you that we are focusing on developing individual technique and overall athleticism at this early age group instead of focusing on wins and losses.

U8 is sometimes the toughest age group because no one knows how to accurately place teams in the proper level of competition since there is no history. It is also difficult because players are prone to the most obvious mistakes to us adult like a goalkeeper throwing the ball right in front of an opposing player and conceding an easy goal. To us, these are the most blatant obvious mistakes, to the 8 year old girls playing on a structured team for the first time, it’s not so obvious.

It is also important that players are placed in the appropriate level of competition so that they may experience success as well as failure. It is not ideal to win every game, and likewise it is not ideal to lose every game. We hope to find a competitive balance which unfortunately the Rage have not found this season. I want you guys to know that I am very happy with the progress of the Rage players and that these tough results will not be a long term pattern moving into future seasons. CCSL (the league we entered the team in) originally communicated to us that there would be 3 levels of competition for the U8′s. We requested to be placed in the 2nd tier of competition which would have been perfectly appropriate competition for our girls. Unfortunately CCSL decided to only make 2 levels of competition and placed us in the highest one. This was a mistake on their end that should not have happened. Since we have evenly dispersed the talent level amongst (4) of our teams it is unfair to the team since they are playing against all the A teams from each club.

That being said, we are very happy with the development of the girls and how they are forming as soccer players. I would like to see more girls attending striker training, agility and coordination training, and participating in as many soccer camps and extra opportunities to play as possible. This will definitely help grow their passion for the game and help them develop quickly. The more they like soccer the more they will play. The more they play, the more they will develop.

Please do not hesitate to ask me any questions you may have, I am eager to communicate openly with all the parents in my age group so that you may know what is on my mind and in my plans for the girls.

Thanks,

Coach Mikey

Between July and August of this summer, you will have the chance to watch the best U23 players in the world compete at the 2012 London Olympics. You will also have an opportunity to watch the biggest names in Europe battle it out to be crowned European Champions.

Let’s start with the Olympics. I love the Olympics!!! I mean who doesn’t, the chance to watch amateur athletes from all other the world compete in a multitude of events spanning from badminton to swimming. I along with the rest of the country was enthralled in the last edition as Michael Phelps reigned in medal after medal. Although soccer is not a competition in the Olympics played with amateur athletes, it does only allow players under the age of 23 years old with the exception of (3) players. This combination of up and coming stars with a few seasoned veterans makes for a very entertaining spectacle. Having a Chilean father, one of my favorite soccer moments of all time was watching Chile win the Bronze medal in Sydney. It was so motivating to see youngsters play along side the legend Ivan Zamorano.

As for the European Championships, there might not be a better tournament aside from the World Cup. Europe’s best face off to be crowned champions and no where else are bitter rivalries more fiercely ignited. We are not talking about cross city rivals here, what we are talking about is history, wars, and political differences that create a heightened sense of competition. Since my alliances are with Chile and the U.S.A., I can calmly watch and enjoy these beautiful matches that will take place.

For soccer lovers, this summer brings us two months of a dream come true. For players aspiring to be great one day, I highly encourage you to watch these games. It is a rare opportunity to be able and watch such high level and intense matches over such a long stretch of time.

Enjoy as I will.

Teaching anything takes a special perspective, demeanor, and knowledge. Math teachers must know the formulas much better than their students otherwise mass confusion would erupt, this is also true in soccer. In soccer one of the many beautiful things about the sport is that through mistakes players learn, which is why all the best coaches in the world allow and encourage players to take risk thus potentially making mistakes. Once mistakes are made though, there is no reason to dwell on them! It’s easy for the coach to see a mistake made and immediately stop their session to tell the player ‘not to do a certain action next time.’ Even if they tell the player in a positive friendly tone, it has a negative impact on their learning. Although it is true the player probably made the wrong choice, it will slow the learning process down if you constantly focus on what they ‘should not’ be doing.

Instead, stop the session and explain to the player a better option or choice they could have made. Instead of say “don’t turn left”, simply explain that “they should turn right.” The problem with the first approach which revolves around the word ‘don’t’ is that players will naturally focus on what you are yelling, especially when nervous. So yelling, ‘don’t turn left, don’t turn left, don’t turn left’ over time their brains will start muting out the negative don’t and only absorb “turn left, turn left, turn left”.

Taking the approach of teaching the positive action will be much more effective. By eliminating the word ‘don’t’ from your teaching, players will only hear what they are suppose to be doing. Absorbing all necessary information that will allow them to actually learn the proper choice and actions in various situations during the game.

During my time as a youth coach I have come across many coaches who forget their primary purpose, which is to teach and create quality players and people. In order to build a team and player that not only wins and loses but does it correctly, with style and dignity; you must learn to teach your players to be excellent, confident people first. For this to happen, coaching with a positive approach is essential. Do you yell and scream at every mistake, do you only give praise when it results in a goal or win? Players who are confident and open to making mistakes learn much more than players who are self conscious and are afraid to take a risk. Through a positive approach, where you sandwich a correction with praise on either side, players will be more receptive to your critique. If they feel you trust and value them they will be able to better absorb when you are correcting their mistakes. When I first started coaching, a mentor of mine put me on to the Positive Coaching Alliance. I immediately combined their concepts and ideas with my soccer knowledge and passion for teaching to establish my personal coaching philosophy. I recommend everyone reading this piece to explore the positive coaching alliance and contemplate whether or not your athlete is in a healthy learning environment. Be honest with yourself and decide whether or not your interactions with your player are helping or hurting her development. If after fully reading through the website you believe you need to adjust, do it! If after reading through the website you realize your daughter or son’s coach is not creating a healthy learning environment, change teams!

Doing this will not only help you daughter/ son develop into a better soccer player and person it might just save them from one day turning away from the sport they love so much.

I recently took nine of my club team players to play in the US Northwest Regional Championships for Futsal, which was a fantastic experience. Since introducing Futsal to the weekly training regimen for my players I have seen a acceleration in technical development as well as an increased awareness of speed of play. My girls had to compete in an age group one year older due to insufficient U11 teams but played admirably, even going toe to toe with the defending National Champions in a 6-8 barn burner.

While I walked around the seven courts in Hayward, I became ever more convinced with each passing minute that this sport is going to help propel the US development of young players to the next level. Due to changing times and the electronic/ media age we are now in, kids no longer play in the streets. Whether it’s soccer, basketball, baseball, or just hopscotch, you just don’t see kids out playing. The rest of the world has a huge competitive advantage in soccer due to the hours of street soccer their young children play on a week to week basis. Although it is not exactly street soccer, I feel Futsal can be a wonderful substitute for our country.

During the off season in the winter and summer we should have our kids play in any number of Futsal leagues popping up all over. During the season you should incorporate an additional futsal practice or open play session. I feel that you should let them play free and give limited instruction. Since we are developing soccer players, let them play like soccer players. No need to teach them Futsal strategy since the goal is to give them a fun, fast paced outlet to play where they get lot of touches on the ball.

After this weekend I am more convinced than ever that this is the game that will take my players to the next level. It invites fast and technical play to develop while encouraging players to be creative and spontaneous due to the small space. These are aspects of the game that we are behind in compared to the rest of the world and Futsal is the way to catch up!!!!

When I think about the best coaches that coached me in my career, they always said, that good teams are created with a good goalkeeper. That puts a little extra pressure on that position doesn’t it? Goalkeepers need to have amazing concentration at every game because one mistake from them could impact the result of the game dramatically.

I rarely hear fans or players blame the forwards when they miss goals as much as I’ve heard  them blaming the goalie if he/she missed the ball. The result of their mistake is that the other team scored and their team lost the game. But this is correct? In some instances of course, but overall I believe it’s unfair to put the responsibility on the goalkeeper for the result of the game. It seems that the forwards have more room to make mistakes than the goalies have.

Being a goalie demands a lot of responsibility. They are not “one more” on the field – they are the only one. They have two friends on the field – their gloves and the posts, and they have to hope that neither of them fails him during the game. They have one objective – keep the goals out – even if it means putting their bodies in front of every ball. If they are successful – then it’s time to celebrate. But loose a game and the goalkeeper has to make a decision – occupy their minds with the result or have the result motivate them to be better the next game.  No one knows what thoughts are going around in a goalkeeper’s head before a game, but giving up is the exit of a weak player so they push themselves beyond the limits to give their absolute best.

Sometimes it is one decision during a game that will make them either a Hero, or a Villain. Tough job to be a goalkeeper I think …

Hasta luego,

If I had a nickel for every time in the past nine years of coaching in the U.S. for the number of times a parent came to the field and said, “I don’t know anything about soccer, but why don’t you do this or that” I could retire today a rich man.

I am absolutely devastated in those conversations because I really don’t think that the parents appreciate all the time I spent in the youth division clubs in Argentina until I retired from professional futbol twenty years later.  It makes me wonder if I should go to their jobs at Oracle or Apple and ask to talk to an engineer or a product designer so I can tell them how to do their jobs. I’m sure given my zero education in their industries that they would listen to what I had to say and implement my suggestions, right?  Yeah, probably not.

I cannot believe that my experience – from being coached by prestigious and respected coaches, to the over 20 years with the ball at my feet during every waking hour, to now having coached youth for the past nine years, that it can actually equate to a parent who, in their own words “knows nothing about the game”. And I know that I am not the only one experiencing this situation. The YouTube video “Soccer Mom – Some Friendly Advice” proves that I am not the only one enjoying this kind of friendly parent advice.

But how do I, or my fellow colleagues who are equally as frustrated, actually get the parents to change this behavior? I mean, I can’t exactly give them homework to do in-between games, right? Or could I? Could I really ask them to educate themselves more about this beautiful game? Ask them to watch more professional games?  Listen to the color commentators and the things they are praising, and criticizing?

I could write for hours on this topic, but I’ll close with just one additional related element that I would like to see change, and that is the parent’s conversations after the games. I’ve been a witness to parents conducting what I think is referred to in the business world as a “de-brief” – discussing with other parents, after the game, all the things that went wrong in the game – mentioning names of teammates who, in their opinion, were to blame for the game result or missed opportunities. Parents, we have to be very careful with these comments because no matter how old your child is, they are listening to you and these comments alone can create conflicts between them and their fellow teammates. So not only are parents misunderstanding the essence of the game, but they also transferring their negative feelings to their child, and this can have a negative impact on the child’s futbol development.

How do we change this behavior and thought process by the parents? I know they have the best intentions, but it is hurting the development of youth futbol players in this country. I am open to suggestions because changing this one aspect would go a long way in developing confident players who play the game with the skill and tactics equivalent to world-renowned futbol players.

Enjoy the video!

Hasta pronto!

I feel that in the club game there are two very different types of coaches. One who puts most their energy into practice, organizing lesson plans and focusing on development. And there is another type of coach who puts forth most their effort during games, preaching the win and yelling the entire game to motivate their team to victory.

I know for a fact we should immediately rid the youth game of this second type of coach. It’s a coach who quite frankly is stealing from honest parents who do not know any better. Most parents attend every game but rarely stay to watch an entire practice, therefore, these coaches can yell all game and give directions to their players as if they are playing a world cup final in order to give the appearance of expertise. In Spanish we say, “este tipo vende humo,” which translates, “this guys is selling smoke.”

If you want to know where your coach lands, listen carefully to when he speaks about the team. Does he talk about the great success of the teams record? Or talk about how many goals the girls scored or allowed? How many tournaments they played in and won? This is a bad sign. If you players coach is not consistently talking about development of skills, athleticism, and work ethic then they are probably selling smoke.

If you go to a practice to observe and the coach is exerting less energy there then on the weekends, you should find another program. I’ve seen a lot of great coaches during the last 10 years I’ve been doing this, and I’ve seen a lot of “pretend coaches” as well. Be sure to do your due diligence to ensure your son or daughter is getting the best out of this beautiful sport!

Improving a players ability to juggle will also improve; balance, ability to read the flight of the ball, ability to control the ball out of air, ability to accurately strike a ball, ability to properly weight the strike of a pass, ability to time a strike, properly header the ball, use different surfaces of the body to control the ball and the ability to simply make the ball do what they want it to do. I believe that these are all things that make a difference between a good and bad player, so, all my players will learn to juggle!

When teaching your players to juggle, start as easy as possible. Have them strike the ball up in the air so that it falls straight back into their hands. This is the first step to juggling and no joke, I spend the good portion of my first season with U8′s having them perfect just that. Coaching points should be; point their toe forward, shoe laces straight up, bend at the knees, slight forward upper body posture, soft touch on the ball so that it does not clear your head.

I will follow up soon with more a in depth break down of each stage of juggling a player should go through to master the skill. Until next time!

Barcelona and Real Madrid clashed in yet another great clasico. This was the 9th clasico in as many months, and in my opinion was the most fantastic!!!

Real Madrid came out with an attacking lineup featuring Ronaldo, Higuain, Kaka, Alonso, and Ozil. It’s been very rare that Jose Mourinho (Real Madrid’s coach) has used this combination of offensive fire power. Real Madrid pressed high up the field and forced Barcelona to play to perfection if they were to win with their possession game. The pressure was relentless and it almost paid dividends when Real Madrid created a flurry of goal scoring opportunities early on.

Watching this game, it’s obvious that Real Madrid is the true contender of a team that can possibly overtake the great Barca machine. Are they ready now? No!!! But if Real continues to play with this positive approach, time will only make them more dangerous.

What I just don’t understand is why Mourinho doesn’t commit 100% to this approach? Why did it take real Madrid being down 2-1 on aggregate and visiting Barcelona for the coach to decide his team can play with such confidence? In the first leg at Madrid, Mourinho fielded a midfield that included a center back and two defensive midfielder. Is it that Mourinho felt he had nothing to lose in the second leg, so he might as well try and attack? The funny thing is when he felt less pressure and decided to unleash his superstar team to attack and press, they finally looked like a team considered to be Barca’s arch-rival.

I hope this serves as a learning experience for Madrid and we begin to see them consistently playing such the protagonists. If so, we might actually see Mourinho get the best of Pep sooner than later.

On a side note, Mesut Ozil is a legend in the making!