5 tips to motivate young players

Young players all want to play well, win matches and generally enjoy the game.

But that enthusiasm can be quickly knocked out of them if their coaches and parents don’t apply the basic principles of player motivation.

Children want to play soccer to learn and improve their skills, to have fun, to be with their friends, to experience the excitement of competition, to enhance their physical fitness and to demonstrate their competence.

These motivating factors are all intrinsic as opposed to extrinsic - they come from within the child as opposed to the people.

Intrinsic motivation is a stronger motivator than extrinsic motivation - a child that wants to play soccer will do better than a child who is told to play soccer - but it can disappear if external motivation is absent.

When that happens, a child will stop playing and the resulting loss of self esteem (“I thought I could be a good soccer player but now I know I can’t”) may well affect the child in other, more important, areas of their lives.
So, what can you do to motivate your players? Here are our top tips...

01  Be INTERESTING

Plan varied and fun training sessions. If a session is disorganised, players can easily get demotivated, as they can with a session that is too hard or too easy.

And remember that variety is the spice of life. Don’t use the same old drills every week - mix it up.

02 SET OBJECTIVES

Having realistic and achievable targets is a powerful motivator.

Set a simple target for your players at every training session. Keep the objectives simple and reward achievement and/or effort.

03 DEFINE SUCCESS

What’s the first question a six or seven year old player asks as he or she comes off the field? If it’s not ’what’s for dinner?’, it will be ’did we win?’.

Many studies have shown that children under 10 do not ‘understand’ winning and losing in the same way that you or I do.

Because of this, they will not feel sad that they lost a match until a parent or coach tells them so and accompanies this information with a positive or negative emotional reaction.

So, if you have to mention the result, do it with a smile. Whatever the scoreline, it is better to talk about the positives and keep the negatives to yourself.

In that way, you are rewarding the effort your players put in and motivating them to keep trying to improve.

04 POSITIVE REINFORCEMENT

Positive reinforcement is catching a child doing something you want them to do and rewarding it.
 

Children, and adults, like being rewarded and will focus on repeating the behaviour that immediately preceded the reward.

If, for example, you high-five a child for providing an assist in a match or training session they will try to repeat the action because of the approval it attracts.

Other players will also try to replicate the behaviour because they want to be rewarded in a similar way.

05 SMILE!

Nothing is more demotivating to a young player than arriving at a coaching session full of get up and go - only to be greeted by a coach who looks as though the sky is about to fall in.

Make sure you smile, have a positive can-do attitude and leave an indelible mark on your players that they will remember.