End Worry, Struggle and Blame on the Soccer Field

I've coached and played in hundreds of games - so I've had my share of bad ref's and calls that didn't go my way.

When your in the moment bad calls are frustrating.  And the easy thing to do is blame.  Its a normal response .

For example:

The ball clearly bounces off the other team out of bounds - yet the AR gives the throw-in to the other team.

OR

The ref isn't calling any fouls even when the other team pulls you down from behind with both hands and takes the ball from you.

It's easy to get distracted and to start blaming the refs and opponents for things not going your way.  And chances are you are probably right.

But any time you divert your attention and focus from dribbling, passing and shooting - you will start to struggle.  Any time you choose to blame others you can almost guarantee you will start to make more mistakes.

Pretty soon your focus snowballs into how many mistakes you are making and you start to worry .

Blame is a poison... that only hurts yourself.  The more you blame others - the more YOU suffer

Fortunately the antidote to blame is to decide that you want to build internal confidence and dump the poisonous blame into the toilet.

Recently one of my teams got blown out in the 2nd half.  They lost big time.  And I could here some of the players blaming everyone else and taking no responsibility for their effort.

I had to change the focus... and FAST!

So I decided to change the warm up for our next game.  Instead of going through our regular drills I focused on one drill.  For 20 minutes all we focused on, talked about, and did was work on being first to the ball.

Then I took our focus to the next level.

We needed a simple tool we could use that would remind us to double our energy up and to be first to the ball.  We used tugging on our ear as our physical trigger and reminder to get to the ball first.

Any time we were lagging I would get their attention and tug on my ear.  Immediately the girls would tug their own ear and double their effort to the ball.

Pretty soon everyone on the team was reminding each other to be 1st to the ball.

The next 2 games were amazing!  We dominated control of the ball for over 90% of the time in both games.  We played 95% of the game on the opponents side of the field.

It's amazing to me how successful you can be when you decide to focus on your goals and jobs on the field with passion instead of blaming others for your mistakes.  If you are stuck in blame, worry and struggle why not change your focus to one simple task.

I hope you see the power this message has and you find a way to use in your own training.  It's a different approach to the game that hardly anyone knows about.

It's another great tool for your soccer success toolbox.

Go get em!

Coach Nolan