Teamwork is essential when playing sports, including youth soccer. Being able to collaborate as part of a team, rather than just a group of individuals, is essential for success both on the field and off it.
Teamwork helps an individual player in a multitude of ways. Here’s how you can foster teamwork in your youth soccer setup, whether as a coach or otherwise.
Why Teamwork is Important in Soccer
When you play an individual sport like tennis or track and field, teamwork isn’t quite as important as in soccer. But in a team sport, it’s essential:
Enhancing Player Skills
When players work with each other, they get better. First, soccer is a team sport, which means you will need to play alongside others to get results, whether you’re a role player or a star.
When individuals spend time training collectively, they enhance their individual player skills in the context of achieving as part of a wider team structure.
Even goalkeepers, who have a unique position on the field and have a distinct training routine purpose-built for goalies, will benefit from teamwork-driven practice.
Working Through Disappointments
Playing sports is winning, but it’s also a lot of losing. Learning to deal with disappointment together, as a team, helps build resilience, and a collective will to get through the low points, and ultimately will lead to greater achievements further down the line.
The stories of every great player include massive disappointment along the way. Even Messi, regarded by many as the G.O.A.T (greatest of all time), had to deal with continual losses in the World Cup. Until he won it all with Argentina in 2022.
Covering Weak Points
Whether you are Cristiano Ronaldo or Johan Cruyff, there is always a weak point in a player’s game.
Sergio Busquets is not blessed with pace. Neither is Pirlo. Bergkamp was often criticized for his lack of goals. Messi is not a fantastic header of the ball, to put it mildly.
The point is, there is no perfect player. But when you work together as a team, you can ‘mask’ these weak points in an individual’s game and not let it affect the end result.
Conversely, teamwork allows individuals to excel in what they are good at. Teams can let you flourish and develop your strong points, polish the weaker ones, and find the best role within a team framework.
Learning Tactical Frameworks
Coaches like Pep Guardiola and Mikel Arteta are known for their tactical prowess. This is not only due to their innate talent but because it was nurtured when they were part of La Masia at FC Barcelona.
Working together as a team from a young age teaches players advanced tactical frameworks that become automatic as they get older. Once they reach senior teams, they will be far more adaptable and capable of understanding complex setups.
How to Encourage Teamwork
Teamwork does not magically appear in a youth setup; you need to foster it:
Activities Off the Field
Training does not always have to take place on the field. If it’s possible, take your squad out on team-building activities that will strengthen personal relationships.
For example, team dinners, a trip to a local arcade, watching a movie, or getting together at someone’s house. It doesn’t have to be expensive, just an activity where everyone is together!
Training with Purpose
Far too many coaches will simply throw the balls out onto the field and get players to do randomly assigned sets of training material. This doesn’t work. To foster effective teamwork, coaches should design purpose-built practice sessions that link together.
Set up training sessions that involve all players, even if you do it in small groups. Don’t segregate according to positions with each and every drill, but instead teach players to work with everyone.
Open Communication
Professional teams spend a lot of time just talking. Airing their differences, showing each other what they need from one another, and talking through tactical decision-making on the field.
You don’t need to be quite as ‘serious’ as the pros do, but you need to ensure that a youth team has open lines of communication. Everyone should feel confident in saying what they feel in a safe environment.
Beyond Youth Soccer
The benefits of teamwork will continue to be relevant, even long after the youth player has stopped playing soccer. The skills you learn as part of a team will help in building and nurturing relationships, communicating effectively with others, and learning to deal with the challenges we face in our daily lives.