The trainer as an influencer II

384 hours a year!!

This is how much time players and coaches spend together on and off the pitch in a year. In this case that means three training times a week + one game on the weekend. Other activities or communication in the WhatsApp groups are not taken into account.

384 hours in which the coach influences his players and that is significantly more effective than the influencers on the Internet. We coaches are absolute people of respect for the players. I still remember a mother asking me if I could explain to the boys how important school was, because they would listen to me more than to the parents themselves.
Are we trainers always aware of this responsibility? Are we also aware of how much our philosophy about football influences children and young people? Every trainer will train “correctly” in his own way, just as he sees fit, because no one will intentionally train badly. We learn from our trainers, from the licenses, from discussions and conversations with other trainers and thus develop our own style. But that doesn't mean that the philosophy we have developed or adopted is good. But do we regularly question ourselves?

When we talk about the training of young football players, for me it is first and foremost the training of ball handling, i.e. topics that are trained with the ball, such as the offensive 1:1, dribbling techniques, ball control, decision-making. Why is that the first thought for me? Because I am of the opinion that we need to train significantly more players who can handle the ball.
However, many people have experienced it differently. You probably know coaches who, in U13 training, focus more on counter-pressing, running up and shifting than on building up the game or playfully resolving pressure situations. Does it have to be wrong to train the first-mentioned things at this age? No, of course not, the only question is to what extent and with what priority.

We want players who can make the difference again and make decisions on the pitch? Then we have to design our training accordingly. We may also have to question it and adjust accordingly. Funnily enough, the coaches with a defensive orientation are often the biggest admonishers who realize that the special players no longer exist. But instead of waiting for an exceptional talent to come to us, we should rather develop the players ourselves and give the players the tools to become special.

Now who influences the training of the players? These are the TRAINERS, more than any Mbappe, Messi or Ronaldo in the videos and more than any influencer on the internet. If we want such exceptional players for our team, we have to start training them to get them.

You have 384 hours with your team in a season. Use the time and sow so that your players can harvest later!

Stay tuned,

Your Tammo

The next part is about how we deal with creative players and whether we can develop a star that way.

Author: Tammo Neubauer