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How to prevent and treat injuries

Children get lots of benefits from playing football.

They learn new skills, how to be a member of a team and how to take responsibility for their own actions. They also make friends, improve their fitness and, if they are coached properly, their raised self-esteem will flow through and enrich other areas of their lives, both at school and at home.

Although youth football is a beneficial and relatively safe sport, the American Journal of Sports Medicine report that young football players in the USA suffer about 120,000 injuries each year sufficiently serious to require a trip to a hospital emergency room.

The total number of football-related injuries among children, including those treated outside of a hospital ER, is estimated to be almost 500,000 per year. These figures are from 2003 and, bearing in mind how many more children play football, they are likely to be considerably higher today.[1]

The most common injuries

The most common type of football-related injury is soft-tissue contusion (a bruise).

Sprains and strains are very nearly as common as bruises while fractures are, thankfully, relatively uncommon, accounting for only about 3% of injuries to children.[2]

How to treat common injuries

1. Strains and sprains

A sprain is an injury to a ligament, one of the bands of tough, fibrous tissue that connects two or more bones at a joint and prevents excessive movement of the joint. An ankle sprain is a very common injury.

A strain is an injury to either a muscle or a tendon. A muscle is a tissue that, when stimulated by nerve messages, contracts and produces movement. A tendon is a tough, fibrous cord of tissue that connects muscle to bone.

How to treat sprains and strains

Both sprains and strains should be treated by the R.I.C.E method.

R = Rest: Rest the injured area to stop further damage and bleeding.

I = Ice: Applied as soon as possible, ice slows down blood circulation which reduces bleeding and swelling. Ice also helps reduce pain.

Note: Applying ice direct to the skin can cause burns. Wrap it in a towel or cloth.

C = Compression: Applied to the area as soon as possible to restrict bleeding at the site of the injury. Pressure compresses blood vessels so preventing blood escaping through open ends of the torn fibres.

Note: Do not apply compression around a whole limb as it will starve other areas of blood.

E = Elevation: Allows gravity to assist the removal of swelling from the injured area and aids recovery.

2. Bruises

A bruise, or contusion, happens when part of the body is struck and the muscle fibres and connective tissue underneath are crushed but the skin doesn’t break. When this occurs, small blood vessels near the skin’s surface rupture and blood collects under the skin. With no place to go, the blood gets trapped, forming a red or purplish mark.

How to treat bruises

Bruises should be treated in the same way but with compressing the injury, i.e., rest, ice and elevate the part of the body affected.

Causes of football injuries

Poor coaching
Poor technique, timing, inability to control emotion and coaches who push players to be overly aggressive are all factors that can result in injuries to children.

So please make sure you teach your players how to tackle, how to keep calm under pressure and that they play according to the rules.

Training on poor surfaces

Don’t allow your players to train on surfaces that are uneven or slippery and don’t leave it to the referee to check the field on match days. Get to the ground early and check for holes, broken glass, stones or other debris.

Incorrect or no warm-up and/or cool-down

Warm-ups and cool-downs are essential and should not be skipped. Your players are much more likely to suffer strains and sprains if you don’t warm them up and/or cool them down properly.

Overuse

“The tissues in the body are a lot like a paperclip. If you just keep bending it over and over and over again, eventually that paperclip is going to break.”
Dr Michael Busch, Orthopedic Surgeon, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

Playing too much, too often or ignoring pain can result in small injuries becoming chronic problems that result in players having take several months off to recover.

Players as young as four and five are often exhorted to “play through the pain” and that it’s good to take a knock for the team.

As coach, you must ensure a player who appears to be in pain stops playing immediately and that they don’t start playing again until you (not their parents) are 100% satisfied the child is happy and fit to resume.

Be sensible regarding training. While you may think that six-year-olds should train three times a week, bear in mind that they also have PE lessons at school, go swimming and play other sports.

Football is a game, not a vocation.

“Youth sports should always be fun. The ‘win at all costs’ attitude of many parents, coaches, professional athletes, and peers can lead to injuries.”
American Academy of Orthopaedic Surgeons

References

[1] Epidemiology of 1.6 Million Pediatric Soccer-Related Injuries Presenting to US Emergency Departments From 1990 to 2003, Am J Sports Med, February 2007, 35, 288-293.

[2] Committee on Sports Medicine and Fitness, Injuries in Youth Soccer: A Subject Review, Pediatrics 2000 105: 659-661

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How to prepare for a soccer tournament

Football tournaments can be a lot of fun.

Your players get to play different formats of the game, play against players they’ve never met before as well as get to eat lots of ice cream!

But coaches who take their teams to summer tournaments need to plan the weekend very carefully. It’s all too easy to make a mistake that will spoil the event and waste the (sometimes very) expensive entry fee.

So what should be on your tournament checklist?

1. What’s the weather going to be like?

If your players are going to be outside in hot, sunny weather all day, you need to make sure that they have plenty to drink.

While you might think parents will use common sense and bring plenty of fluids for their child, will they bring the right fluids?

Sports drinks are better than plain water. Plain water contains no carbohydrate or electrolytes, causes bloating and discourages further drinking. It also stimulates urine output and therefore is inefficiently retained.

And make sure your players drink to a schedule, say every 15 minutes, whether they feel thirsty or not – thirst is not an accurate indicator of fluid needs.

You should provide somewhere for your players to get out of the weather (hot sun or driving rain!) and rest between games so a gazebo or tent will be useful. If you don’t have one big enough to hold all your players, find a parent who has or hire one for the day.

Ensure parents bring sunscreen for the players and that it is applied every time they have a drinks break.

2. Know the rules!

Tournaments often play to non-standard rules. Slide tackling may be prohibited, goal kicks may be taken from the goal line, the ball might not be allowed to go over head height, etc. So make sure you check them and tell your players about them before the first game kicks off, not after!

3. Player preparation

a) Warm-ups

A series of short, intense matches requires good player preparation.

Warm-ups should be brief, intense, and take place before every match (not just the first one) so that your players are prepared physically and mentally.

Aim to finish each warm up with a game of keepaway or Swedish Handball a few seconds before your players take the pitch.

b) Player rotation

Tournaments are an opportunity to give every player in your squad an equal share of playing time. You simply can’t play your “best” players in every game – it’s unfair on the players on the pitch (who will quickly become exhausted) and the players on the sidelines (who deserve to play, not watch).

As soon as I can, I get a copy of the tournament fixtures and write a team sheet for every match, making sure every player gets a fair share of playing time AND gets to start in at least one game.

4. Coping with finals

Your team has played well and you’re through to the final stages of the tournament. Your players are understandably excited and some are clearly nervous.

How are you going to help them play to their potential in the big match?

Seeing your way to success

For some years now, I have used a psychological technique called visualisation to help my players overcome nerves and play without fear, no matter how important the occasion.

Visualisation will not give a player technical skills that he or she didn’t have before but it will make them believe they can play well and help them relax.

You can use the technique with players as young as eight or nine but the older they are, the more effective this technique will be.

I have used it with U11s who were so nervous before a final that they were couldn’t sit still and U15s who were terrified of letting themselves down in a final against their biggest local rivals. On both occasions, my players took to the field eager to play but calm inside and they played some great football.

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How to play the TTT way

“Simple football is beautiful. But playing simple football is the hardest thing to do.” Johan Cruyff

TTT (Total Tika Taka) is a combination of Total Football and Tika Taka – a fast, short passing style of play by players who are not limited to playing in one position on the pitch.

It’s an exciting way of playing that has it’s roots in Total Football, pioneered by Dutch football club Ajax Amsterdam in the 1970s.

In Total Football, a player who moves out of her starting position is replaced by another player, thus retaining the team’s original structure. Anyone can be an attacker, a midfielder or a defender depending on the requirements of the game at a particular moment.

Tika Taka is more recent. It’s the name of the fast, short passing style of play primarily associated with La Liga club FC Barcelona and the Spanish national team under managers Luis Aragones and Vicente del Bosque. Anyone who has watched Barca or the Spanish team will know how devastatingly effective Tika Taka (or “touch touch”) can be.

Having a team that plays like Ajax and Barcelona rolled into one may seem wildly overambitious to an U8s coach! But really there is no reason why children can’t play in this way… other than the preoccupation that most youth football coaches have with formations and playing children in fixed positions.

The common focus on formations and planting players in specific positions is not good for young players. It stems from the desire to win matches – rather than teach children how to play football – but it often results in young players becoming what Manny Schellscheidt (ex-USA national team coach) calls “position stuck”.

“When they don’t know exactly what to do,” Schellscheidt says, “they go to the spot they’re most familiar with, regardless of what the game is asking for.”

But, I hear you say, surely you need to have players in certain positions?

Well, yes you do. But you also need to remember that football, although it is played with a ball, is really a game that is played without a ball for 90% of the time.

And unlike some other ball games, (baseball, for example), football does not (or should not) have fixed positions except, perhaps, for the goalkeeper. Instead of having limited responsibilities, players – even U8s – have jobs to do that change as the game progresses around them.

So what does this mean in practice?

Improving your players’ ball control, especially their first touch, should be the focus of 90% of coaching sessions.

How to improve your players’ ball control

Players should be taught to receive and move the ball with all parts of both feet and be encouraged to move to a supporting position immediately after passing the ball.

How to coach movement off the ball

Teach the core skills of passing, shooting and tackling, and explain the various positions on the pitch but minimise the importance of formations and tactics. Players should not be labelled as a “defender”, “attacker” or “midfielder”.

TTT games

Pass and move drills such as Shuttle Passing are useful for embedding basic ball skills while simple keepaway games are excellent for encouraging players to switch positions with each other.

Small-sided games (SSGs) such as the 1-0 Game, the Four Goal Game and the Liverpool Game will help your players learn to use the spaces on the pitch to their advantage and also encourage them to pass and move quickly.

It’s up to you!

While these games and drills will help your team learn the TTT style of play, the biggest factor in their success will be your willingness to accept the fact that allowing your players the freedom of the pitch and discouraging them from playing the long ball is going to result in lost matches in the short term.

But over time, your players will learn how to play football – not just how to win games – and they’ll have a lot of fun doing it!

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How to make your players listen!

Experienced coaches use a few simple strategies to keep their players focused and attentive during coaching session and the tips below will help you get your messages across more effectively.

But remember that your players are children – not mini adults – and if you are running a midweek coaching session, they’ve probably been at school all day being forced to sit and listen to their teachers. Once they’re out in the fresh air with a goal to shoot at, the last thing they want to do is listen to more lectures.

Tip 1: Keep it short

When you’re explaining a game or drill to children, try not to speak for more than 15 seconds and never talk for more than 30 seconds.

Give just one or two instructions, check understanding (“are we all OK with that?”), get into the action quickly, (“right, lets go!”) and correct errors as you go along.

Tip 2: Silence is golden

Never start talking until you have your players’ complete attention. Make sure balls are left to one side and keep quiet until your players are quiet too. Even if it takes several minutes.

Tip 3: Avoid distractions

Face your players away from other games or activities that are going on around you and don’t stand with the sun behind you.

Tip 4: Get down to their level

Don’t tower above your players. Get down on one knee if you need to and make eye contact with every player as you speak. Don’t wear sunglasses.

Tip 5: A picture is worth a thousand words

Demonstrations are a key part of football coaching so show your players what you want them to do.

If you can’t do it, find someone who can! Ask for volunteers or get an older or more experienced player to show the others the skill or technique.

Tip 6: Have rules… and apply them

It is essential to have team rules that are discussed and agreed with your players. My number 1 rule is simple: “No talking while I’m talking.”

But don’t be too quick to apply sanctions – if you do, you’ll come across as a sergeant major instead of a coach – but if a quiet word doesn’t do the trick you will have to tell the player concerned to sit out until they are ready to listen.

There’s nothing to be gained by making a player sit out a game or drill that they didn’t really want to do anyway but making talkative players sit out the first few minutes of the end-of-session scrimmage is a powerful deterrent.

Summary

These tips will help you avoid being embarrassed by players who refuse to listen and you should expect and encourage your players to pay attention to what you are saying.

But be lenient with players who are under eight. What you may perceive as discipline problems are really personality tendencies common to that age group: short attention spans, high energy, sociability and an inability to understand detailed explanations. Don’t expect six-year-olds to act like 26-year-olds.

And remember that all children come to coaching sessions to have fun and play football which, ultimately, is just a game. Taking it too seriously, or making practice too much like school, will result in your players switching off altogether and, in the end, they’ll just stop coming.

For more soccer coaching tips and products visit Soccer Coaching Club.

Improve your players’ kicking power

Four to six-year-olds won’t get a lot of power into their shots no matter what you do and I suggest these coaching notes should be used with players aged from seven years up.

More effort doesn’t equal more power

If your players try to kick the ball harder by going at it more violently, they won’t kick it any harder, they’ll just get frustrated as their accuracy drops off and the power in their shot stays the same or becomes weaker.

This is because too much effort tends to make the kicking leg go stiff and the stiffer their leg, the less power is transmitted from foot to ball.

Accuracy drops off because too violent execution of the instep drive usually results in a deterioration in technique.

In that sense, the instep drive is a bit like a golf swing. The way to get distance and accuracy is to use the right technique in a smooth and relaxed manner.

When I’m working on increasing power with my players this is what I look for:

In the last stride before the ball is struck, the player should hop on to the non-kicking leg. This gives the kicking leg extra flex and springloads the shot.

Hopping on to the non-kicking foot in the final stride also results in the kicking foot coming down from a greater height – a high backlift is essential for maximum power.

The ankle of the kicking foot must be locked. The easiest way to do this is to scrunch the toes up real hard.

The kicking leg should whip through the shot in a smooth and controlled manner.

How to use imaginary glass and a video camera!

A good follow-through is essential. I tell my players to imagine that there is a big pane of glass about a foot in front of the ball and their kicking leg should break the glass after they have taken the shot.

Talking to players and demonstrating how to increase the power in their shot is only part of the answer. Taking video of them in action on the training pitch is a very useful way of showing them the flaws in their technique

I use a still camera that also takes video and I play it back to my players on a laptop. Seeing any flaws in the way they kick the ball for themselves really does help them to improve quickly.

How to help your players cope with mistakes

All football players – even top professionals – miss shots on goal, mishit passes and make poor decisions occasionally.

Professional players know that mistakes are a part of life and can put these minor disappointments behind them without too much trouble. Children, however, sometimes find it harder to ignore the mistakes they make on the field.

Mistakes often make young players upset, frustrated and even angry with themselves and these negative emotions can have a damaging effect on their game. One common reaction to what they perceive as letting their team mates down is to hide on the pitch, to stop wanting the ball and to stop making runs into promising positions for fear they might fail again.

So it’s important that you know how to pick players up after they make a mistake and help them to understand that, in the words of John Wooden: “If you’re not making mistakes, then you’re not doing anything.”

Who makes mistakes?

The short answer is, of course, everyone. Teachers, parents, policemen, judges… even youth football coaches sometimes make mistakes!

Young players are no different but some are more affected by mistakes than others.

Most teams have at least one player who is a “football perfectionist”. They work hard at training, listen to every word you say and are regularly the “player of the match” on match days. But they often have unrealistic expectations of themselves, their self-esteem is low and they are prone to being overly self-critical.

For these players, making a mistake, especially during a match, is a big deal. Even the smallest mistake is seen as confirming their worst fear: That they aren’t very good at football.

In contrast, children who have learned that mistakes are unavoidable and expected, will be more resilient and have more confidence in their own ability.

These tips should help you get all your players to that level.

Stay composed

How we respond to our players’ mistakes will teach them how they should respond to their own.

If your striker sees you shaking your head in despair when she misses an open goal, don’t be surprised if she hesitates before “pulling the trigger” the next time she has a goalscoring opportunity.

If your goalkeeper sees you throwing a drink bottle to the ground when she fumbles a catch (and yes, I’ve seen that happen), don’t be surprised when she doesn’t even try to save the next shot.

In matches, nothing should cause you to lose your composure and in training you should take the attitude that “it doesnâ€™t have to be perfect, it’s the effort that counts”.

Don’t use words such as “what on earth were you thinking?” or “you can do better than that!”. And please don’t tell players “to try harder” when they are probably already trying as hard as they can.

Even saying that “it was just bad luck” or “you did OK, they just didn’t understand”, can confuse a player who knows full well that they did make a mistake and it wasn’t someone else’s fault.

Make mistakes a learning point by acknowledging errors calmly and explaining to your players what they should do if they find themselves in that position again – not what they shouldn’t do.

Encourage realistic expectations

You can help minimise the importance your players give to their mistakes by giving them sensible objectives.

Players who go into a game thinking that: “I must score today”, are setting themselves up for failure.

Talk to your players about what they expect to do when they step onto the pitch and replace any hard-to-achieve outcome objectives with more sensible, process objectives such as:

To tackle hard.
Get into the box for every cross.
Move into a good position to receive a pass.

Share the mistakes of famous players

YouTube has dozens of video clips of famous players making some really amazing mistakes.

Goals missed from 2ft, goalkeepers throwing the ball into the back of their own net, defenders scoring stunning own goals… the list is endless.

I have some of the more amusing examples downloaded onto a laptop that I take to training sessions and show them to my players during drinks breaks. It does their self-esteem no end of good to see famous players falling on their backsides!

Conclusion

Persevering when the going gets tough and being able to bounce back from mistakes are not just important skills for a young football player to possess, they’re essential life skills.

Your players are going to encounter many setbacks before they’re much older: College rejection letters, failing exams, not getting the summer job they’ve set their hearts on and more.

You can do them a massive favour by teaching them, in the words of FIFA female World Player of the Year and ex-USA star, Mia Hamm, that “failure happens all the time. It happens every day… what makes you better is how you react to it.”

For more soccer coaching tips and products visit Soccer Coaching Club.

How to deal with a soccer team that cheats

I’ve seen players as young as eight or nine claiming corners or throw ins when they know they touched the ball last, feigning injury to get a free kick and handling the ball like miniature Thierry Henrys.

Youth football coaches falsify birth certificates, encourage their players to pull and push at corners to stop attackers getting to the ball, condone diving and teach their players that “it’s only a foul if the ref spots it”.

And referees who blatantly favour one team over the other are, sadly, commonplace.Â

The “win at all costs” culture that pervades youth football, encouraged by the lack of effective penalties for cheating and supported by the cynical attitude of mega-rich pro players and their managers, means that you are bound to meet teams which cheat.

But what should you do about it?

Don’t react

Games in which one team is obviously cheating, whether it be by deliberately fouling your players, “bad mouthing” them or claiming that they are being fouled, can easily get out of control. Emotions run high â€“ both on the pitch and on the touchline â€“ but you must remain calm.

Confronting the other coach/manager while the game is in progress is pointless and will add to the tension. So if you feel you have to speak to the other team’s officials, do it after the game and out of earshot of the players and their parents.

Don’t allow your players to cheat back

Whatever you do, don’t allow your players to fight fire with fire.

Children have an acute sense of fair play and you may be confronted with a set of outraged players at half time complaining that their shirts are being tugged, the other team are pinching them (that happened to one of my teams!) or the referee is biased.

That’s when you have to set an example. By all means recognise your players concerns but don’t criticise the match official, the other players or anyone else. If your players are angry, try to channel their emotions into playing harder and faster but don’t allow them to descend to their opponent’s level.

Set the standards

Cheating doesn’t come naturally to young football players â€“ they watch respected professional players getting away with breaking the rules and think: “If it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me”.

Then they try their new “skills” in training, usually in the end-of-session scrimmage.

That’s when you have to step in and make it clear to your players that you will not tolerate any form of cheating, either in training or in a match.

If you see shirt tugging, etc. in training, stop the game. In matches, sub a player who tries to gain an unfair advantage and explain that: “We don’t do that sort of thing”.

Take a hard line, never accept anything less than complete honesty from your players (or yourself) and never turn a blind eye.

For more soccer coaching tips and products visit Soccer Coaching Club.

How to coach very young soccer players

Coaching very young children is great fun.

Four, five and six-year-olds are so enthusiastic it’s hard not to give them a good time at training sessions. All you have to do is put a ball on the ground and off they go!

But if you want to help them get the most out of your training sessions and set a firm foundation for the “serious” years to come, you should follow a few simple guidelines.

Set the rules

While older football players need to be involved in rule-setting (“what do you think the team rules should be?”), four to six-year-olds need to be told what you want them to do.

You don’t need a long list of rules. One or two is enough. But if you don’t have any rules, you will waste a lot of time trying to get their attention and you will end up feeling a bit frazzled!

Team talk!

Tell your players – in the first session – that if you shout “team talk!”, they should stop whatever they are doing and run to you. If they have a ball, they should bring it with them and sit on it.

Remind your players of this rule at the beginning of every session and give lots of praise to them when they do it.

When I’m talking…

Team talks are your opportunity to explain to your players what they are going to do next.

Verbal instructions should be very brief – no more than 10 seconds or so – and followed by a quick demonstration.

But you need to make sure that your players are listening. So tell them that they can’t listen and talk at the same time!

If a child persists in talking while you’re explaining something, gently ask them to be quiet… or they won’t know what is going to happen next.

Ratios

You should never try to coach big groups of children on your own, however old they are.

If you’re coaching children aged 11 or older, there should always be at least one coach for every 16 children but if you’re coaching four to six-year-olds, the ratio is much lower: One coach for every six or seven players.

Get parents to help out if you don’t have the luxury of assistant coaches. It’s a good way to engage them and when your players are a bit older, you will need engaged parents!

Play very small-sided games

When playing team games, play 2v2, 3v3 or 4v4.

If you allow the size of the teams to get bigger than that, the children won’t get enough touches on the ball and the games will be too complex and confusing for them.

Never say “never”

Allow your players to move the ball with whatever part of the body they want to.

If they want to kick the ball with their toe, let them. But, at the same time, show them that they can move the ball with the inside, outside, sole, heel and instep too.

Forget all about positions

If you play matches against other teams, don’t try to put players in positions. Very young children all want to be where the action is – within two feet of the ball – so let them.

When you see players beginning to move away from the “swarm” of their own accord, you can introduce the concept of team shape.

Rather than tell your players that they are “defenders” or “attackers”. These labels make no sense to four to six-year-olds but they will, eventually, begin to space themselves out and a recognisable team shape will develop. But don’t rush it.

Keep activities short and familiar

Games should be short, no more than five or 10 minutes, and don’t be afraid to repeat activities that they enjoy.

Young children like to play games that they know and enjoy. If your players want to play Sharks and Minnows, Freeze Tag, Red Light, Green Light and simple games of tag every time they step on to the practice field, let them.

You don’t have to teach them a new game very week!

Following these guidelines should help make coaching sessions with four to six-year-olds fun and enjoyable for everyone concerned – including you!