Sport Psychology - Self Confidence.

Self-confidence: The mark of a champion. That secret ingredient that all great footballers seem to possess, regardless of what level they compete at. Can you grow it? If so, how? Are there specific things that parents, teachers and coaches can do to kill it?

Self-confidence is that intangible factor, a cousin to positive mental attitude that keeps a player working hard regardless of how many times he may fail or how many obstacles get thrown in his path.

Self-confidence can give an average player or team the courage and focus to defeat a stronger opponent. Self-confidence can motivate you to attempt and accomplish the impossible. Likewise, lacking self-confidence, a player or team will consistently perform below their potential. Low self-confidence can kill a player’s enjoyment of the sport and turn him into a dropout statistic.

Coaches pause for thought

"Are you building or busting your players' self-confidence?"

Good coaches consistently build self-confidence in their players. They continually look for opportunities in training and games where they can help their players grow, improve and feel better about themselves. They have an innate understanding that young footballers always perform in direct relation to their level of confidence. Knock your players down in the wrong way and at the wrong time and you will be rewarded with consistent performance problems and underachievement. Build your players up honestly and appropriately, and they will consistently over-achieve for you.

Keep in mind a fact missed by far too many coaches: No matter what you do, you are always building up or tearing down your player’s self-confidence. Whether you have lengthy, brief or no interactions with your players you are having an impact on how they feel about themselves. As a matter of fact, every interaction you have can potentially affect their self-confidence. Go through a training session with no eye contact and no communication with a player and chances are that the boy will leave feeling that you don't care about him. As a consequence the boy may begin to question his or her own worth as a player.

Truth be told, you hold tremendous power in your players' mind. With the numbers of single parent families rising and the fact that a large proportion of teaching staff are female, you could, in many instances, be the only significant male role model that a boy has. As a result, he will care about your opinion and want you to believe in and respect him. Consequently, you may find that he is constantly searching for clues as to how you feel about him. A look, a voice tone, a particular comment all potentially insignificant to you, can have a powerful affect on how that boy feels about himself. Nowhere is this more apparent or quite as devastating to self-confidence as how you deal with playing time on the pitch and mid-game substitutions.

Most boys base their self-confidence on how much playing time they get. If you don't play them, the majority of players go through a crisis of confidence. "I am not playing because the coach doesn’t believe in me. He doesn't think I'm good enough. I hope he's not right. What if he is?" It's truly a rare young player that can keep his self-esteem intact regardless of how little pitch time he gets.  Of course, who you choose to play and for what reasons is your decision as coach. How you deal with substitutions, however, can dramatically affect the self-confidence and therefore the play of your entire squad. What I'm specifically referring to here is your style of making personnel changes during a game. Some coaches are know to have a ‘quick trigger finger’ and will pull a player off the instant that he makes a mistake and then miss the opportunity of turning what is perceived by the player as a negative response into a positive one by spending time talking to the player and building his self esteem.

Substitutions are made for a variety of reasons during a game; however, if you don’t take time out to share your rationale with the boy who has been taken off he is likely to believe that his withdrawal from the game is simply based upon the fact that you view his replacement as a better player than him.

Consistently benching any player the instant that he makes a mistake will give you several things that I doubt you really want. First, and foremost, it will get that player thinking too much whenever he is on the pitch. If he knows that you are likely to take him off the minute he messes up, he will be out there, in the action, focusing on not making mistakes. Entertaining a fear of making a mistake while you're playing is probably the best way to guarantee that you will mess up. Your players will always play their best when they feel that they have nothing to lose. When you have nothing to lose you play loose, relaxed and your focus stays where it belongs, in the action. However, if players think that their pitch time is at stake every time they step onto the field, then they will play tight and distracted. They won't focus on the action and, as a consequence, will consistently play below their potential.

Having a limited tolerance to mistakes from certain players will instantly set in motion a self-confidence killing cycle. The player worries about limited playing time and messing up. He goes out in the game tight, distracted and tentative. He plays poorly as a result. You immediately bench him when he does.  His self-confidence falls through the floor. The next time you do give him a chance to play, he is even more worried and distracted, and the whole cycle repeats itself with the player’s self-confidence getting lower and lower.

How many times have you seen good players with enough talent to be consistently starting, plagued by low self-confidence and devastated by this cycle? Is this the fault of the coach? Perhaps it is, maybe we need to look closer at how we use fringe squad players. Bear in mind that every player in your squad is caught in a vicious circle. In order for them to play loosely and with more confidence they need to feel free from the worry of making mistakes. This means that they need to have no worries about being substituted. This can only come with more, NOT less pitch time. Unfortunately, they can't get more time in games unless they are playing well. They can't play well without more confidence. They can't get more confidence without more playing time, etc

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Positive Thinking

Coping with Performance