| Dealing With a Big Loss |
A coach's actions and words can keep players from being dejected
By Graham Ramsey
Unfortunately, many matches in youth soccer end up being one-sided affairs. How should a team react when struggling against a superior opponent? What can be learned from a big loss? What can a coach do to promote a positive experience during and after a big loss?
The far too common reaction after a bad defeat is total distress. The size of the defeat can simply add to the degree of the distress.
The challenge for all coaches is to make the game a positive experience. The only real loss is when the players stop trying and/or abuse the game with petty or poor behavior, regardless of what the scoreboard says. Either situation is losing on a grand scale.
For good players, losing is a test of a team’s morale and pride. Anyone can perform like Ronaldo when his or her team is ahead 7-0.
However, when you see players still giving their best and urging their teammates on despite being down several goals you are seeing real players and a real team. It is when the wheels start falling off and a team is losing by several goals that the game gives players their biggest test. It is no longer the scoreline that is important, but the test of players’ resolve and courage to respond in a positive manner.
Sadly, in this country, too many players and teams fail this test; real teams are too rare. The more common sight is the dejected, hence already defeated, team which falls behind by a single goal, much less two.
The games that you remember are the comeback thrillers. If you are lucky to play in such a game and be on the side that turned a two- or three-goal deficit into a win or an even match, it will live in your memory forever. It’s a game that takes everything of you and your teammates to make happen — your skill, your fitness, your determination and maybe your greatest quality: your spirit to never give in.
To stop the downswing and put the team back on course, there are a number of strategies that team leaders can use:
• Get back in play quickly. Run into the net and get the ball back to the center spot as quickly as possible. Two positive things happen — you don’t give your opponents time to enjoy their goal and you are responding in a positive way by sending the message that you are not defeated and are intent on getting on and getting even.
• Set a positive tone. Bring the team together in a huddle and set a positive tone. Take charge of any player whose head may have dropped because of an error or from becoming depressed. That attitude has to be nipped in the bud, or otherwise it becomes a cancer. Don’t let the team drift into this state of mind.
• Make a player’s error a team error. If a player creates or allows a goal, don’t disown him or her as though he or she were a leper, especially if it’s your goalkeeper. Leave the guilty youngster to fret and worry with no support from teammates and you have a time bomb ready to explode. Make the error the team’s error by accepting a portion of the responsibility and encouraging everyone to pick up his or her game and support each other. If possible, get the ball back to the player who made the error and let him or her get back into the game again. This is particularly true when it’s a goalkeeper who otherwise might go long periods without being involved and then be faced with another tense situation with only the negative memory intervening. Whether a field player or goalkeeper, the key must be to get him or her back into a playing groove.
• Develop a kickoff play. There is nothing worse than to absentmindedly take the kick-off and give the ball back to your opponents for them to double whammy you with an easy goal. Often the scoring team is at its most vulnerable point after it has just scored. Some players drop their concentration and others are still celebrating. This is one of the best times to strike. A set play with a ball delivered behind the back line to a sprinting winger will put the opponent under immediate pressure.
• Offer encouragement. Your players never need encouragement more than after they have conceded a goal. Encourage effort and praise skill or an attempt to be skillful. There is more than one game going on within a game and there are more ways of winning than just the score at the end of the match. If youngsters do or try something they have practiced and use it in the match, that is a winning moment. If a player does something for the first time, that is a winning moment. Youth soccer is about winning moments. Players and parents are looking for positive leadership. This is where coaches earn their millions. As a coach you may feel just as depressed as the child who has scored an own goal, but you can’t show it. Your role is to help and encourage your players upward and onward. Never use sarcasm to offer encouragement at times like these. Children recognize this in an instant. The sarcastic comment is just as deadly as the poison arrow.
• Learn from the experience. What can you take from defeat to help your youngsters and team improve? Certainly not the comments overheard after one state cup match last spring. The message conveyed by the losing coach was that the loss resulted from his players’ inability to “take out” (meaning from the game) a particularly effective opposing player. Messages such as this have no place in sports, at any level. Rather than focusing on the negatives, the key after a match is to identify the positives, including learning from what your opponent did right. Ask your players what they got out of the match. Ignore or forget the lessons from the match and you’re like the second Titanic looking for a bigger iceberg.
• Compete with dignity. It takes courage and a good heart to fight the good fight when the tide is against you and you are outmanned. Anybody can give up and walk away, but if you care about the game, then you will keep playing. Winston Churchill gave a great speech at his former school during the darkest days of World War II about the courage to face challenges of all sorts. He stood up, gazing over his audience, and began quoting Kipling’s famous lines: “Meet triumph and disaster. And treat those two imposters just the same.”
The lesson learned is to never give in to anything, great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honor and good sense.
If our youngsters learn to acquire some of that Churchillian spirit, then soccer has played its part in helping children learn more than any win or trophy can supply.
Editor’s note: Graham Ramsey is a former Maryland State Youth Soccer Association Director of Education and Training. This article originally appeared in the November-December 2002 issue of Soccer Journal.
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