Monthly Archive: September 2011

One of the teams they played was an inner city school, Como. Many of the kids at Como couldn’t afford good soccer equipment and often showed up in tennis shoes. The first time they played Cretin, they lost eight to nothing. The Cretin coach used subs, and made everyone pass three times, and shoot with their off foot.

Management and MotivationWe played a better team to a two-two draw at the end of regulation during a state semifinal game. It was a tough game. At the end of the first overtime, the other team scored on us, and they celebrated like they had won the championship. During the one-minute break before the second overtime, my U14 team came in dejected.

One of my U14 teams was playing a game against a staunch rival. The other team had won the championship from them the year before. The kids knew this, and so did the other team. The other team expected to win. Our first half strategy was simple. Just harass the ball, disrupt their passing and wait for a counter attack. The Italians call this Catennacio.

Edina was a large school, and I suspected we might be in trouble when their players each arrived with their own matching athletic bags and personal trainers. When the game started, it was forty-five seconds before they scored on us. After three goals, our goalie began to cry.

One of the thing’s management always wonders about is… do they have the right team? When coaching a youth soccer team you don’t have the opportunity to fire players or draft new ones. It presents a unique opportunity. A good coach or manager asks, “How can I develop each player to their maximum potential?”

One day, my ten year old daughter begged me to coach her rec-center soccer team. Most of what I know about managing and motivating business teams comes from coaching youth soccer. I agreed and went skeptically to “draft night,” unsure of why kid’s needed to be drafted. There I found two other coaches poring through the kid’s applications and putting them into two piles; the ones they wanted and the ones they didn’t. It appeared they had been at it for a while.