Sideline coaching is one of the reasons why many young amateur goalkeepers are struggling in the goal. Let’s be honest, sideline coaching is simply annoying and for some young goalkeepers, this is humiliating and devastating.

For example,  pretend that you’re going out to dinner with your best friend and as you eat your dinner, your best friend tells you every few seconds,  to sit up straight, fix your posture, stand up straight, sit down, turn head, don’t talk, talk, look up, look down, laugh, don’t laugh etc…Just reading this becomes annoying as heck but NOBODY in their right mind would like to be in this situation.

Lets analyze why parents want to do SIDELINE INSTRUCTIONS:

•  they want the best for their child, want to be helpful
• The end result or outcome is something parents would like to control
• They do not want to see their kids struggle, lose a game or fail at all.
• For some parents, sideline coaching is a form to release stress
• Parents want to be totally involved in every aspect of their child’s career.

***We’ve all seen coaches from the sidelines who are simply DOWNERS and even their body language could send out negative signals to an athlete!!

Here’s the downside to the point stated above on sideline instructions:

• Extremely distracting, annoying and often athletes quickly LOSE focus
• It creates anxiety, stress, FEAR to make a mistake because parents/coaches will be upset (it is a terrible thing to play in fear)
• Anger:  At themselves, team, coaches and their own parents.
• Athletes will stop trying: some kids will cry after a little mistakes, others will simply STOP playing.
• Aggressive: At this stage, athletes will be violent or vicious towards a parent, ref, fan or player, out of control.
• Some goalkeepers make little to NO progress at all.

NOTE:

For many years, I have trained professional goalkeepers and personally played at a high level, where training is a sacred place for concentration with ZERO interruptions from the public.  To a coach, it is very distracting to have parents do sideline instruction during A TRAINING SESSION.  I’ve also seen kids get so nervous and annoyed when they get the “LOOK” from parents from the sideline!!. It is IMPOSSIBLE to help AMATEUR young goalkeepers this way!!   

Here are few things that you can do to POSITIVELY to change the attitude and mood of the young goalkeeper:

• LET THEM STRUGGLE: best lessons in life comes from mistakes you make.
• Let the coach do their job!!!!
• Watch the game:   Enjoy the game
• Cheer as much as you want:    Don’t drop “HINTS” as you cheer
• If athlete wants to talk about the game then do it but only when they are ready to talk about it.
• Enjoy your child, make them feel like a million dollars!!

Nobody can FORCE anyone to be successful. Successful athletes are fully dedicated to improve everyday.  Parents or even coaches have great intentions for their athletes but at times their actions can change the course of the athlete’s enthusiasm. If the athlete’s enthusiasm is gone, the athlete will eventually stop trying or simply play with FEAR.  Be aware of these signs before it is too late!!

Success consists of going from failure to failure without LOSS OF ENTHUSIASM- Winston Churchill