Many junior teams are lucky enough to have more than one coach.

Sometimes parents will take a proactive semi assistant role. But there are inherent dangers – lots of well meaning comments can confuse the overall message.

Coming from different voices, most of whom have at least some implied authority, means a player can be under several influences and may even shut out the key messages.

Before each session, it is important to agree who is leading each section of the practice. Then decide who is going to talk, when and most vitally what is going to be said.

The “corporate” language of how a skill or strategy is to be performed must come as a constant – even if a coach does not agree with what the others are saying. As the session progresses, the lead coach can turn to other coaches for specific comments.

Otherwise, the other coaches purely encourage or reiterate. More difficult is the “one voice, one message” with sideline parents.

It is a brave coach who faces the parents over the corporate view, especially when a particular parent is perhaps telling their sibling to perform differently. The Soccer Coach Weekly strategy is to take the practice as far away from the parents as possible!

I like this speech which explains what a young player has to put in to get what they want from the sport. It uses the tale of the carpenter to illustrate the point – it’s a nice tale so sit back and listen and learn: