"Over-Coaching", It's Time to Give Football Back to the Children

"Over-coaching"? What does that mean?

This is actually a concept that has been widely discussed in youth football development circles abroad, "over coaching." The meaning is obvious: in the process of teaching children football, some coaches go too far, treating grassroots training for under-12s as if it were professional academy training.

And they are completely blind to the harm this causes children, always believing that the most important thing is for children to learn various moves and techniques under their guidance.

When we talk about "over-coaching," we always end up discussing "letting football itself be the child's teacher." Likewise, this topic inevitably leads to "giving street football back to children."

Although everyone has recognized the phenomenon of "over-coaching," I still rarely see coaches taking their group to a pickup field, using lampposts as goals, with no boundaries, no training kits, no cones, and not much coaching.

When children are playing, the coach continuously interrupts, giving too many coaching points, to the extent that it interferes with the children's ability to explore and experiment on their own, suppressing their creativity.

Put simply, it's the coach acting as a "helicopter parent," helping children learn every touch, making all the decisions for them in training. To put it bluntly, it's "spoon-fed teaching", children become players controlled by the coach's joystick.

This limits children's ability to think independently and innovate. Parents and coaches are overly involved in the child's interaction with football, leaving children with no opportunity for independent thinking. Every decision comes from parents and coaches, and children have no chance to learn and grow on their own. As the saying goes:

We've heard all the wisdom in the world, yet we still can't live a good life.

What good is just hearing it? Children need the process of self-exploration, learning from their own experiences, rather than through us "control-obsessed" coaches who seem professional by micromanaging every aspect of a child's football learning, but are actually hindering their development.

I wonder if you've noticed a phenomenon: when younger children (ages 4 to 6) first come to football class, apart from those few who already love football due to family influence, probably 5 out of 10 aren't really willing to play. The first thing they do when they arrive at the pitch is run around everywhere, what truly attracts them are the strange trees, benches, and other curious things nearby.

But this kind of experience and feeling, this freedom, becomes harder and harder for them to find in training. During many sessions, while you're going on and on, the children's minds are already soaring with the free air, even though they're looking into your eyes.

We need to find a new teaching approach that guides children toward more self-exploration, self-learning, and self-reflection. We should minimize the involvement of coaches and parents, giving children more free time to play football, to digest the coach's guidance and encouragement on their own, rather than mechanically performing the actions dictated by the coach.

Recently, I've been trying to change in my own coaching. I set aside small windows during breaks in training to guide children and ask them questions.

To avoid disturbing other children, instead of stopping the entire session as I used to, I simply walk over to one child and quietly share my thoughts and questions with them.

Gradually, I started seeing the results of this approach: the children had more touches on the ball, more fun, and a growing understanding of football. And these precious insights came from their own hands-on experimentation, not from my interruptions every three minutes.

I think you've already guessed what I'm getting at. Parents are even more prone to "over-coaching" because it's not just in football, it's even more common in daily life. This is perhaps related to certain cultural tendencies.

Excessive spoon-fed teaching is far too common in many places, and this is one of the deeper reasons why the football played by many teams looks so rigid.

We often see parents screaming from the sidelines as if they're about to lose a video game match, wishing they could control every child on the pitch.

If I were a child, I would absolutely hate that kind of playing environment. That kind of pressure only makes children anxious, conflicted, and eventually they may start hating football altogether.

It's time we did something about this.

Ages 6 to 12 are the golden years for children's learning and development, but unfortunately, "over-coaching" is most rampant in these age groups.

At this point, some people may still not be able to identify what "over-coaching" looks like. Here are two examples:

Substituting a child who made one or two mistakes during a match and lecturing them on the sideline about how to correct it, instead of giving the child more opportunities on the pitch to try and reflect on their own;

Constantly shouting instructions during training or matches telling children how to play, "Shoot!" "Switch!", instead of waiting until a break in play and guiding the child: "Do you remember last time when you had the ball near the box and there was only one defender between you and the goal? What could you have done? Could you have tried to beat that last defender and then shoot?"

Sometimes we instinctively feel that immediate guidance is crucial, but if you find yourself constantly talking during the coaching process, that's a warning sign. Stop, observe, and let children make their own decisions, that's what truly helps children learn and grow independently.

Dutch and Arsenal legend Bergkamp once had this to say about "over-coaching":

"When I think back to my time learning football at Ajax, I always remember that we had just two coaches on the sideline. They rarely shouted continuously, instead, they let us figure things out on our own, let us express ourselves. This helped my professional career enormously. Many grassroots youth coaches nowadays, and I'm talking about the under-12 age group, they all think they're Mourinho or Wenger. They know exactly what they should do at every step, what children should do in every training session. So by extension, the children no longer need to think for themselves. The coaches have already done everything for them. All they have to do is follow instructions like robots. And this is the biggest problem, they're not learning for themselves, but for the coach. When a child encounters a problem or challenge and stops to look at you, as if to say 'What should I do?', that's the moment you as a coach should reflect, because you have surely been over-coaching. Give children back the freedom to learn football. You need to create that kind of learning environment for them, so they can grow into individuals with their own style and personality. We don't need to produce children who all move the same way. What we want is to unlock their latent creativity, not to churn out batch after batch of 'clone' players."