Tips for Organizing a Youth Soccer Team to Success

When leading a soccer team, the organization of the sports team can often be the least fun part. You have to balance your players needs, with your coach’s needs, with your league’s requirements and finally, with the parent’s needs. With such a large cast of characters with sometimes competing interests, organizing this chaos isn’t easy. Here are just a few organizing (non-coaching) tips to help you get organized and to help ensure your soccer team accomplishes its goals.

Steps

1. Get the team roster down. Make sure you get every participant’s key information like their preferred contact method (email, cellphone, etc.). Set up an email list using services like http://www.qlubb.com so that everyone can send an email to the group email address rather than having to list everybody’s email address. Publish the roster on the web so that people can get to know each other, set up carpools, and have their own side conversations etc.
2. Get the 911. Set up the call tree so that you can get in touch with people when it counts. People’s preferred method of communication should be taken into account. Last minute rain outs of games and other postponements require a quick and reliable response so that nobody gets stuck. Maintain this roster online so that everyone has the most up-to-date contact information.
3. Understand your goals. Have that first team meeting where everyone can get acquainted but most importantly get agreement on the goals. Are you out to win the championship or to learn and have fun? Who is the right person to coach the team? Prior to any meeting you should do some informal polling and discussion so that you can go to the team meeting prepared.
4. Ask for volunteers. Don’t get stuck doing everything. People are really willing to help if asked. At every meeting look for a chance to recruit volunteers, especially based on any skills they might have. Some parents may have good soccer skills and can be an assistant coach during practice. Online sign up sheets are very useful so that everybody knows what’s been taken and what’s left to do and they can sign up on their own time.
5. Create the master schedule. Get a master schedule online published as soon as possible. It should include all practices, games and tournaments. Putting it online cuts down on needless email chatter and eliminates miscommunication. Be sure to include location, times and who is responsible for what. Remember to bring snacks for that half-time energy boost. Services like Qlubb (http://www.qlubb.com) has the ability to publish schedules either privately within the group or publicly.
6. Figure out the budget. Most budgets for recreational soccer teams are simple however, the numbers do have to add up at the end of the season. Make sure you account for all costs like league fees, equipment costs, tournament fees, transportation and housing costs. Remember that having a fundraiser costs money too. Look at ways to defray costs through activity fees, bake sales/car washes, sponsorships from local sports stores, subsidies from sports equipment manufacturers, etc.
7. Build on the community. A sports team is comprised of a group of people that form a community around the common interest of sport. However, over time as people get to know each other, bonds strengthen. Fostering the community through things like photo sharing, team picnics, after game dinners are a great way to have fun while also improving trust and teamwork.
8. Do something special. Getting your team excited about the sport can help enrich the experience. If the professionals are having a tournament in town, arrange for a field trip. If you are budget conscious, you can see some great competition at the college level. Most sports have a hall of fame that you could arrange a field trip to. And if you ask around you might be able to find a pro in the area who might donate some time to run a guest practice session or to give a pep talk.
9. Broadcast your accomplishments! Put up a public web page and talk about your wins! Nothing makes a team more proud than to let people know what you accomplished. It also lets players send that link to grandma. Sites like Qlubb have the ability to automatically generate a public site based on the content of the site, which minimizes the overhead.
10. Ask for feedback. Keep an open dialog with everyone and be flexible. It’s important to listen. Soccer teams live for months to years and needs change all the time. A good leader will be able to anticipate these needs by constantly listening and thinking ahead.

Knowing How to Play Soccer Could be Your Key to Success

Knowing how to play soccer could be your key to success.

Teaching others, particularly youths, how to play soccer is a passion for many people worldwide. However, what many of these soccer lovers do not realise is the fact that it is possible not just to do this full time but also make a very good living from it.

Such is the appeal of soccer worldwide that the demand for people who can actually coach others how to play soccer far outstrips supply. Irrespective of whether it’s England, Australia or the United States the thirst for learning how to play soccer is almost unquenchable.

Why then, if the demand is so great are there not more people teaching others how to play? There are three main reasons for this.

Knowing how to play soccer and actually teaching others how to play soccer are two totally different things. Unfortunately many people do not realise this.

These people are under the mistaken impression that to be good at showing people how to play that they had to be good at playing soccer themselves.

Because of this mistaken belief many soccer lovers are not only depriving themselves of the opportunity to coach soccer but also depriving themselves of the chance of making a very good living doing something they love.

The ability to acquire knowledge, to be organised and impart knowledge is not restricted to any particular age. Teaching in general and teaching people how to play soccer in particular is an acquired skill, a skill that can be acquired and applied using a certain methodology. Again, this is not something that a lot of people are actually aware of.

Many lovers of the beautiful game have a vague notion that they would like to be in a position to make a living from teaching others how to play, but they lack one vital tool. This tool is the key to success for any business, a business plan.

The lack of this blueprint for success, formula, call it what you may , is the common factor in why so many people fail to realise their dreams and this is as true for coaching people how to play soccer as it is for any other business.

The requirements for showing others how to play soccer.

The requirements are actually quite simple and if each one is present the opportunities are limitless. The most basic requirement is a passion for the game and a willingness to learn.

Organisational ability, whether it is your own or one of your relations is also a big plus. However the most important part if you are to be successful at coaching others how to play soccer is getting your hands on a good plan and applying it.

What should a good plan contain?

If you are considering the idea of teaching others how to play soccer your plan should contain the following;

Ideas for setting up your first coaching session.

Soccer drills.

Play great soccer,    grass roots coaching,  

Marketing and promoting your soccer coaching business.

Ideally your plan for will come from someone who has achieved success themselves in this area. The opportunities for those who have done a little preparation and planning are vast. The opportunities for those that love teaching others how to play soccer and know how to stick to a simple gameplan are limitless. If you want to learn more about how to start earning money from coaching soccer click here

Sometimes People Can’t Handle Success

Sometimes people can’t handle success – Satish Nair

“I tried 1000 different ways to find a solution, but 1001st was the best solution” – Thomas Alva Edison, when asked about his experience in inventing the light bulb.

The first question is “What is Success?” : The dictionaries provide various definitions of success as ‘an occurrence that accomplishes its intended purpose’ or ‘a state of prosperity or fame’ or ‘a realization that a person is successful’, but success is broader than what we define. Achieving success means you became famous; you can have enough money to buy the luxuries you longed for so many years, you are being a darling of the masses.

Anybody can achieve success, however for that one has to have the self belief within him that he can, this is the primary step towards success. If you do not believe in yourself, then creating that feeling is your first assignment. Secondly, we have to focus on what we are going to do to achieve success, something we already have and something we have to attain from others.

There are many factors that contribute to success or failure, the most important of which is a person’s mindset. One can not create and sustain success, if his thoughts, beliefs and emotions are not adjusted to success. If one believes in oneself, money or what success means for them are in dissimilarity to a successful life, he finds it difficult or impossible to create one.

Some of the key factors for people, who want to be successful are determination, decisiveness, continuous learning, constructive planning, hard-work, relentless practice (regain the mettle even when things are going against his wishes), have to have the ability to recover and learn from failures. One requires a strong vision of his future, his planning; setting achievable goals all can play important roles in becoming successful.

There is no need to worry, If one does not have all the above characteristics, think success is not a heavenly fruit, as if one can only dream of it, everybody can achieve it with various techniques. One can set goals and objectives, which may be inherited qualities, however learning some advanced techniques for success, which can only be learned from schools/people. You have to develop mental strength to succeed, which will enable you to recover from setbacks more easily.

There is another side of this coin that lot many people, famous personalities, they can not handle the success suitably – can say success is an catastrophe for them – a bad experience. How to handle the success depends upon the person as an individual i.e. it is a very individual matter. To somebody success is an unexciting aspect, but to somebody it is an energizing factor to achieve more. We surprise when we hear news about famous people, who suffer from alcoholism, drug abuse and serious emotional problems, we see that success can bring different kinds of discomfort alongwith it. Diego Maradona, Mike Tyson, Princess Diana are perfect examples, facing serious problems when they are famous, as if people think they have everything, but suffered at different levels and they fee they are alone in the midst of fame.

First Example Diego Maradona. He is former caption of Argentine football team. He played in four World Cups, won a world cup in 1986, received FIFA Player of the Century and voted in 2000 by FIFA, the best football player of all time surpassing the great footballer ever PELE.

Since the 1990s, Maradona has been battling cocaine addiction, which included spells in Swiss and Cuban clinics. After retirement, Maradona spent most of his time in Cuba (can say in hospital), and after returning to Argentina suddently he suffered a major heart attack following a cocaine overdose and was admitted to intensive care in a Buenos Aires hospital. After he showed improvement, Maradona was taken off the respirator on April 23 and remained in intensive care for several days before being discharged.

Second example : Diana, Princes of Wales, from the time of her engagement to the Prince of Wales in 1981 until her death after a car accident in 1997, Diana was one of the most famous women in the world, a pre-eminent celebrity of her generation. During her lifetime, she was often described as the world’s most photographed woman. To her admirers, the Princess of Wales was a role model; After her death, there were even calls for her to be nominated for sainthood, while her detractors, consider her to have been suffering from a mental illness; it has been suggested that Diana was, according to one biographer, possibly suffering from Borderline personality disorder. Diana herself admitted to struggling with depression, and the eating disorder bulimia, which recurred throughout her adult life.

Third Example is of Mike Tyson. At the height of his fame and career in the late 1980s and throughout the ’90s, Tyson was one of the most recognized sports personalities in the world. Apart from his many sporting accomplishments, his outrageous and controversial behavior in the ring and in his private life as well as the drug and alcoholic abuses has kept him in the public eye than his career.

Tyson retired from competitive boxing in 2005. He has since engaged in a series of exhibition bouts in a tour across the US to pay his numerous debts. Despite receiving over US$30 million for several of his fights and $300 million over his career, Tyson declared bankrupt in 2003. now, Tyson appears in countless popular media in either cameo appearances or as a subject of parody or satire.

So why these people addicted to drugs, alcohol and suffering from various disorders? And the answer is “Sometimes people can’t handle success” the reasons may be they fear the success and self sabotage their lives, that’s what happened to Maradona, Mike Tyson and Princes Diana, there were throwing the fame away. No one has been able to break through this massive self sabotage. No wonder that people are afraid of success. To achieve success means need of a lot of self-examination along with chances in lifestyle and facelift of our behaviors.

We are NOT just talking about some personalities here; we are talking about every successful people, including you. Success is like a hard rock, not everybody is able to crack or pull it down easily. Chances are that anybody who tasted the success in any field can face such problems at any moment of time; it is not a fault of us, but a phenomenon people around the world face.

Satisfaction is an important ingredient of success. For becoming successful, you have to learn to get satisfied. This often means giving up wanting and longing, two feelings that don’t go with satisfaction.

Let us hope we will not be addicted to the drugs and alcohol like Maradona did, but almost everyone is limiting his lives because part of him is afraid of success. If it applies to us, then we should retrospect that what receding factors and soul searching to know what pulled us back, so that we can rectify the wrongs and find the rights.

Success requires discipline, determination and a strong belief in oneself. It’s a whole lot easier to stay where you are than to move into a new state of being.

Beckham hoping to replicate success with AC Milan

Beckham hoping to replicate success with AC Milan
David Beckham hopes his second spell with AC Milan will be as good as the five months he spent on loan with the Italian club in 2009. The England midfielder passed a medical Tuesday and has spent the past two days training with his new teammates. AC Milan resumes play Jan. 6 against Genoa. “My experience with the club was so special,” Beckham said Wednesday.

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