How Do I Deal With Bad Behaviour?

Sulky, argumentative, lateness, laziness, playing badly or talking when you're giving a team talk. Pretty common behaviour when you coach youth players. I'm sure like me you get frustrated by players like this because it causes disruption in your training sessions and in matches.

Seeing players disengage is difficult to deal with – you know these things stop players learning because understanding goes out of the window. Telling the player “no” can be like a red rag to a bull and you get ignored making the situation explosive.

What you need to do is find out the cause – why are they late, why are they playing badly on the pitch? In effect you need to ask questions and listen.

Coach “I've noticed you've not been playing well, not trying in some games and arguing with your teammates.”

Player: “They're annoying me and I don't want to play.”

Coach: “Annoying you because they are not giving 100 per cent in games?”

Player: “Yeah they've been sloppy. Too many players are not putting in the effort to win games so why should I?”

Coach: “I've noticed that too. Let's get all the players together and find out why.”

And you've given your player a voice, something for you to act on – you've listened, you've given your attention and understood the player's problem. Now you can talk to the team and show the player you will act on his/her problem.

This will go a long way to making that player feel understood and give them more purpose to be a big part of the team.