Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer News, Soccer Skills, Soccer Team Management | Tags: battyeford, losing 15-0, respect your opponents, winning 15-0
Guest Blog
By Mark Bickerdike, Battyeford under 11s
The Battyeford U11s squad
I’ve been reading Dave’s recent comments on respecting your opponents when you are winning by a big score.
Having recently been on the wrong end of a heavy defeat (albeit in an adult match) the worst feeling was when the other team changed their style to accommodate our ineptitude, it felt like they were just taking the mickey.
By telling them to pass and pass and pass before shooting or shooting with your wrong foot I feel it shows at best pity and at worst disrespect to the other team.
Our team recently got beaten 7-0 (and we were lucky to get nil) but the thing that I wanted out of my under 11’s was the ability to keep playing, not to let their heads go down, to keep their positional shape and above all realise that some teams are better than us, lose with grace, take the positives out of the game and move on, all of which they did.
The week after we drew one each with the team at the top of the table and the week after we won a game 15-0.
Now I know losing 15-0 hurts (I know because I’ve been there) but the last thing I wanted to do is to disrespect their team or coach by somehow telling my boys to ‘hold back’. I wanted them to do exactly what I told them to do when we were losing 7- 0 and that is to keep trying their best, keep their positional shape and to do all the things we worked on in practice, but above all not to get ‘cocky’, to win with grace and not to show disrespect, to enjoy the win but realise that not all games will be so one sided, take the positives out of the game and move on.
The fact of the matter is that winning or losing, whether by one goal or 15, is all part of football and all aspects need to be experienced in order to gain a full knowledge of what the game is about.
Nobody likes to lose and everybody likes to win, the trick is to learn from both experiences.
The next time we played the team who beat us 7-0, we started really well and went 1-0 up with only ten men against 11. We were completely bossing the game but were pegged back to 1-1 at half time. Second half whether through tiredness or a bad half-time team talk we completely capitulated and lost 10-1.
I’m sure we’ve all had games like that, but it did give me a chance to let the guys compare how they felt after winning well to losing badly. We’ve gone on to win all our league games since and are up to third in the league.
It’s also worth remembering that the boys and girls probably don’t beat themselves up over a defeat like the coaches do, many a time after a loss I’ll be walking miserably back to the car dissecting the game and wondering what we could have done differently and my son will look at me with a smile on his face and say “Can I have a chocolate bar?”, like nothing matters in the world.
It is, as they say, only a game.
