Are you disrespectful to the other players? Do you like to fight - verbally and physically? Are you overly dramatic? Is there always a problem with your boyfriend or girlfriend? Are you a liar? Do you skip school? Are you smart enough to keep yourself academically eligible?
If you have caused your coaches and team problems in the past, there is a good chance that they are going to pass on you during these soccer tryouts. If you are trying out for a high school team, that's bad news for you, because there might not be another team to play on.
But even if you're trying out for a club team, soccer is a small community, where everybody seems to know everybody, and coaches share information on players. Do you have enough sense to know when Coach needs you to shut up? Do you know enough to tie your shoes? Do you remember to come to soccer tryout prepared? Do you learn from your mistakes?
Do you know when to push harder and when to back off? Do you know when to do what you're told? Can you read the field? Do you remember other soccer players that you play against and how to beat them? Sometimes during soccer tryouts, coaches don't tell you everything you need to know. They sit back and see if you can figure out what they want.
Are you a whiner? Are you a complainer? Is it always someone else's fault? Are you mean and hurtful? Do you ridicule other players? Do you like other people to fail, even your own team mates? Do you think you're better than the other players? Do you think that the team rules do not apply to you? Do you think that you don't have to show up to practice and games on time? The X factor is that little something extra that you bring to a team.
Sometimes a coach will take a player who doesn't have the skill, the speed or the agility of the ideal soccer player. Sometimes it's because the player tries so hard and plays with so much heart, that they are an inspiration to the other players. Sometimes the coaches feel that with a little more time and training that individual can become a very good soccer player.
Sometimes the player is a motivator, cheerleader and a natural leader. Thus, the Delphi method provides more in depth and reliable analysis of the research questions and is more effective than a single interview or questionnaire [ 28 ].
For the current study the modified Delphi method [ 28 — 29 ] was adopted. This design entailed an initial interview followed by two rounds of questionnaires. The Delphi method requires purposeful sampling of a small panel of domain-specific experts to achieve reliable responses, as a result a strict selection criterion was enforced for participant selection [ 28 — 29 , 31 ].
Participant selection was based upon the unique perspectives and experiences in elite youth soccer coaching within Australia. All participants were either the youth technical director or head coach of an Australian regional representative team competing at the Under 13 national soccer championships, which is the highest level of competition for Under 13 players in Australia. The Under 13 level was chosen for this study as this is the first age level in Australia where players are selected for representative teams to compete at a national age-related championship in front of national recruiters.
Eight regional technical directors and twelve head coaches agreed to participate in the study. The coaches had been coaching representative youth teams for All participants were informed of the study procedures before providing written consent prior to participation.
To achieve a complete profile of the attributes associated with skilled Under 13 soccer players, an inductive qualitative semi-structured interview was chosen as the initial method of inquiry. Similar to previous studies [ 28 — 29 ], this approach allows participants more scope to develop a rationale for their opinions through conversation. Open-ended questions promoted consistent discussion to identify the key attributes participants value when identifying talented youth players for selection into a regional representative team to compete at the national championships, including technical, physiological, anthropometric, psychological and tactical attributes e.
Probing questions were also incorporated to understand why the participant thought the attribute was important e. Are there some attributes you believe to be more important than others when identifying talent Under 13 players? How do you decide between talented or less talented players at this age group?
See S1 File. As the current player development strategy in Australia indicates that up to and including the Under 13 age group players should be allowed and encouraged to play in multiple playing positions, participants discussed attributes in a general context, rather than position specific.
Interviews were conducted in a one on one manner face to face and ranged in length from 30 to 45 minutes, and were facilitated by the first author. Following this, a panel of three experts i. Finally, the expert panel operationally defined each attribute; for example, the operational definition for the attribute x-factor included, unpredictable, creativity, thinks outside the box see Table 1.
The first round questionnaire included all 29 attributes identified during the initial interview. Participants were provided with instructions for the completion of the questionnaire, and the operational definitions of each attribute. During this stage, each attribute was evaluated, rated, rationalised, modified, or deleted by the participants.
The scale uses three main anchor points of reference with a bandwidth of three points between each anchor, least important i. Any attribute participants believed should be deleted was given a score of 0. Participants were also encouraged to provide a justification for their rating for each attribute. All 20 participants correctly completed the first round questionnaire i. Following the completion of the first round questionnaire, responses were recorded with mean group ratings calculated for each attribute, with 17 attributes obtaining a mean rating of 6 or above i.
These 17 attributes formed the second round questionnaire. The second round questionnaire asked the participants to review, rate and justify the updated list of 17 attributes. Participants were informed the presentation of the attributes was based on the ranking from the previous round with the highest mean ranked attribute presented at the top of the questionnaire; however information relating to the justification for the ranking were not presented. By presenting the attributes in this high to low manner, participants are able to reflect on the overall group rankings compared to their responses [ 31 ], but are not influenced by others justifications.
Participants were informed this may be the final round of the process if consensus was reached and thus the last opportunity to provide a justification for their ranking of the attributes. Overall, 18 of the 20 participants correctly completed the second round questionnaire i.
As the order of importance of the 17 attributes did not change between the first and second round questionnaire, a stable level of consensus was determined between participants. Data analysis determined the ranking or order of importance of the key attributes based on the mean and standard deviation. The justification for the ranking provided by the participants in the questionnaire was also compiled.
As there were no differences between technical directors and coaches, all results were combined for analysis purposes. Table 2 provides the associated ranking scores of the attributes, and attributes deleted by the participants. Based on the analysis of the participant responses, a hierarchy of attributes exists with seven attributes identified as most important to performance and eleven attributes moderately important to Under 13 performance see S1 Dataset.
Analysis indicated emergent attributes from key performance categories, including technical, tactical and psychological. To facilitate interpretation, participants were assigned pseudonyms, with technical directors represented with the letter T e.
Evident from the data is the importance of technical skill proficiency, with first touch i. So I look for players who can play a good pass. Can they keep control? Participants rated decision-making skills as most important tactical attribute with other tactical attributes such as game sense and awareness, anticipation, and general game understanding rated as moderately important. Participants also highlighted several psychological attributes important for skilled youth performance.
Coachability and a positive attitude were ranked most important by the participants. Physiological e. Interestingly, defensive ability was also deleted following the first round. The current study was an innovative investigation describing the current talent identification practices of Under 13 representative team recruiters within Australia. The findings make a significant contribution to the current knowledge by providing initial evidence of the hierarchy of attributes Australian youth recruiters consider important when identifying and selecting Under 13 players for a representative team.
The findings indicate technical i. In addition, recruiters also provided evidence of the attributes they do not consider important when identifying talented youth players for an entry level representative team, including physiological, anthropometric, and sociological qualities. Researchers have recommended coaches apply a holistic multidisciplinary approach to talent identification [ 3 , 8 ], with the current findings potentially providing initial evidence to suggest that recruiters do consider numerous attributes when selecting and identifying youth players.
Recruiters perceived four technical skills i. Therefore, if a player has a limited or poor first touch, it can negatively impact the performance of all other on-ball technical skills, such as striking and running with the ball.
Some researchers have provided evidence to suggest an isolated assessment of ball control, where a player has to keep the ball in the air without using their arms or hands, can differentiate skill levels [ 9 , 14 ]. The results from the current study suggest coaches and recruiters assess and identify players first touch ability via in-game or small-sided game performance. Therefore, to further improve current research knowledge, researchers need to consider how to develop in-game or small-sided game assessments of technical abilities to provide a more ecologically valid and practical assessment which may be used by coaches and recruiters.
The findings also suggest the perceived importance of other technical abilities such as striking the ball and one-versus-one interactions. Participants indicated that as soccer is a passing game players need proficient skills to be able to effectively and accurately distribute the ball and assist in attacking movements.
Rather they indicated assessment of technical skills i. Therefore, the challenge for researchers is to create more ecologically valid assessments of technical abilities which can be implemented by coaches and recruiters. A further benefit of simulated games for assessment is the ability to identify decision-making skills of the players, as simulated games promote decision-making skills, which may be lacking within isolated soccer-specific performance assessments [ 35 — 36 ].
In relation to tactical skills, youth coaches perceived decision-making ability as very important for performance and game awareness, anticipation and general game understanding as moderately important. These results underline the importance placed on tactical skills at a youth level, as it can have an impact on skill execution.
Therefore, youth recruiters believe that even at an Under 13 level, players need to be strong decision-makers to be identified as talented representative players. The findings from the current study corroborate with previous research which indicates decision-making performance can differentiate skilled and less skilled youth soccer players [ 10 — 12 ].
To assess tactical ability researchers have generally conducted video-based laboratory assessments with players making decisions relative to what on-ball action should be performed next i. The results of the current investigation however suggest coaches and recruiters associate decision-making skills with both on and off ball actions i.
While this approach has been identified as an appropriate assessment method within the talent identification process [ 8 ], there is still limited understanding of how decision-making is assessed practically in-game and what coaches look for when judging decision-making performance.
Therefore, the challenge for researchers is to further investigate the specific aspects of decision-making coaches and recruiters consider important to potentially develop objective assessments of youth player decision-making abilities within game environments. The results also suggest coaches perceive some psychological attributes important when recruiting talented youth players, specifically coachability and a positive attitude.
As indicated in the results, participants believe a willingness to learn new skills and a positive attitude to development is important in youth players. Players who were identified as coachable and have a positive attitude are more likely to have a growth mindset [ 39 ]. While coachability and positive attitude were rated highly by the coaches, there is still an underrepresentation of other psychological qualities such as motivation, resilience, commitment, and confidence which researchers have found to be predictors of soccer career success [ 5 , 23 — 24 ].
Therefore, future investigations may consider the need to provide further education of these psychological qualities, or methods coaches and recruiters could use to assess them within potential youth players.
While the current study reported the attributes perceived as important for talented youth soccer players, the findings also highlight attributes recruiters perceive less important when selecting or identifying youth players. Our soccer training program has been developed for males and females of all abilities, ages 10 and up. Contact us for more information about our soccer training programs.
Fri 6th Jul - pm Written by Michael Robson. Reading time. Tip 1: Do your research! This indicates that the coach will probably be looking at other options for a striker and attackers for the next season On the flip side, Hakoah Sydney City East FC took home the most goals at 66 for the season, with Sydney FC coming in at a very close second with 63 goals in total. As a striker looking to be selected, this table should tell you where to focus your efforts.
Some techniques you can perfect before trials include: Try doing a scoop to set up a creative play just outside the yard box. Keep it simple but keep busy: Always check towards the ball when receiving, try to play the simple ball with minimal touches and be sure to quickly take up a position to receive the ball again.
Try a chip to beat the goalkeeper. Work out who is the weakest player and make an effort to play against them. If you find yourself in a one-on-one with the goalkeeper, try using a double outside cut to beat them.
Be comfortable in communicating with your team; call for the ball when you need to. So how would you showcase yourself during the most critical time of your year? Be enthusiastic Be there early and stay late. Take four balls and go onto the field 30 minutes before the trial begins.
Beckham was well-known for his innate free-kick taking ability during important games, which tells you that practice makes perfect and the people noticed. Practice chipping an imaginary keeper from both sides of the field. If you are standing around and waiting for something to do, practice juggling the ball but be sure not to over practice and lose your concentration.
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