You Should Love Your Players

For your players to be successful, they need you to care deeply about them.

The starting point is care. Over a long enough time horizon, the Developer shows that care in many ways, but no way is more powerful than the culture rep–the repeated process of a person showing vulnerability and it being returned with empowerment. Immense trust builds organizationally and interpersonally over time, and that care transforms into something much deeper and profound.

It transforms into love, which we can define as deep care for your people.

But this can’t be faked. A player’s willingness to be vulnerable is dependent on you showing up every day, living the role of the Developer. Trust is a never-ending process that takes time to build, but only a day to destroy. This is why a Culture Vision is so fundamental to development–it guides the way we interact with each other.

And iterated on long enough, bonds are formed that can only be described as love.

For the remainder of this article, I will describe what love can look like at the different levels of our soccer culture.

1. Grassroots

You show love for your players by sharing your love and enthusiasm for the game.

Directors and Coaches will need to have visions that build the player technically and, most importantly, foster an enjoyment of the game. So many kids stop here because of a bad experience and today’s kids need more self-belief than ever. They simply need you to teach them something, celebrate the small wins with them, and encourage them to keep going all while having fun.

Make it fun, bring the energy, teach them something, and fill them with belief, so they want to keep playing beyond their experience with you.

2. Youth Travel

You show love for your players by preparing them for the future game and life.

Leaders will need club-wide visions that develop the person (Culture Vision), develop the player for the future game (Playing Vision), and make that vision as clear as possible to their people (both players and parents). Don’t ever take shortcuts to win games if it means deterring a player or team away from its potential. If you love your players, you’ll be willing to play the longer game with them even though most likely, you won’t be there when they truly experience their potential at higher levels.

You love your kids by simply supporting and preparing them for a future that you may never share with them.

3. Academy

You show love for your players by caring deeply about their futures, including the ones that will never be professionals.

The number of kids who are told they are going to be future pros or brainwashed into thinking it's the only route is one of the saddest elements of our soccer culture. You show love by caring as deeply about player 18 as you do for player 1. The job is guiding everyone towards their potential regardless of whether that potential becomes another bullet point on our personal resumes.

Your players are at a critical moment where fear can overwhelm the game they’ve loved their whole life–love them back by supporting them the best you can.

4. College

You show love for your players by becoming a father (or mother) figure they’ll need in one of the most important developmental moments of their lives.

The players are out of their house for the first time in their lives overloaded with a million different inputs on top of encountering their first “professional” environment. They need love and support more than ever. If there is a strong culture and strong interpersonal relationships, players wouldn’t be so ready to hit the transfer portal.

A college coach can change a player’s life trajectory–love them the entire 4 years and beyond.

5. Professional

You show love for your players by caring about them as people in the midst of a cut-throat environment.

We act like professionals are completely developed products as players and people when the truth of potential is that it’s always a moving target. In these high-pressure environments, players need to be loved and shown they are much more than an employee or someone contracted to win games. And a lot of times, just being honest, however difficult the truth may be, can be the best entry point to showing how much you care.

Professional players are people too, and need to know you care deeply about them in the most competitive of landscapes.

Final Words

If you love your players, it means you’ve made their dreams your own.

Love becomes a barometer for the type of leader you are and the navigation that drives your process. If your navigation is winning or based on self-interest, you’ll separate from your players without even knowing it, and your players will feel that separation on an emotional level. But if your navigation is development and you serve with humility, you won’t just love your players–Your players will love you back.

And paradoxically, fostering such connections will contribute to your success more significantly than the approach of a leader solely driven by a pursuit of winning.

Funny how that works…

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