Soccer Confidence on The Field

by Robbie
(Canada)

I am a 6'0 15 year old male and started really playing house league soccer the summer of my 14th year, well to be honest I played when I was 5 but that doesn't really count... Right now I am 15, in the 3rd season of playing soccer, and right now I’m on a house league.

However, last indoor season (my first one) I was asked to play for a rep B team... So I was kind of surprised since I had very little experience since I just started soccer. But I decided to give it a shot and go to the try outs.

A week after the tryout I got a call saying I made the team and the first practice was on the closest Monday. I showed up and played alright, not many mistakes. So I was starting to feel at home and it felt good. But then at our first game a fluke goal was scored on me and my coach and team mates said that is wasn't my fault there was no way someone could block that.

So I decided to put it in the past and move on. However once the others left one of the defenders came up to me and started to swear at me and tell me how terrible I am and that I should go back to house league. I just ignored him and kept on playing. The rest of the game turned out fine so I was feeling pretty good about myself.

The next game I made a mistake and the defender came and cussed me out again, so I told him to back off and let me play my game. But then it got serious, whenever something went wrong, he would blame me, even if the problem was not scoring a goal. So every game and every practice he would swear at me and tell me how terrible I am at soccer.

And because of this, everyday coming home from a game or practice I would be devastated and whenever my dad asked what was wrong I would say I didn't play well today. so this kept going on until I was so nervous that the defender was going to get mad at me I told my coach I was injured and didn't want to play, and every game I would make up excuses why I couldn't play and why the backup goalie should go in.

So by the end of the season I played about 4 games total. This was traumatizing and I decided I never wanted to play soccer again, actually, I quit the team about 3/4 through the season because I was tired of the defenders jeers. This lowered my confidence during the game so now even though I play house league I still get really nervous because I think that if I make a mistake someone is going to scream at me and say I’m a horrible player.

So I guess the moral of my story is that even if players make mistakes, tell them to keep trying and encourage rather than insult, because I’m sure if I stacked with my rep team and wasn't afraid to try, I would have been successful. So learn from my experience and always encourage your team mates.