Interview with Coach Ben

Coach Ben talks about the problems facing small clubs, helping players commit themselves to goals, and how coaches can use the game to enforce discipline.

It’s hard to capture who Coach Ben is, but I suppose I’ll start with the obvious stuff: He’s about 5’8”, completely bald, and he doesn’t walk as much as stalk around with a slight stoop from spending years and years meticulously taking care of his club’s grass fields.

He can be fastidious and cranky, but Coach Ben is also an enigma. He cares and loves his players like no other coach that I’ve met. He’ll tell people off directly to their face but he won’t hold a grudge. If you get him talking about soccer he will talk and talk — illustrating his points with colorful turns of phrases — and peppered throughout his stories about past players and old coaching friends are little gems of wisdom that any coach can (and should) pick up and put in their pocket for later.

He’s been an amazing mentor for me over the years and I hope I can capture his essence and share what makes him so special, and how he managed to turn a small, rural town into a dominant soccer community that’s overperformed for decades.

Coach Ben, thanks for chatting with us. You created a club in a rural area which has its own challenges. What are some of the issues you’ve come up against in developing coaches?

Well the reality for players in programs like ours is that the coaching is good but the level of competition on a regular basis is above average at best, and that’s as far as it goes.

The director who took over for me has done a fantastic job, especially with our rec side. He’s drawing up all the lesson plans for the younger teams because that’s a struggle for a lot of volunteer coaches who work regular jobs and raise kids.

The education piece is hard for these volunteer coaches who barely have enough time to give as it is, and then you ask them to come and get more educated, and they say “Well why?” and you say “So it can be better.” and then they say “Yeah, but my kids are going to be out of there.”

That’s the way of club ball for small clubs. The rec coaches come and go with their children, and often the competitive coaches too. When that kid is done so are they, and out goes all that knowledge, all that experience. It’s the curse of small clubs.

Right now, we’ve got an excellent group of coaches, amazingly good. The younger teams are awesome and it’s reflective of the coaching. As the coach goes, so goes the team. Always. Because if the coach is crap the team isn’t going to want to perform.

A lot of the time the issue is poor man management; not understanding your players, being too demanding without demanding the right things. At the youth level, the whole idea is that first and foremost it’s a game, and hopefully it’s a game we all love. So it’s my job as the coach to facilitate an environment where players want to learn and want to come back to. They can’t wait to get to training because it’s challenging, because it’s fun, because it’s structured, and because they’re actually required to do something.

I chatted with a few of your players and they talked about going to bed early, eating healthy meals, and getting their homework done so they could focus on soccer. How did you manage to instill that kind of commitment?

Well you just have to repeat that message to them so many times. And I used to tell my players “You’re representing A) yourself B) your community, and C) you’re representing me. And if you are a poor representation I’m going to kick your ass.” I mean it would never be physical but “I will take your ass to task.”

And all of my decisions were steeped in the game. Not in me, not in my emotions, not in the players, not in the social stuff. It was what does the game demand? What does the game demand from me as a coach and what does the game demand of my players?

Let’s take a technical glitch, like their first touch is shit or their passes are no good and you’ve already worked on it with them. You’ve coerced and cajoled and you’ve done everything in your power until: “Goddamnit that’s enough! I will not tolerate this shit anymore. I know you have the abilities, you’ve shown it to me, and guess what? Once you’ve shown it to me I now expect it out of you. I’m willing to let you have mistakes because you’re human, you’re not a robot. Am I pissed at you? No, I am not upset with you or mad at you at all. I’m disappointed is all I am. And I’m really frustrated. And furthermore, it’s not Coach Ben yapping at you. I’m just the coach. I’m the mouthpiece for the game. You think you can be technically sloppy and still be a decent player? What do you think?” Well then they know immediately. “You’re right coach, I gotta pull it together.”

Sometimes it needs to be said quite emphatically just like that, other times it needs to be said gently. You have to consider who it is that we’re coaching, and what are these kids faced with day to day. What do they bring to the training field with them every single day?

That’s part of it. And part of it is going through the trouble of putting stuff on paper that they can read. The more shit that they can tack up on their mirror, the better. I made visuals and emailed it to them and to their parents. And I would tell them “What goes on in our team stays in our team. And if you’re not mature enough to do that then we’re going to have issues. Because I don’t want you going home yapping to mommy and daddy about playing time. If you got an issue you come talk to me and we’ll sort it out. I respect you, you respect me, we respect each other. It’s little me, big we. And if you don’t want to roll like that then you don’t roll with us. And that’s all there is to that. And even though we don’t have a no cut policy I don’t have to play you one damn minute. There’s consequences and there’s rewards, so you decide what you want.”

Well this touches on another question that I think all coaches should answer, but how do you enforce discipline in your teams?

Well again, it starts with the premise of the game. What does it take to be a player? That supplies all the fucking answers, right there. You can’t be a party boy and be a player. The game demands that you treat your body right. The game demands that you be tactically adept.

Now the part about how you get your players to behave: to not be smart-asses, to not be talking when you’re talking, to treat each other with respect. Well Coach Ben carried a big fucking bat. I didn’t put up with any of that bullshit, I just sent players away. “Go home.” or “Go over there and sit. You’re done. You want to be a jackass right now? I got no room for jackasses. I’ll talk to you in a few minutes.”

I don’t have any tolerance for bad behavior when we’re trying to get stuff done. There’s a time and place to goof off, and I try to give them those opportunities, and I tell them when they are.

And water breaks can be a huge one. You wanted them in 30 seconds, and now it’s almost been a minute and the last kid is just now getting his water. So if Joey is the last player back, I’d say “Alright Joey. Take off. Just start running and when I’m satisfied I’ll tell you to stop.”

Or the whole team is being bad, they’re not paying attention – and they’re not paying attention because they’re little assholes, not because they’re having a hard day – that’s when I’d tell them to stop, give me the ball, and take off. “Go!” And some days it’s “Go again. Go again.”

And I warn them, I’m only going to make them run as a punishment. Why, why, why would I try to run the legs off of my players and make it the most uncomfortable thing when the game absolutely demands that you love to run. And it wasn’t about the physical running, it was about the humiliation of taking the ball. They want the ball and they want to play. So you take their toy away from them, same with a little kid. When you have all the balls, you’re in charge of the whole damn exercise.

They’re just grown up little kids, that’s all. All the way up to adults. We all behave like idiots at time. We revert to the stupid crap we did to get attention when we were little. It’s human nature. It doesn’t make a person bad or anything, it’s just interesting.

But I try to limit all of that discipline stuff. I try to be pretty tolerant most of the time, and sometimes I can be a real smartass. I’ll insult them in front of their friends and everyone laughs and I go “Don’t worry about it, I make fun of everybody.” And then I’ll make fun of another guy who was laughing the hardest. I’ll take the piss out of him right away and then they get it. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. And is has to be good for me and pass the acid test and then I’ll do it to the players. When I was younger and fit I would do the training sessions with them. I would set the standard. I’d say “I’m 30 years older than you, if you little bastards can’t keep up with me then get your shit together.” And I used that a lot because I was fit.

There’s lots of little disciplinarian tricks you can use to get their attention, and it’s really about getting their attention as much as anything. I think one of the most useful ones as far as criticism is criticizing to the whole group and then maybe dialing it back later to that individual. That way nobody feels like they’re being picked on.

I just did this. I go to the game and there’s one kid who’s struggling and completely ineffective and I know he’s put way too much pressure on himself. He thinks this is his year and he needs to shine but he’s choking big time. So I talk to him, but the mistake I made is that I pulled him away from his buddies. I said “Come here man, I want to talk to you.” But that was wrong, he thought I was criticizing him and he felt that he was being singled out.

So when I got home I texted him and said “Sorry if you felt I was criticizing. I wasn’t. It looks like the joy has gone out of your game and you’re not smiling like you used to at all. Just have fun and relax.” The next time, we changed his position and said “Go play in this position that you’ve never played before so therefore your expectations for yourself should be zero. Just go play.” And he had a great game. It’s a little psychological, it’s those tricks, and the longer you coach the more you learn them.

And you pick up stuff by watching what other guys do. I’m the world’s biggest mimic and a coach should be. If you’re not “stealing” another guy’s training exercise then you’re not paying attention. If you see something that works, then use it and tweak it to make it yours. It’s that constant absorption of knowledge and understanding.

Only the last several years of my life have I realized I’ve become detail oriented. Because for me I had to go beyond. It was getting boring. You can only coach the same stuff for so long until you have to challenge yourself to take it to the next level. In real terms that means you have to simplify the exercises you’re doing and then you can start layering on to it and it’s a logical progression from easier to more difficult. And that’s just the game from a development standpoint. You can’t start at the top and work your way down, you got to start at the very bottom and work your way up.

When players underperform though that’s tough. It’s one thing when you don’t have the talent, but when you have the talent and it doesn’t produce... those are some of the most challenging moments. That’s also part of the great fun for me. How do you get on top of that? How do you figure it out? It’s a mystery at times. You gotta dig deep and I go back to the same things over and over again and it comes from understanding your players. So take the time to understand them. It doesn’t take much more than saying “Hey, how’s it going? How was your vacation?” The more they can see you not only as their coach, but as their mentor – the guy they know they can count on to be consistent – the better.. It may have been consistently cranky for me, but they could count on it, and that’s the key part.

Thanks for reading the first part of my interview with Coach Ben. If you’re not already, make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss Part 2!