Strategies to Improve Half-Time

A key part of the game day process is finally examined. Here's 5 ideas to make it better.

Most coaches I’ve worked with are pretty comfortable running half-time breaks. But ‘most’ is not ‘all’, and I remember being a new coach and feeling unsure about how to handle that ten minute window. So I figured I’d write a short piece about how to get the most out of it.

Addressing Different Ages 🧒

The principles behind a good half-time break are the same across all ages. While there’s certainly different things you can do — and should be aware of — with U16 players compared to U9 players, I’m going to go ahead and say most of what’s to follow will generally work for players U10 and up.

Principles of a Good Half-Time 🖊️

While examples are great to learn from, I find that strict prescriptions can be too constrictive when tailoring exercises to your environment. Instead I prefer to understand why something works, and then build customized structured from there.

In broad strokes, a good half-time will follow the 4 Principles of Good Coaching. You want half-time to be engaging for players, it needs to unite the team in some fashion (whether it’s emotional, tactical, technical, etc.), and it needs to develop players as individuals and as a team.

Even coaches with tried and true formulas can’t simply rinse and repeat all the time. (Or as Coach Ben likes to say “You can repeat some, but you definitely need to rinse.”) If it’s the same thing every time, eventually youth will become bored by the regular half-time spiel. You’ll have an easier time gaining and keeping their attention by occasionally mixing things up (while still abiding by the same guiding principles of course).

So let’s dive into it.

Coaching Staff 💬

This took me forever to learn properly, so I want to address it right away. As mentioned in Principle 2 of Good Coaching, a coach’s job is to create relationships throughout the team and the coaching staff.

If you have an assistant coach, I recommend that during the first few minutes of half-time, while players are getting water and catching each other up on what happened during the first half, you meet with your assistant coaches and chat.

Here are a couple questions that I always try to cover with coaches who are with me on gameday:

What are you seeing?

What changes do you think we need to make for the second half?

What changes do you think the opposition will make?

These questions usually prompt a discussion, and then we quickly figure out who’s going to say what to the team.

This process is crucial for maintaining good working relationships, and possibly more importantly, helping assistant coaches feel like they play an important role within the team. It’s my firm belief that any experienced head coach should consciously work with younger coaches to help them in their development.

Speaking to the Team ⚽

After talking to your assistant coach(es), it’s time to address the team. Hopefully they’re all gathered up by then and have shared some ideas with each other.

I find that taking time during a training session to teach players how to communicate in small-group settings is incredibly helpful — both for soccer and for life. It’ll save you time in the future from having to gain everyone’s attention, which consequently will help your players get more out of their time between halves.

This can be a good moment to jump right into a discussion with players. Some standard questions to use might be:

What’s one thing that we did well this half?

What’s one thing we can improve on?

What was the goal we had for this game? Are we achieving it? Why or why not?

What’s a key moment that we need to be aware of during the second half?

It’s easy to let players get carried away answering questions, and before you know it, halftime has just passed and you ‘ve spent the entire time calling on kids with their hands raised instead of giving your two cents. So don’t be afraid of jumping in and redirecting the conversation to new players to move the discussion along, or by linking players’ answers to what you (and/or the assistant coaches) want to talk about.

As a reminder, it’s okay if a player says something that doesn’t relate to what’s happening on the field. It’s okay to acknowledge when a player is wrong otherwise they’ll never see what the learning process actually looks like.

Review Data 🖥️

I find it useful to give players specific metrics to track during games. This not only gives us quantifiable data that we can use to track our progress over the course of a season, but it also serves as a jumping off point to start discussions and reinforce coaching points (don’t forget to share it with parents as well to earn extra brownie points).

As a reminder, have your substitute players keep track of different game-metrics that can be easily recorded. For example, if you’ve been working on pressing during the week of training leading up to the game, you may want to keep track of how many times your team won the ball in the attacking third and/or draw a heat map to determine where the ball was won back the most.

During half-time players can present this information to the team (which helps build public speaking skills) and use it to spur problem-solving and build game plans for the second half. Or if you want the players to do more, then you can use…

… Small Group Sessions 🙋

After the data is presented, you can divide players into small groups and have them discuss the information and come up with a hypotheses about why it’s happening and how to increase/decrease the number in the second half. You can divide up the group by positions: offense/defense/midfield, or central/outside players.

After giving them a few minutes to talk in their groups, you can then bring everyone together and have each group summarize what they thought and what they will change in the second half.

Obviously you don’t need to have game data to run small group sessions. I’ve divided up players by positions and then ran each group through the process. You have to be sharp and use your time wisely here, but it’s a great method to use because it gets kids socializing, learning, and engaging with each other about soccer (which is all we can ever really hope for).

Summarize, Sub, and Sendoff 👋

After you’ve met with coaches, had data presented, asked players for input and they’ve worked in small groups (or any mix of these things, as doing it all may be pushing it for the time allotted), it’s your turn to summarize everything. It’s best to give the team 2-3 big picture things to focus on, and ideally you want them to relate to the conversations that you had during the break.

The alternative is to give each positional group of players 1-2 things to focus on in the second half. Regardless of which method used, it’s important to review their progress on these things after the match has ended.

The very last “coach” thing to do is to give the starting lineup for the second half. Make sure you have enough time so there’s no rushing or any confusion about who should take the field. It’s a tiny thing but will lead to a smooth playing start. This is crucial to getting players into the correct headspace and giving them the best opportunity to maximize their playing potential.

The very, very, very last thing to do is to make sure everybody’s had a sip of water, have a few last words with individuals and shake some hands, then finally get a cheer and take the field.

Wrapping up Half-Time 🎀

That’s it. There’s tons of different ways to make half-time interesting and helpful for your players. But remember to consult and build relationships with your coaching colleagues, ensure any half-time talk is interesting and engaging for your players, and present new goals to focus on in the second half. If these things are done consistently, the players, the team, and you, will get better over the course of a season, and that’s what it’s always been about.