Just Be
I've watched a lot of pre-tryout talks. The rousing speech. The hard-ass coach telling players they need to be exceptional just to be considered. If you've watched All or Nothing, you know the version — the intensity, the clipboard, the stare. If you've watched Mikel Arteta, you've seen the childlike drawing of a brain with arrows explaining how much it can grow.
That's not really me.
When I gathered 72 players at ODP tryouts for the 2010 boys, I kept it short. I introduced myself and the assessment team, and then I told them their job for the day was simple: just be.
Blank looks. What does that mean?
It means believe. And it means effort. That's it. Just be — belief and effort.
Let me tell you why those two things, in that context, matter more than most coaches realize.
Forty Number 10s
When the check-in forms came through, I saw that roughly 40 of my 72 players had listed themselves as a number 10 or a number 8. That's more than half the group. All playmakers. All in the middle of the field, controlling the game, finding pockets of space, linking play.
Now think about how that happens. A kid is bigger, faster, and has a better touch than the rest of their team. Their coach puts them at 10. Or they watch Messi operate in central pockets and decide that's who they are. Or they've been the best player on every team they've played for, and the 10 shirt comes with that. The position becomes identity.
So you get to an ODP tryout, you're competing against the best players from your state — players from big clubs, small clubs, rural areas, cities — and suddenly there are 40 of you claiming the same shirt. And most of you aren't going to play there.
That's not a criticism. It's a problem created upstream, at the club level, over years of development where players are plugged into a position and left there.
Belief Is Often Given, Not Built
Here's what struck me most about those tryouts. When I asked players to try something different — to go play at left back, to fill a number three role, to drop into a more defensive shape — the thing that stopped them wasn't technical ability. It was belief.
One player was struggling to hold down a position in the midfield. Strong attributes — good movement, sharp on the ball. I could see center back written all over him, and I told him so. His dad came to me afterward and said, "My son's not a center back."
I said, "Your son is not going to play six in this group. But I think he can be a strong four."
He didn't agree. His son went out and played center back anyway, and he was excellent. But I wonder what that player carries with him because someone told him that's not where he belongs.
That's what I mean when I say belief is often given, not built. A player's confidence in what they can do is frequently a reflection of what the adults around them have told them they can do. And when that picture is narrow — you're a 10, that's your position, stay there — you get players who are scared to try something else, even when something else is exactly what they need.
Can you go play center back? I can't, Coach.
Can you try?
That's the only question that matters.
Pickup Soccer and the Freedom Experiment
Think about what pickup soccer looks like. Old men on a Sunday, no pressure, no parents watching. They start in one spot and drift around. Someone drops into midfield for a bit, moves to the wing when they feel like it, goes up front when the team needs something. Nobody labels them. Nobody has told them they're a 10 and nothing else.
And they're fine. They figure it out.
Now think about how many of our club players could do the same. Thirteen-year-olds who have never played anywhere other than the position their coach put them in at eight. Who are physically capable but mentally closed off to the idea that their game might exist somewhere else on the field.
That's what ODP shows me every year. Players who have real quality but have been developed in such a narrow lane that they arrive at a high-level environment and freeze the moment someone asks them to adapt.
The clubs that serve their players best are the ones teaching them enough of the game that they aren't confused when they're asked to step backward a line or shift to the right. That's still rare.
The Effort Part
Belief is the internal piece. Effort is the external one — and it's more complex than it looks.
The easy version of effort is the eye test. Kid sprints to win a ball back. Kid runs the channel on a throw-in nobody else chased. Kid picks up a teammate after a mistake. You see it and you love it.
But the real version of effort includes something most coaches try to squash: negative emotion. The frustration when a teammate gives the ball away. The visible anger after a missed opportunity. Coaches often try to flatten that because it can become toxic — and it can, when it's unmanaged.
But I'd rather have a player who is genuinely mad at a mistake than one who doesn't care either way. The mad player has standards. What they need is to learn how to flip that feeling into something useful — not an arm around the shoulder, not telling the teammate what they did wrong, but tracking ten extra yards, blocking a passing lane, giving the teammate something to play to. That's competitive effort. That's what it looks like when you channel the feeling rather than suppress it.
I tell my players: you can be mad. Show me you're mad by working harder. That's the only version I'm interested in.
What the Tryout Actually Measures
Our ODP setup is straightforward. We run mixed teams, watch players in a game environment, and then split into two fields — one for the players who are in the conversation, one for the players who are fighting to get there. No mystery. No waiting to find out how you did. You can see it.
That clarity matters. When a player on the development field is called over to the other field to try a different position, they know what the opportunity is. When they're asked to play somewhere they've never played before, the framing is already there: your belief and your effort got you this chance. What you do with it is up to you.
Some players grab it. They try the center back role, find that their reading of the game translates, and suddenly they're a different proposition to the assessors than they were two hours ago.
Some can't get past what they've been told they are.
As a club coach, you're the one doing that telling. Every time you put a player in the same position, season after season, without ever showing them what else they might be — without ever asking them to try — you're narrowing their belief before they even get somewhere like ODP.
The technical and tactical stuff matters. But a player who believes they can try and who gives genuine effort? That's a player I can develop. A player who's only ever been one thing and is scared to be anything else?
That's a harder conversation to have at thirteen.
Just be. Believe you can. Try. Show me the effort.
That's the whole talk.
Listen to the full episode: Ep. 70 — Just Be
@LeeDunneSoccer