Your Players Need to Self Reflect

Do You Actually Know How Your Players Feel About Soccer?

I've always pushed the idea of two points of contact with every player in every session. One coaching point — something about their game, something they can work on. And one personal connection — how's the dog, how was the school show, what's going on in their life outside of soccer. Build that in consistently and over time it changes everything about the relationship you have with your players.

But here's the thing. When you're coaching two or three teams, actually doing that is hard. Really hard. You can try to catch everyone but some nights you're just trying to keep the session together.

So I started looking for ways to speed it up — and what I landed on was something I'm now using at my club. We call it a self-reflection.

It's simple. We push it out through our software and ask players to answer a few questions. No judgment, no grades, no consequences. Just honest answers.

The first question is: on a scale of one to five, how do you identify as a soccer player? Five means soccer is you — it's everything, you eat and breathe it. One means you play, you enjoy it, but it doesn't define you. Growing up I was a hard five. Everything was football. But plenty of the kids you're working with right now are twos and threes, and that's completely fine. The power isn't in judging the number. The power is in knowing it.

I had a kid a couple of years back who gave himself a five — total soccer player, loves it. But he was missing practice once a week. I was confused by it. Turned out his mom wanted him to play baseball too. He didn't really want to, but that's what the family had decided. I had no idea until I asked. Once I knew, I could have a totally different conversation with both him and his parents.

The second question is around attitude. Out of five, how committed are you to getting better? Are you showing up to improve, or are you here because you enjoy being here and that's enough? And look — both are valid answers. Not every kid on your team has the same ambitions and that's okay. But you need to know which is which, because the way you coach a five is completely different from the way you coach a two.

The third question is about challenge. How do you handle it? Do you want to be pushed? Are you ready to step up? Some kids are screaming for it and won't tell you. Some are quietly terrified and won't tell you either. This question opens the door.

Now here's where it gets interesting. I was at a convention in Philadelphia and heard a professor named Mark Williams — he works at Manchester United — present on talent identification. And his core message was that we consistently get it wrong. We pick the bigger, faster, stronger kids at nine and ten years old, stack our top teams with them, and give the smaller kids volunteer coaches and lower expectations. Then we wonder why so many of those "studs" aren't studs anymore by twelve.

The late developers, the smaller kids who had to fight harder and earn everything — those are often the ones who end up going the furthest. Because they built grit while the early bloomers were just coasting on physicality. And when I ask players how they handle challenge in a self-reflection, I'm starting to get a picture of who's built for the long game.

The last piece is a text question: who do you want to be as a soccer player this year? Not just "better" — actually describe it. Bigger? Faster? More technical? Do you want to play up an age group? Do you want to challenge for a starting spot? Can you articulate it? Because if they can write it down, now I can coach to it. Now every point of contact I have with that player throughout the season is anchored to something they told me they wanted.

And here's the coaching gold: when that player comes to training and I see them doing exactly what they said they wanted to work on, I can catch them — "hey, that's your five right there" — and suddenly that self-reflection from three weeks ago has come to life in the session. That's how you build the kind of relationship where players actually feel seen. Not because you have superhuman memory, but because you asked the right questions and kept the answers.

This doesn't take extra time. It takes a few minutes of setup through whatever platform you're using. And if a player doesn't fill it in? Honestly, that probably tells you something too.

The best thing you can do for your players isn't always on the training field. Sometimes it's just asking the right questions and actually listening to the answers.

Listen to the full episode here 👉 Heads and Volleys - Episode 94 Self Reflections

And come find me on Twitter/X — @LeeDunneSoccer — I'm always up for the conversation.