It doesn’t mater if you’re a young first-time assistant coach or a veteran of the game if you are not humble it’s likely you will not leave a positive impression on the single player or/and the team. Discipline and determination are huge factors for a winning team, but without patience, the willing to listen and knowing as a coach you can always be better you wont get that far.

Negative ego’s in a single coach will pollute the whole team, ego’s in a club or coaching director will trickle down and intoxicate the whole club, I’ve witnessed it as a coach, a father (and a very long time ago) as a player.

As this is a website dedicated to Goalkeepers I have the perfect example for the continuing of this article:

Last season (2023/24) I witnessed as a parent the most toxic team/club environment of all times. Consider that I’ve been a Soccer Dad for 8 years and a GK coach for the past 30+, so when I state “All Times” I mean 3 decades or more!

I can start saying on my son’s team there were a half dozen parents that thought that their child was the next Arthur Antunes Coimbra (better known as ZICO). It was all about their kid, the ego’s flew all over the place, dad’s that would hyper-inflate their son’s achievements bumping up the size of everything their child did on the field and giving absolutely no credit to the teammates that built up the goal their kid scored. I listened and observed all of their pridefulness and arrogance and just let them blow their own trumpet for the sake of peace. However that did not stand for long as many parent’s ego’s started to inject their children on the field.

A striker that was immensely inflated by his fathers ego actually started to believe he was above and beyond any of his teammates and had a seriously negative character arc. The striker started the season with being one of the team, just to end up feeling everyone else was there to assist him and only him. Blaming non-successful passes and crosses that were not served exactly where he wanted them. Blaming others when he shot a ball wide or over the crossbar going to the extent to verbally insulting the goalkeeper for for being scored on.

The success of a soccer coach always draws the attention far wide than just the parents. Everyone wants to know what a successful coach is doing to be successful.  Coaching is more than putting together a game strategy and a lineup of 11 players you think are the best for the job. Humble coaches DON’T see coaching as a job, they see it as a part of their life! They don’t see it as a commander, but more as a influencer. Humble coaches want to teach the whole team to strive and not just certain individuals and that stands for coaches at their first steps all the way up to them that have a UEFA Pro-License!

The soccer coach that has EGO’s will very often exhibit control by questioning your child’s ability and commitment to the team and simply because he doesn’t like the parent he will take it out on the child. One would say: That’s terrible! and for parents that have been involved in competitive travel soccer for several years, underneath have witnessed a coach like this at least once or even several. A toxic coach is ready to blame a player for the loss or thank a single player for the win! A coach with ego’s will correct a player even when they did the right thing simply to make him/her look bad with the rest of the team. Bad coaches allow players to group up and isolate other players from the group and allow them to run their mouth on the field without any consequences.

Directors of Coaching/Goalkeeping and administrative directors:

The Director of Soccer Operations, is usually a lot more administrative rather than practical. He/She oversee all soccer programs of the club and is in control of the player evaluations and possible feedback. A good Director of Soccer Operations will meet with his coaches every week (at least) and dictate the club basic guidelines and will listen and execute any requests. Mostly the DSO will listen to parents that have questions or concerns, they will reply to emails and text messages on a daily basis, it is someone that will take a stand if a coach is not operating within the club standards!

I remember contacting this past season the DSC of my son’s former club twice. Once to make a formal complaint on a coach that was continually taunting individual players and talking to parents with disrespect. The second email was to recommend a goalkeeper to the club. 7 months have gone by and I still have to hear back from him for either email 🙂
Keep in mind that club directors, directors of coaching and team coaches all have cellphones and those cellphones all have a text message system and email. If they don’t get back with you within “let’s say” 12 hours, then they’re ignoring you!

The Directors that responds in a timely manner are respecting you, they value your concerns or questions. Remember that in the U.S. it’s “Pay-To-Play” so you are a customer and not only a parent and in this case you should be treated as someone that is “investing” into their club.  A humble DSO knows that players are always above parents and if the player is quality and can contribute in making a team more solid it can always find ways to “handle” the parent.

Here is the perfect example of a humble and very professional Director of Soccer Operations:
A goalkeeper recently verbally committed to an out of state MLS Academy for the 2025/26 season, the parents are seeking a new club that can allow the keeper to play at the highest level (MLS Next) and have the best goalkeeper coaching group that will improve his level of training and play. The rosters are complete, but the DSO knows that the goalkeeper is solid. He is aware that the GK has played in the MLS Next for 3 consecutive seasons and prior to that 2 seasons in the Florida Academy League not to mention that the child also plays for a U15 National Team.

The Director welcomes the goalkeeper with great interest and blends the him into their U15 MLS Next program, thus even though the DSO is totally aware that the goalkeeper will be leaving the club at the end of the season, he gives him all the treatment he deserves as an integrated part of one of the clubs teams and guarantees that he will receive quality goalkeeper training.

When I personally thanked the Club Director for allowing my son to join the club with such short notice, his response was: We will do everything we can as a club to support your son in this year of transition” This is the perfect example of a soccer director fulfilling his duties and going beyond to help a player that he will lose at the end of the season! I have never witnessed a youth soccer club component being so compassionate and professional about a players development and I will make sure that the Director, the coaching staff and all the members of this club take full credit for it. This is how it should be at every youth soccer club!


Most soccer clubs today have a Goalkeeper Coach and larger clubs will have a GK director and a team of keeper coaches. It’s pretty standard if your club exceeds 12 teams to have GK director that organizes the goalkeeper coaching staff and coaches at the same time. However, it is totally unacceptable that the Goalkeeper Director uses this title to explode their inferiority complex and ego’s as a tool to weed out what bothers them.

Over the years I have seen all sorts of goalkeeper coach directors:
1. Coaches that used the title to delegate others and take no responsibility.
2. Coaches that believe the word “Director” means power and muscle.
3. Coaches that believe in the group they put together and assists them.

We’ve already covered #1. The soccer club member that will sit back and delegate others to do his duties along with theirs. They take the title as a job and are in it just to pull the cash at the end of the month.

Number 2 is usually that coach that has a mediocre life without satisfactions and most of all they hold grudges. They bring their everyday life problems to their job and attempt to make things better for themselves by inflicting on others. They are the ones that will create the most toxic coaching environment, they will never delegate anything above “coaching” and if you try to go above and beyond in your duties they will do everything they can to bring you down and make you look bad in front of club members, parents and players.

Number 2 will never share the best with the rest of the coaching staff. They will work with the pool of best goalkeepers and give the rest of the coaches what they consider “leftovers”. This is not only a worthless ego blast but mostly it is damaging for the goalkeepers. Why would you not rotate the goalkeepers, so that they get the very best from all the goalkeeper coaching staff? That would be way too much to ask a Goalkeeper Director that suffers constantly from inadequacy and insecurity in their daily life and prefer to intoxicate the whole area they operate within.

Number 2 will often walk-up and jump into another goalkeeper coaches session and correct him in front of all the goalkeepers and then walk away showing no interest in the session they just interrupted. If the goalkeeper director really wanted to help the coach and the keepers he was working with, he would have assisted the whole session and made corrections no visible to the keepers, simply adjusting the drill and stating “You can also execute this drill this way as well”.

The worst side of Number 2 is Game-Day.  What I witnessed last season was the absolute example of “YOU ARE DOING IT VERY WRONG BUDDY!”
The game starts and the goalkeeper is not even given a chance to take control of his defense and get a feeling of his surroundings and we can already see the Goalkeeper Director on the sideline screaming at the top of his voice ordering the keeper to do something he is already about to do. They will keep the keeper On-The-Edge and distract them from what is actually happening on the field. Then after 5 minutes the GK Director will walk away, just to come back 30 minutes later  to yell at the keeper again.

When the goalkeeper makes an exceptional save, here comes #2 again… If it’s during training he can’t hold himself and will contort reality to make a coaching point, they can’t help it! Even worse is the great save made during a game, under the eyes of both home and away team parents they will jump off the bench and hit that sideline yelling loud enough for the whole soccer complex to hear that the save you just made could have been better. #2 is them that will never admit you had the perfect game or training session.

Then we have the coach listed as “Number 3”. He is the goalkeeper director that will set a plan for the whole season involving his goalkeeper coaches. He will rotate the goalkeepers making sure that they all get to train with a different goalkeeper coach during the week. He will assist the goalkeeper coaches and will listen to their ideas and thoughts and will gladly bring in productive suggestions that will benefit the whole goalkeeper program.  It’s not about how much they can make, it’s how many goalkeepers they can help live their dream, they inspirit them and hearten their goalkeeper staff at the same time. There are very few of these #3’s and they’re very hard to find in today’s youth soccer programs.

The point of this article is that a humble spirit helps us remember that the coaching relationship is all about player development and not about the power we have as a coach!

Rick Zucchi
ZEE Goalkeeper Academy