How To Deal With Soccer Parents

Dealing with soccer parents is one of the most important, and sometimes less enjoyable duties of a youth soccer coach. As a youth soccer coach myself for many years, I have come across numerous situations with parents. I have learnt the hard way by experience the best way to deal with soccer parents.

Firstly, from the very beginning you need a set of rules and expectations for the players and parents. I present these to the parents at a very early stage in writing and ask them to sign that they except these conditions. I have a handout prepared and read the content while the parents are gathered. This lets the parents know where you stand and what is acceptable and what is not. This prevents many future situations occurring as you can simply refer to this at a later date.

Some of the rules I insist on are:

Only positive comments from the sidelines towards all players

No coaching the players as this is my job.

No being critical towards the referee.

These are just a few of my own personal rules.

I also give the parents a way of dealing with any problems. I ask them not to approach me before, during or immediately after a game as emotions could be high at these times. I ask them to firstly speak with the manager to see if the problem can be solved. If the problem cannot be solved in this way, I ask them to send me an email. If they need a personal meeting, I arrange an appointment at a convenient time for both. This delay in the process usually allows time for the situation to be diffused.

During a meeting I make sure to listen carefully and not to be confrontational. I remain calm. I then diplomatically explain to the parent my side of the story and suggest a solution. This method almost always works. It is only very rarely that the problem is not solved after this.

I always make sure not to be directly critical of the player. I say things like young players always make mistakes and that this could be a good learning process or act as a life lesson.

One problem that I had with a few individual parents was that they were coaching the player from the sideline. I called a parent meeting and told the whole group why it was important that they did not coach. I mentioned points like the player will be confused by having 2 sets of instructions and that the players would not be able to make their own decisions if they were being coached by the parents from the sideline. This quick 5 minute parent meeting worked as I explained the reasons why.