Soccer Success Starts in the Mind: Why Every Player Needs a Mentor

An athlete’s mind is their most important tool for success. Speed, endurance, and technical skills are undeniably valuable, but the ability to overcome adversity is what ultimately separates good players from great players. Lots of players can perform when their team has the momentum. But very few can perform just as well when adversity strikes, and high-level soccer is rife with adversity, both on and off the field.

Dealing with setbacks on a constant basis is extremely difficult if you’re not mentally prepared, and that’s what a mindset coach or mentor is for. No young athlete should have to shoulder this level of obstacles to overcome on their own, and a mentor is specifically qualified to help you power through the unique challenges awaiting high-level soccer players.  

Here are a few reasons we sincerely believe every young soccer player could benefit from a mentor:

A Mentor Shows Athletes How to Deal with Adversity

Soccer is famously known as a game of mistakes, because players are making decisions at lightning speed, and it’s impossible to make the right decision every time. If you get flustered and lose focus every time something goes wrong, you won’t be much help to your team. A mentor teaches you to stay composed after mistakes happen, so you can continue driving your team forward, determine what went wrong, and prevent it from happening again.

Also, no soccer player’s journey is immune to setbacks, whether it’s getting injured, cut from the team, or passed over for a pro contract or by the college of your choice. A big part of a mentor’s job is changing your perspective towards setbacks so you view them as normal and natural, as opposed to something you should dread.  

Taking the negativity out of these inevitable experiences allows players to stay confident and focused on their long-term goals.  Mentorship even teaches you to view setbacks as valuable opportunities to identify and improve weaknesses in your game, so you can bounce back as a more well-rounded player.

A Mentor Allows Athletes to Express Their Emotions

The demands of high-level sports bring powerful emotions, and expressing these emotions is crucial for an athlete’s mental health.  

However, many athletes don’t feel like they can truly express themselves to their parents or friends because the athletes feel – whether they’re right or not – that  people can’t relate to their experiences firsthand.

A mentor that has lived the journey of a high-level athlete knows exactly what they’re going through. Athletes may be more inclined to discuss their mental struggles with mentors outside their close circle of family and friends because they know that whatever advice their mentor gives will be based on firsthand experience with a similar situation.  

For example, let’s say you try out for your region’s top club and don’t make it. At first, this seems like a sign that your long-term goal is no longer within reach. A mentor can harness their personal experience to explain why this couldn’t be further from the truth. Their career took all sorts of twists and turns before they reached their own long-term goal, and that’s a very comforting thing for an athlete to hear.

A Mentor Helps Athletes Build Their Own Journey

Speaking of twists and turns, one of the toughest realities about soccer is that there’s no clear-cut path to a successful career. It doesn’t work the same way as other sports, where the path is more conventional: You play on your high school team, then you get recruited to a reputable college program, and then you go pro.

With soccer, the trajectory of your journey is completely unique. You might play for one of several clubs in your region. You might get recruited to a Division II school or a Division III school, where you might play for four years or maybe one or two before transferring to another school. From there, you could very well end up making the jump to a professional team in South America or Europe.

The point is, soccer players don’t have a single step-by-step process they can follow to be successful, which heightens the need for additional guidance. A mentor can help you set realistic goals and make sensible decisions towards these objectives based on the myriad options before you. They provide a sense of clarity in an uncertain future, explaining exactly what you have to do to achieve the specific milestones you have in mind. Adults have a hard enough time coping with the more unique aspects of their lives, so you can only imagine how much harder it is for a teenager.

Mentorship is Crucial When There’s No Set Path

At Beyond Goals Mentoring, we know how that getting recruited to play college soccer is no walk in the park – much less getting a pro contract. The amount of responsibility that has been placed on young soccer players is enormous to say the least, and we’re here to help. Harnessing our own experience as former pros and our up-to-date knowledge of the recruitment process, we assist young athletes with reaching out to coaches, self-promotion, and consistently elevating their game to turn their dream into reality.

So, if your athlete could use some help navigating this complex process, let’s set up a mentoring session today.