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How to Become a Football Coach: All you need to know

For those football fans, having jobs relating to it, is of most excite. First of all, you have to be fully prepared to step into this circle and have your own understanding and orientation of football. Whether being a campus football coach or a professional coach is all your own choices.

No matter at home or abroad, football coaches have to work with a certificate. This article will tell you how to get the certification, find a job and be a real football coach.

Step 1: Understand job description and responsibilities

There mainly have two categories of football coaches in a team, which one is Head coach, the other is Assistant coach.

The Head coach instructs the team's tactics, starters, and selection of personnel to enter and withdraw, makes arrangements of daily training plans, personnel changes, and sometimes also needs to know all the players' condition. Adjusting the starting staff and arranging formations on the spot, but at the critical moment, there is still a personnel change operation for substitutions.

The Assistant coach is mainly responsible for the team's daily training, the game of reserve team and youth team, and making reasonable analysis of the players' state and physical condition, etc.

Basically speaking, an assistant football coach plays a more critical role in the performance of a game. Their responsibilities are mainly about:

  • Develop a training plan
  • Command competition
  • Attend the press conference
  • Personnel selection

Step 2: Think before you do: whether is it worth to be a football coach

A football coach is a critical role in a football team while he or she is always in the background, but does this job suits you or not, which you may think about the advantages and disadvantages of it first.

Advantages of a football coach

High salary: A football coach can make a better income than a football player. Some famous coaches just even work as a hobby but not cares about money.

Don't have to work so long time: Football coaches can be off work at an earlier time, may about 3 pm or 4 pm which depends on an everyday training schedule.

Good reputation: A football coach with successful work earns good reputation among peers and football field or even in the world with lots of respect.

Disadvantages of a football coach

Miss some family moment: Due to the time schedule, a coach may miss his son's birthday party or some other anniversaries when a football match encounters that day.

Not everyone can support you: Whether a football coach is good or not, there are always criticisms, which the coach has to bear.

Pressure: Commensurate with high salary, the pressure which a football coach is burdened with is not low, so we always see the picture of a football coach is a man with an old, gray-haired look.

Step 3: Research Best colleges and universities

For someone who wants to become a football coach, it's better to enter a college to get a bachelor's degree. Here is a list of best colleges and universities for football coaches.

1. Kent State University

2. Ohio State University

3. University of Cincinnati

4. Texas Christian University

5. Dodge City Community College

6. Tennessee Technological College

7. University of Oklahoma

8. University of Iowa

9. University of South Carolina

10. Salem International University

11. Samford University

12. University of Michigan

13. University of Alabama

14. Stanford University

15. Staffordshire University

16. Cardiff Metropolitan University

17. Durham University

18. Hartpury College

19. Leeds Beckett University

20. North Umbria University

Step 4: Go through College

To best coach football players, you have to learn the game first, and continuously upgrade your knowledge of current new rules. You can choose to take football courses in universities, or be a football player in sports school, which each can pave the way to become a football coach since earning a bachelor's degree is one of the requirements. Also, the choice of majoring in coaching and management is helpful to your career.

You can choose subjects as follows:

  • Officiating
  • Coaching dynamics
  • Sport psychology
  • Sports nutrition
  • Sports marketing
  • Leadership
  • Sport management
  • Athletic injuries

Step 5: Gain your coaching experience

Getting some coaching experience is essential to start your career. You can find an internship or a teacher to shadow under his or her instruct. Do whatever you can to have a closer look at how to train and manage a team, and accumulate the knowledge for the future. Besides, watch football matches as much as possible to learn this game, and video or interview about famous football coaches.

Step 6: Prepare relevant skills for a football coach

Football coaches are leaders of a team, who are the key to win or lose in a game, so they need some professional skills and outstanding abilities to control a team and a match.

SKILLS

  • Professional level of football
  • Basic Anatomy and Physiology
  • Sports psychology
  • Safety and First Aid
  • Expressional ability
  • working principle of muscle
  • Training principles and methods
  • Data statistics and analysis

ABILITIES

  • Communicator: Ability to think clearly and expressively
  • Engineer: Ability to understand players, maximize their potential, and analyze the impact of team members
  • Teacher: Ability to take effective teaching methods to improve team learning
  • Politician: Ability to maintain good relationships with players, opponents, clubs and social groups
  • Trainer: Ability to develop training plans to improve individual comprehensive skills
  • Scientist: Ability to do scientific analysis
  • Artist: Possess excellent artistic ability to be friendly with others, correctly face injustice, respect and consider the needs of others.

Step7: Find relevant jobs, and apply it

For a young man, being a football coach is not an easygoing, or in other words, uncommon. Most coaches were used to be athletes in their own field, after they retired from sports, then choose to do coaching, so you may do some assistant jobs in a football team first. You can choose to work at local schools as a sports teacher or coach a youth team to accumulate experience step by step.

Important Tools for a successful football coach

A football is essential to do football jobs, also, a coach needs to learn some modern tools to level up working efficiency such as applications to do statistics, make training plans, record players' information or other relevant materials.

Develop your career path

After graduation, to start your career, you may choose to be low-level coaches at high schools or universities. When you get some experience, go to be an assistant coach, after a few years, you can realize your dream and become a head coach.

The more success you make; the upper level you will be.