Hi... I'm new to BigSoccer and I was wondering if someone could help me with my situation.... I've been playing soccer for a while now, but ever since I started playing high school soccer, I have trouble with my confidence. I've heard about players sometimes becoming "burnt out" from a sport. Sometimes my confidence level gets so low that I want to quit. Right now, it seems I've lost my passion for the sport, so does anyone have any suggestions as to what I can do about this? Thanks
What do you mean by confidence? Do you mean that while you are out there playing, that you are more worried about screwing up than playing your regular game? Or are you merely saying that you are burnt out? As a kid, I played both baseball and soccer, and one day I just had no more desire to play baseball, and that was it. If that is your case, then I dont think I have any real suggestion... However as far as confidence in your game and whether or not it affects your on field performance, really just try to go back to what you know you do well, and not dwell on things you may make an error on during a match. All players in all sports have times where they go thru poor spells, and it's just something you've got to work thru. Welcome to BS btw.
this same thing is happening to me right now it is screwed up I feel like I can't do anything right on the pitch, so I'm just like wtf is the point in playing when it is screwing my team?
Take some time off from playing competitive games, and play for fun and practice. It happens a lot to me too, when I go play with some friends, and I have a bad day and totally suck. It's depressing, makes you not want to play anymore. It happens mostly when playing with people with much higher skill than you. Try playing with some other (less skilled) people, and build up your skill.
I play with people who are a lot better than me when I'm worried about not doing so well. When you have no choice but to play with people who are better than you, your confidence has to be higher b/c you'll lose if you don't.
When you are learning a subject, it is very important to mix successes with learning opportunities (that is, failures). You have to figure out some way of mixing in successes into your learning routine. You can do this with playing some games with people at a lower level than your competitive games. This gives you a chance to build your confidence, while giving you time to pick up passing and dribbling skills that can be useful in your larger game. Try taking the normal soccer class at college, or playing pick up games. Another thing you can do to build up successes is to play a more conservative style and make a new definition of success. Sometimes I play with the higher skilled players in my soccer league - when I do, I play on outside defense, where my definition of success is tapping a ball away from a player out of bounds, or forcing a ball handler to make a move on me and making it easy for another player to steal the ball.