The group needs training too: team cohesion and leadership

Putting fifteen players together does not make a team. How a group moves through its stages over the season, which roles and rules hold it together, which coaching style works with young players and what to do about the leaders who do not wear the armband.

Linkalde · 2026-10-27

Every coach has seen a less talented side beat one that looked better on paper. Almost always the difference is in how the group works. Team-management courses keep repeating one idea: a collection of players is not a team. A team has to be built, and that is the coach's job too, just like technique or tactics.

Sport psychology calls this cohesion. Carron defines it as the tendency of a group to stick together and stay united while pursuing its goals. It has two sides worth telling apart, because you work on them in different ways:

Both matter, but they are not the same thing. A group of friends can play badly together and an effective team does not need everyone to be best mates. In youth football it pays to look after both, because many children keep playing because of their friends in the team.

The stages of a team during the season

A team is not born ready-made: it goes through stages that repeat every season, especially when there are new players. Knowing which one you are in helps you understand what is going on and avoids false alarms.

The conflict stage is not a failure, it is part of the process. It is better for problems to come out in October and get sorted than to let them grow until the second half of the season.

Roles and rules

What holds a group together is its structure: the role each person has and the rules everyone respects. For it to work, the coach looks for four things:

• Role clarity: every player knows what is expected of them, including the one who comes off the bench.
• Role acceptance: they take it on and commit to it, even if it is not the one they like most.
• Positive rules: few, clear and designed to make the group work, not just to punish.
• Participation: players can have a say in what affects them.

In practice, in the first week you can agree the team rules with the players: punctuality, kit, how to talk to a team-mate who makes a mistake, what to do after the match. With small children three or four rules on a poster are enough; with older teenagers it can be a short code of conduct they write themselves.

The leaders who do not wear the armband

Carrascosa distinguishes between formal and informal leaders. Formal leaders are the ones who are appointed: the coach, the assistants and the captains. Informal leaders emerge from the group itself: they are players whose opinion carries a lot of weight with their team-mates, even though nobody gave them that role. The problem arises when the two do not coincide and the informal leader is not pulling in the same direction as the coaching staff.

• Work out early who really has influence: who the others look at when something has to be decided.
• Talk to them often. They are your best thermometer for what is happening in the changing room and they can help you change it.
• In youth football, rotate the captaincy. That way more children learn to take responsibility and the armband does not become a privilege of the best player.
• Watch out for cliques: those who play more and those who play less, newcomers and old hands, kids from the same school. Mixing them in pairs, groups and on trips is the simplest way to prevent them.

Which coaching style works

Three styles are usually described, depending on how much the coach lets others decide. The authoritarian coach gives lots of orders, trusts little and motivates mainly through punishment. The participative coach listens and makes the decisions, but involves the players and relies mostly on reinforcement. The permissive coach leaves almost everything in the hands of the group. Every coach uses each of them at some point, but with young players the participative style is the foundation.

When athletes are asked what they expect from their coach, the same things always come up:

• Talks little: only what is essential, clearly and at the right moment.
• A sense of humour.
• Individual attention: knows each player and not just the team.
• Technical competence: knows about football.
• Control of the group: rules are kept, including by the best players.

There is no single style that always works. Effective leadership depends on four things at once: the coach's qualities, their style, the characteristics of the players (age, experience, motivation) and the situation. An under-8 needs a closer, more directive coach; an under-18 needs more say in decisions.

When the group performs below its level

A team can lose strength in two ways. Through loss of motivation: some players do not give everything because they believe nothing they do will change their role, or because they think it is the others (the ones who play most) who have to put in the effort. Or through lack of coordination: everyone pulls in a different direction and the effort is wasted.

1. Explain the effect each person's behaviour has on the team: turning up late, not getting back to defend or not helping a team-mate.
2. Give each player feedback on their contribution, with video or simple data if you have it.
3. Spot when demotivation appears: often it is tiredness from badly managed training loads or minutes.
4. Deal with it in the group and one to one. A well-judged team talk helps, but a private conversation reaches where the talk does not.
5. Focus above all on what goes well: a positive atmosphere unites more than a telling-off.

To work on it on the pitch, use games where the result depends on everyone: goals that only count if the whole team takes part, rescuing trapped team-mates, relays and rondos where you have to talk to keep the ball.