Confidence Needs More Than Encouragement

Confidence is often talked about as if it is a personality trait. Some players seem to have it. Others are told they need more of it. When confidence drops, the natural response from the adults around a players is often encouragement.

“You’re a great player.”

“Just believe in yourself.”

“You’ve done this before.”

That support matters. Young athletes often identify encouragement from coaches, teammates, parents and others around them as a source of confidence. But encouragement is only one part of the picture. Research with elite early adolescent academy soccer players found that confidence came from several places, including previous accomplishments, preparation, coaching, social support and understanding different aspects of the game (Thomas et al., 2021). That helps explain why confidence can feel strong one week and disappear the next. If a players relies mainly on goals, praise, selection or a good performance to feel confident, their belief can become closely ties to outcomes they cannot completely control. A broader foundation can give them more to return to.

Clarity can be part of that foundation.

Confidence Can Move

Players will not feel equally confident every day.

A strong performance may increase belief. A difficult game can make a familiar action suddenly feel less comfortable. A change in role, stronger competition or a ,stale early in a match may create hesitation.

Confidence naturally responds to experience.

The goal is to help the player develop enough understanding and evidence that doubt does not immediately take over. Preparation can help. So can previous experiences of success and supportive relationships within the environment. Clarity adds something else. It gives the player a better understanding of what they are trying to do next.

What Clarity Actually Means

Soccer does not offer knowing exactly what will happen so a player cannot know how an opponent will react, whether they will Strat the next game or whether every decision they make will work. Clarity is having enough understanding to know what you are trying to do when those uncertain moments arrive. That may mean knowing what an individual training objective looks like. It can mean understanding feedback well enough to try something differently the next time. For another player, clarity may come from better understanding their role within a particular phase of the game. The objective is to give the player something concrete to work with.

When players understand the task in front of them, they can begin acting on information they understand.

Why Praise Alone Cannot Carry Confidence

Research in youth sport has found that autonomy supportive coaching and process focused praise can contribute positively to young athletes’ perceptions of competence and development (Coatsworth & Conroy, 2009). The question si what the praise helps the player understand. “You’re brilliant today” may feel good. “You kept checking your shoulder before receiving and it helped you recognize pressure earlier” gives the player information they can use again. The second response helps explain why something worked.

That distinction matters because players eventually need to recognize evidence of progress themselves.

If confidence depends entirely on someone else saying “good job”, the player may struggle when the feedback becomes corrective or when encouragement is not immediately available. Specific encouragement can still support the player. Over time, the goal is for the player to increasingly understand their own development rather than waiting for others to define it for them.

Feedback Should Help A Player Know What To Do Next

Corrective feedback is part of development. Confidence does not require protecting players from hearing that something needs to improve. What matters is whether the feedback gives the player a useful path forward. research on change oriented feedback in sport found that feedback was more supportive of motivation, well being and performance when it was delivered in an autonomy supportive way and provided useful information about how an athlete could improve (Carpentier & Mageau, 2013). That gives coaches and players an important distinction.

There is a difference between, “You need to be better there” and “Before the ball travels, see if you can recognize where the pressure is coming from. That may give you another option when you receive.”

Both identify a problem but only one begins to give the player something specific to act on.

Clarity makes accountability more useful because the player understands what improvement actually requires.

Confidence Is Built From Evidence

Young players frequently look outside themselves for evidence. Did I start? Did the coach praise me? Did I score? Did we win? Those experience can influence confidence and they should not be dismissed.

A player might recognize that a situation that felt rushed two months ago now feels easier to read. They might notice they are receiving the ball more comfortably under pressure. They may understand an instruction more quickly or begin solving a recurring problem without needing the coach to intervene. Those moments matter because the player can see their own progress. Research with young academy soccer players suggests that previous performance accomplishments and preparation are among the sources players use to develop confidence (Thomas et al., 2021). The more sources of evidence a player can recognize, the less their confidence has to depend on one outcome.

A striker does not have to score to know they made useful movements.

A goalkeeper can concede and still recognize good decisions.

Confidence becomes broader when the evidence becomes broader.

Clarity Is A Shared Process

It would be too simple to say that a player who lacks confidence simply needs clearer coaching. Confidence can fluctuate even in a strong developmental environments. A coach may communicate clearly and a player may still misunderstand the message. Roles can also genuinely change as players develop and teams move through different moments of a season.

Coaches can communicate expectations and provide useful feedback. Players also learn to ask questions, interpret what they are hearing and take increasing responsibility for understanding their own development and the player can ask, “What does that look like when I do it well?” or “What should I focus on first?” Those questions can turn a broad instruction into something the player understands.

When a player feels stuck between what they are hearing and what they are experiencing, an outside conversation can sometimes help them organize the information and identify what they may need to ask within their environment. So, the purpose is to help the player become better prepared for it.

For Parents, Confidence Does Not NEed To Be Fixed Immediately

Watching a child lose confidence can be uncomfortable. Parents often see the change before the player says anything. They may become quieter after games. They hesitate in situations they normally attack with certainty or begin questioning abilities that previously seemed automatic.

Part of the parent’s journey through youth sport is learning that confidence will move.

If a child says. “I played terrible”, curiosity could be more useful by asking “What felt difficult today? or “Was there anything that started to feel better as the game went on? or “What were you trying to work on? Questions like these leave room for the player’s experience while helping them reflect on what happened. They also begin shifting the conversation away from whether the performance was simply good or bad. Encouragement can still follow; the difference is that the player has had an opportunity to make sense of the experience first.

Help Players Build More Than One Source Of Confidence

A player whose confidence depends only on scoring can struggle when the goals stop, a player whose confidence depends entirely on being selected can feel uncertain when their role changes and a player who depends mostly on praise may begin doubting themselves when feedback become more demanding; research on sport confidence suggests that athletes benefit from drawing confidence from multiple sources rather than relying on one fragile indicator (Thomas et al., 2021).

For developing players, that might include preparation, recognizing previous improvement, understanding the rrole and drawing appropriate support from the people around them. It can also include learning more about the game. The young academy players studied by Thomas and colleagues identified tactical awareness as one of the areas in which they experienced confidence. When players understand more of what they are seeing, the game can begin to feel less mysterious. They still have to perform, but they have more information to perform from.

A Final Thought

Players can feel nervous and still make good decisions. They can question themselves for a moment and still return to something they understand. Preparation gives them evidence. Useful feedback gives them direction. Clarity gives them something to act on.

None of those guarantee that confidence will remain perfectly stable.

The goal is to help young players develop a broader foundation so that one poor game, one mistake or one difficult period does not erase everything they know about themselves.

For parents, that may mean resisting the urge to rebuild confidence with reassurance alone.

For players, it increasingly means learning to recognize their own evidence of progress. Confidence may still move but with greater understanding, players have more to return to when it does.

Reflection

When your child’s confidence drops, what do they usually rely on to rebuild it?

Are they waiting for the next good performance or someone else’s reassurance or are they beginning to recognize evidence of progress for themselves?

References

Carpentier, J., & Mageau, G. A. (2013). When change-oriented feedback enhances motivation, well-being and performance: A look at autonomy-supportive feedback in sport. Psychology of Sport and Exercise, 14(3), 423-435. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychsport.2013.01.003

Coatsworth, J. D., & Conroy, D. E. (2009). The effects of autonomy-supportive coaching, need satisfaction and self-perceptions on initiative and identity in youth swimmers. Developmental Psychology, 45(2) 320-328. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0014027

Thomas, O., Thrower, S. N., Lane, A., & Thomas, J. (2021). Types, sources and debilitating factors of sport confidence in elite early adolescent academy soccer players. Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 33(2), 192-217. https://doi.org/10.1080/10413200.2019.1630863