What Does Your Coach Actually Mean By Your Role?

a few weeks into a season, players usually know where they have been playing. They may call themselves a specific position and begin to form opinions about who well the season is going based on what happens from that position. But knowing your position and understanding your role within that poison are not always the same thing.

A winger may spend most of a game without receiving the ball in the areas they hoped for and still have contributed significantly to how the team played. A midfielder may complete fewer forward passes because the game repeatedly requires them to provide balance underneath the ball. A defender may barely make a tackle because their positioning prevented the opponent from playing into a dangerous areas in the first place. A goalkeeper may make only a few saves because their positioning, communication and decisions helped the team prevent dangerous chances before they developed. Now, from the outside, some of those performances can be difficult to interpret.

For the player, the challenge becomes understanding what the coach is actually asking them to contribute within the game and that understanding is an important part of development.

Position Tells You Where You Start

A position gives the player an initial reference point. This reference point helps organize the team and provides some information about where certain responsibilities are likely to appear.

The role becomes more details, for instance, two players can both be called wingers and be asked to play very differently. One coach may want the winger to stay wide and create space for players inside. Another may want them arriving centrally when the ball moves to the opposite side. Against one opponent, the winger may be asked to press aggressively. Against another, the priority may be protecting a particular passing lane and waiting for a different trigger.

The position has not changed, the demands within it have and is one reason a player can understand where they are playing while still being unclear about what a good performance actually looks like. Recent work in youth football has highlighted the value of making role expectations more explicit through observable behaviors. Rafnsson et al. (2025), working with professional coaches, developed position specific role descriptions designed to help coaches communicate more clearly what different qualities might actually look like on the field. This highlights the importance and players benefit when expectations become understandable enough to act on.

Role Clarity Gives Performance Context

Without clarity, players often evaluate themselves through the most visible parts of the game and may rarely explain an entire performance. The player may have been asked to occupy a defender so someone else could receive. They may have needed to recognize when the team required patience rather than another forward action. Their pressing responsibility may have been designed to force the opponent toward a particular area rather than simply win the ball themselves.

Once the player understands the role more clearly, the performance has more context. Instead of only asking, “Did I play well?” they can begin considering, “Did I recognize what my role required in the situations that kept appearing?”

That is a different level of reflection but clarity does not mean memorizing a script. Soccer does not reward players who simply follow instruction without interpreting what is happening around them. The game changes too quickly. Teammates move, opponents adapt and spaces open and disappear. A player may understand the coach’s intention and still need to decide how that intention applies to the situation in front of them. Research with professional academy coaches has highlighted the importance of developing players who can think strategically, reflect and solve problems within the game rather than relying entirely on externally provided answers (Price et al., 2020).

The coach may give the player a framework but the player still has to play. For example, a fullback may understand that the team wants them to provide width in possession. If the winger is already occupying that space, repeating the instruction literally may create two playing standing in the same area.

The player has to recognize what has changed. Perhaps the useful space is now inside, may the best contribution is remaining underneath the ball or the moment requires waiting rather than moving at all. This is also why a player’s role can change within the same game.

What a player is responsible for when the team has the ball may be completely different from what is required of them immediately after possession is lost. The score can change the demands. So can the opponent. A substitution may alter the relationships around the player. Even the same tactical idea can require different actions depending on where the ball is and what teammates have already done. Research reviewing coaches’ instructional influence on tactical behavior in soccer suggests that clear instruction before activity can help players coordinate collective actions, while also showing how coaching information interacts with the tactical behavior that emerges in the game (Morais et al., 2025).

Players need enough structure to recognize what the team is trying to accomplish and enough understanding to adjust their behavior when the situation changes. Understanding the role means recognizing the intention behind the instruction well enough to adapt when the picture changes and increase intelligent independence.

When Feedback Is Unclear, The Player Can Ask For Specificity

Role clarity can become difficult when coaches use phrases that make sense to them but remain vague to the player. A coach may say, “Play faster,” or “Stay connected,” or “Help us control the game".” Each phrase may be connected to a specific picture the coach has in mind. The player, however, may hear the words without understanding the situation behind them. “Play faster” could mean moving the ball with fewer touchers. It might mean recognizing the next action earlier. It could also refer to moving into position before the ball arrives rather than doing everything quicker once it reaches the player.

All different scenarios, but a player who simply hears “I need to player faster” may leave training believing they understand the feedback while having very little idea what needs to change.

Young players sometimes hesitate to ask coaches for clarification and may worry that asking means they were not listening, that the coach expects them to already understand or that they will appear difficult or demandin. Parents may have similar concerns about encouraging the conversation but the purpose is not to challenge every decision or ask for constant justification.

A player might ask, “When you say you want me higher, what situation are you seeing?” or “What is the biggest thing you want from me when we lost the ball?” These questions connect feedback to the game and help the player understand whether the issue is positioning, timing, decision making or execution. As the weeks go by, the player should need fewer explanations for situations they have learned to recognize and is part of growth and their development.

Your Role Should Eventually Make The Game Clearer

One sign of growing understanding is that the player begins needing fewer isolated instructions. They begin connecting situations rather than seeing actions in isolation and is where tactical understanding becomes more transferable.

Research examining the development of game understanding in youth soccer has shown that young players are capable of developing increasingly sophisticated ways of thinking about teammates, opponents and strategy when learning environments deliberately encourage that understanding (Price & Collins, 2024). Understanding your role means more than knowing what the coach said; it means recognizing why the instruction makes sense within the game.

Parents Do Not Need To Become The Tactical Translator

This part of the season can create a new challenge for parents. Your child comes home and says, “The coach wants to stay wide,” while you watched the game and thought they should have moved inside. Or they say, “The coach wants me to player quicker,” and you have your own interpretation of what that means and it can be tempting to fill in the missing information. But sometimes the most useful response is allowing the uncertainty to remain with the player long enough for them to investigate it.

“What do you think coach means?” is different from “Here is what the coach means”; the first keeps the player inside the learning process and if they do not know, that can become useful information.

The parent can help the player organize the questions without becoming a second coaching voice and becomes increasingly important as players get older.

The Player Should Gradually Own More Of The Conversation

When players are young, adults naturally carry much of the communication around their development. But as players mature, that balance should begin changing. The player is experiencing the training, they are also receiving the feedback and making the decisions inside the game. Eventually, they need to become capable of discussing those experiences themselves. It does not mean parents disappear from the process; parents still provide perspective, support and judgement about when adult involvement may be necessary.

Development becomes more sustainable when the player can increasingly identify what they understand, what remains unclear, what is being asked to improve, what they need to ask for clarification and in turn it builds ownership without requiring the player to have every answer.

A Final Thought

A player’s role is more than the position written beside their name on a lineup, it is their evolving understanding of how they contribute to what the team is trying to accomplish.

Early in development, much of that understanding comes from the coach. As the player matures they should begin connecting the information for themselves and recognize why a position matters. They see how their responsibilities change when teammates move and understand that the same role may require different actions against a different opponent. Somethings may remain unclear and when they do, they become more capable of asking a useful question. That progression matters because soccer will eventually give the player situation the coach cannot explain in advance.

Reflection

What your child describes their position, how much can they explain about what the coach is actually asking them to recognize and contribute?

If something remains unclear, who currently owns the responsibility of finding that clarity?

References

Morais. C. Z., Bispo. K. C. S., Ueda, L. S. C., Milistetd, M., da Silva, J. F., Borges, P. H. (2025). The role of instructional constraints performed by coaches on tactical behavior of soccer player: A systematic review. Journal of Human Kinetics,100 ,293-308. https://doi.org/10.5114/jhk/202057

Price, A., & Collins, D. (2024). Exploring the development ‘understanding’ in high level soccer players. Physical Education and Sport Pedagogy. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17408989.2024.2352828

Price, A., Collins, D., Stoszkowski, J., & Pill, S. (2020). Strategic understandings: An investigation of professional academy youth soccer coaches’ interpretation, knowledge and application of game strategies. International Sport Coaching Journal, 7(2), 151-162. https://doi.org/10.1123/iscj.2019-0022

Rafnsson, D., Harwood, C., Steptoe, K., Matthíasdóttir, Á., Sveinbjörnsdótir, B., & Kristjánsdóttir, H. (2025). Enhancing role clarity in youth football: Applying the 5Cs to role descriptions by position. Interantional Sporting Coaching Journal. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1123/iscj.2024-0070