I’ve planned sessions that looked genuinely good on paper and then watched them fall apart the moment real players stepped onto the pitch. Anyone who has coached for more than a season has had this happen. The gap between what you planned and what actually happens is wider than most coaches admit to themselves.
For a long time my response to a session going wrong was to replay it obsessively that night, often staying up late picking apart everything that went badly. I got properly angry with myself over it. What actually helped was giving myself a limit: reflect in the car on the way home, make a couple of notes, and leave it there. Permission to have a bad session, rather than treating every off night as evidence I was a bad coach.
That shift only works, though, if you actually diagnose what went wrong rather than just feeling bad about it. Here’s the framework I use now.
Start With The Symptom, Not The Fix
The instinct when a session is dying is to reach straight for a fix. Don’t. Work out what’s actually happening first, because the same symptom, players switching off, can have completely different causes.
Players look bored. This isn’t one problem. It’s usually one of four:
- Repetition boredom — they can do this without thinking anymore. No mistakes because it’s too easy, mechanical execution, no energy.
- Challenge boredom — the task is too easy and there’s nothing to compete for. Success rate near 100%, players finishing quickly then standing around.
- Confusion boredom — they don’t understand it, so they’ve quietly stopped trying. Players look lost rather than switched off, avoiding the ball rather than ignoring it.
- Relevance boredom — they can’t see why it matters. You’ll hear “why are we doing this?” more than once.
Each has a different fix. Repetition boredom needs the same skill in a harder context: add a defender, add time pressure, add a consequence. Challenge boredom needs the difficulty raised until the success rate drops to roughly 60-70%, because nobody learns anything succeeding every single time. Confusion boredom needs you to go back a step and re-explain, not push forward. Relevance boredom needs you to connect the activity explicitly to Saturday: show them when they’ll actually use this.
Players aren’t improving over weeks. Usually one of four causes: you’re changing focus too often (three weeks on receiving, then something on Instagram catches your eye and you switch); you’re not progressing the challenge (same exercise, same intensity, week eight looks like week two); there’s no transfer to the game (it’s trained in isolation and never tested under match-like pressure); or the skill is simply too advanced for the foundation that’s actually there.
The fix for the first is uncomfortable but simple: commit to one foundation for longer than feels natural. Sixteen weeks, not three.
What Not To Do
Pushing through a drill that’s visibly failing, hoping it improves through sheer repetition, rarely works. Neither does blaming the players for what’s actually a planning problem. And panic-switching between three different activities in five minutes leaves everyone, you included, more confused than when you started.
If it’s genuinely going wrong, say so, pivot to something you know will work, and keep your energy up while you do it. Players read your body language faster than they read your instructions.
When You Get It Wrong
Sometimes the problem isn’t the session, it’s you. You lost your temper, or a piece of feedback came out harsher than you meant it. The instinct is to move on and hope nobody noticed.
Don’t. A short, direct acknowledgement does more for trust than pretending it didn’t happen: “Last week I got frustrated and raised my voice. That wasn’t fair. I’ll do better.” Admitting a mistake to players doesn’t undermine your authority. It shows them adults can be wrong and still keep going, which is exactly what you’re asking of them every time they misplace a pass.
The Reflection That Actually Sticks
I still do the car-ride version of reflection after a session that didn’t land. What type of breakdown was that. What was the earliest sign I ignored. What would I try differently next time. Three questions, on the drive home, and then I let it go rather than carrying it into the following week.
A session falling apart in front of parents and players isn’t proof you’re a bad coach. It’s data. The coach who never has a session go wrong probably isn’t challenging anyone enough to find the edge of what they can do.
If you want the fuller troubleshooting framework, including the decision tree I use to work through a session that’s not landing, it’s in the book, The Rise of the Dogmatic Football Coach, or inside the Football Coaching Academy alongside nearly 1,600 other coaches working through the same problems in real time.