Coach Ben’s Inspirational Academy Pre-Tourney Speech

Throughout this season, Coach Dave and I have been teaching you all to be confident, skilled individual players.  You have worked your behinds off, twice a week with us and at home piling up thousands of touches and hundreds of minutes with the ball.

Every time we see you go out and play and come upon someone from the other team, a teammate in practice or even us as coaches, we can see in your eyes there is no desire to give away the ball, only that you want to win that 1v1, 1v2 or even 1v3.  You ball-hogs, you! :-)

This whole week and throughout the season we trained in cramped tiny spaces and I know just from this week how much you grumble about running into each other and having the ball taken away by your own teammates, but very often now, you are keeping the ball, avoiding the contact by staying on your toes, and finding the tiniest spaces to move through and get off a shot.

Take a look around at the orange cones I set up.  Right now we are standing inside the same amount of space we train on in the indoor field (32’ x 56’).  Now look out at the rest of the field and all that space, almost seventeen times the space we use to train.  Think you can find the green space when you have the ball?  Think you can find the green space when you don’t have the ball?

Win or lose today, tomorrow or two weeks from now, all we want to see from you is running onto and off of this field with smiles on your faces and with no distractions to…just…play…soccer.

With all that said, today let’s have fun, keep the ball…AT OUR FEET…, let’s possess…THE BALL…, play some awesome skilled Legends soccer, take the ball down the field, and score some goals.

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Hope it pumps them up tomorrow.  I certainly can hear music crescendo in my head towards the end!