Catch Them Being Good: Everything You Need to Know to Successfully Coach Girls - Softcover

Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Tony DiCicco coached the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team to the Gold Medal in the 1996 Olympic Games in Atlanta and the World Cup Championship in 1999. He is currently the commissioner of the Women's United Soccer Association.

Dr. Colleen Hacker is the sport psychology consultant for the U.S. Women's National Soccer Team and a professor at Pacific Lutheran University in Tacoma, Washington.

Charles Salzberg is a magazine journalist and the author of more than fifteen books.

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Introduction

The Gold Medal game in the 1996 Olympics between the United States and China is, to my mind, the greatest women's soccer game ever played. It was a battle of equals, with everyone playing at the highest possible level. China was more effective than we were in the midfield and we outshone them on defense and in the attack. As a result, it was not unlike a high caliber chess match and, as the game progressed, we were very close to a stalemate. When we got the ball, China couldn't get it. When China got the ball, we couldn't get it. Quite simply, this was an amazing game to watch and even more amazing to be a part of as coach of the Women's Olympic Team.

In the first half we had a wonderful passing combination that started when our goalkeeper, Briana Scurry, distributed the ball up the right flank and it came through Michelle Akers in the midfield. Then we changed the point of the attack to the left flank, to Kristine Lilly, who bent in a terrific cross that Mia Hamm, who was one of the early sequence passers, ran onto and, with the outside of her foot, perfectly placed her volley on goal. Gao Hong, the Chinese goalkeeper, made a great save that hit and ricocheted off the post onto the field. Then Shannon MacMillan opportunistically finished it off, scoring the first goal of the Gold Medal match. It was not only a great passing sequence but also a great finish that included a terrific save by the Chinese goalkeeper.

But China wasn't about to lie down and play dead. Not long afterward, Sun Wen, the scoring phenomenon of the Chinese team, received a long pass over the top that beat our defense. And as Briana Scurry was sprinting out to her, Sun Wen chipped it over her head, but Brandi Chastain, sprinting back, couldn't quite clear it off the goal line. So it was 1-1 going into halftime, and despite the fact that it was a tie, I was still loving the game because everyone was playing so incredibly well.

I had very little to say to the team in the locker room because we were doing so many things well. After the normal tactical adjustments I told the players that they had been a great group to coach over the last year and that now it was up to them. They had forty-five minutes to fulfill their dream of winning the first ever Olympic Gold Medal for women's soccer, and although we'd played well, we needed to play better to defeat this worthy opponent. In fact, I was so excited and so eager for the second half to begin that after only a few minutes I left the locker room and went back onto the field. After a moment or two of standing alone in front of our bench, in front of thousands of fans, I began to feel a little exposed, suddenly realizing that here I was the head coach but my team was still in the locker room.

When the team returned for the second half, I was not disappointed by the quality of play, which had all the drama you would expect from two great teams. Once again we had a great passing sequence with Mia Hamm passing to Joy Fawcett, who was coming out of defense. We must have completed twenty passes in a row, trying to build our attack through the left flank, bringing it back and trying the right flank. China stole the ball-they got it for perhaps one pass-and then we stole it back again, and while they were expanding players out of their defense, we sneaked in on them. Joy Fawcett, with perfect timing and tremendous speed, beat the last defender and slid the ball across the face of the goal to Tiffeny Milbrett, who scored the go-ahead goal, making it 2-1.

After Tiffeny scored the goal, I took her out of the game and, as a defensive move, put in Tiffany Roberts. There were about twenty minutes to go in the match and in these kinds of games the last twenty minutes are hell. The other team is sending everything it has forward and your team's back is up against the wall. But in this instance we took the game over by maintaining possession of the ball so that the Chinese team had to keep chasing it and us. By the last five or ten minutes, in my mind at least, the game was over. In fact, I made a substitution, a gesture of respect, by putting in Carin Gabarra, one of the great stars of women's soccer and a Hall of Famer, to give her the opportunity to play in the Olympic final. She deserved to be in the game, but under normal conditions a coach would not have substituted an offensive player at that point in the match. For me, however, the maneuver showed the high level of confidence I had in our team. I knew there was nothing to stop us.

That Gold Medal contest was the epitome of the game of soccer, and our team played like a perfectly scripted dream. I remember sitting on the bench and marveling at what was happening on the field. Every pass I thought we should be making, we made. Every shot we should have been taking, we took. There was a connection I had with the team and the way they played that was really an enactment of how I thought they should play. We were a team on our competitive edge, playing at an extremely high level of skill tactically, physically and mentally. For ninety minutes we played the game just about as well as it could be played.

How were we able to reach that level of play, and how were we able to maintain excellence over such a long period of time? There are no simple answers, of course. And to understand the significance of our dominating play and win in 1996, we have to look back to 1992, my second year as a member of the coaching staff and the year after our first World Cup win. We played only two games that year, and none of our World Championship team members competed except Mary Harvey and Mia Hamm. In 1993 the team was beaten three times, twice by Germany and once by Norway. And then we lost in the World University games to China, 2-1. So the telltale markings were there-we were no longer the best team in the world, and yet, technically speaking, we were still reigning World Champions.

A pretty good year for us was 1994, when we won a domestic tournament, beating Germany 2-1, China 1-0 and Norway 4-1. But the truth is, in that 4-1 game against Norway, the score could easily have been reversed. For the first forty minutes we were totally dominated by the Norwegians, although they didn't score. Just before halftime I substituted Michelle Akers, and she turned the game around. With Michelle in the game we managed to sneak in a goal and then another one at the start of the second half. In effect, we "stole the game" from them. Despite winning that tournament, I could see there was something lacking in our play. Without domestic leagues, without the players having the luxury of training on a regular basis, we were losing ground to the rest of the world.

When I took over as coach of the women's team in the summer of 1994, I knew we weren't the best team in the world. One of the roadblocks we had always faced was that we would meet as a team for only a week or ten days during a tournament or spend numerous days in training but then play just one match. That changed in February of 1995, when we finally became a residential team and moved our training camp to Florida. Even more important than establishing our own facility, I felt, was the need to strengthen our mental skills. When I was a player, I was a goalkeeper, a position that is 90 percent mental and 10 percent physical. As a result of my experiences playing that position, I've always believed that when you reach a certain level in athletics, the difference between success or failure is determined by mental skill. That's the trump card because by that time players are technically proficient, and they understand the tactics of the game and are physically prepared.

I wanted to hire a sport psychologist to address our mental skills before the World Cup in June. We brought in two or three different people to address the team. Then, in May, about six weeks before the World Cup, we had a trip...