The shouting culture in the world of soccer

Is the habit of shouting at matches preventing the sport from developing normally?

Managing a group is always a complicated task, but the difficulty increases as the age of the group in question decreases. In soccer or sport in general, we see every weekend that a recurrent resource of coaches towards this end is usually the shout; not only to transmit instructions, but also to correct, motivate ... Now then, shouting to teams of soccer players in training, is it motivating?Is it motivating, is it ethical, is it effective, is it effective?

The culture of shouting in soccer

It is true that, in soccer, there exists certain "culture of the shout", that is to say, that players themselves often demand this character from the coach in order to stay focused or motivated. to stay focused or motivated. However, shouting, by itself, need not have any effect on anyone's motivation from a Biological point of view, but, if anything, quite the opposite (no one likes to be shouted at). Therefore, the relationship between motivation (or intensity, or concentration) and yelling would be learned.

Be that as it may, this culture of shouting does not seem to be accessible to any player.. There are individual differences among all people, and also among children. Thus, we can find introverted children and extraverted children. The main difference between the two is the base physiological activation.

Therefore, extraverts, with low baseline physiological activity, tend to seek out situations involving high stimulation. situations involving high sensory stimulation, which provide them with that amount of sensory stimulation.that provide them with the amount of activation that their organism lacks. Thus, they tend to have a higher tendency to risk, a greater tendency to seek new sensations (travel, try new restaurants, meet new people), a preference for loud music, a tolerance for disorder, conflict....

However, introverted people are at the opposite pole, with a high base activation and, therefore, an external stimulation can collapse them, so they tend to prefer controlled, predictable environments, which are more likely to be a source of conflict. They tend to prefer controlled, predictable environments and tend to avoid and tend to avoid potentially stressful situations.

The differences between introversion and extraversion.

It should be clarified that the examples given here to define both behavioral tendencies are simplifications that aim to facilitate the understanding of the concepts, but that personality is composed of many more factors that all interact with each other.

In any case, given this individual differentiation between people, we can infer that the same will occur among athletes, and in young athletes. Soccer, as a team sportshould attract the attention of extraverts, and we tend to find this to be the case. However, if we analyze the different categories of grassroots soccer (from the "chupetín" to the youth) we observe how we can find greater heterogeneity among the younger ones, and a high tendency to extraversion among the older ones.

We could argue that this is due to the fact that, when boys and girls reach a certain age, they begin to choose their favorite extracurricular activities by themselves, thus manifesting their introverted "phenotype"... but there could be more.

If we look at the generality, usually only a minority of introverted only a minority of introverted players who make it to a youth team tend to perform remarkably well. within their own team. In the elite, we find Zidane, Messi, Iniesta... exceptional players, with this introversion profile.

Do not hinder talent

We could come to think that, in their training process, these players already stood out at an early age, performing at high levels for their age and making fewer mistakes. Therefore, it is possible that these introverted players received less shouting and, therefore, their physiological activation was not exceeded, and did not generate rejection or discomfort in attending training sessions.

If this were so, we could be facing a natural selection of extroverts in soccer and grassroots sports, to whom a little stimulation in the form of shouting would not bother them, running up against the hackneyed argument of "if he can't stand being shouted at he's not good for soccer", but what about the introverts who fall by the wayside? Could it be that we are prematurely classifying the potential talent of great athletes? Do they deserve to miss out on the multiple benefits that sports practice brings to their physical, mental and social growth?

We would still have to dig into the scientific literature to debate whether shouting has a motivational effect on players, but what we do know today is that there are alternative motivational and communicative techniques that may allow us to better adapt to the individual differences of our players, and that, in short, is group management.