Smart Soccer: How To Use Your Mind To Play Your Best

Rating:
Summary: Good reading for serious young sportspeople
Review: "Smart Soccer" is fun and inspiring reading for young sports people. Aspiring soccer players who want to grow into confident atheletes should read it for sound advice from a variety of soccer stars and other professionals of the game. In a nutshell, Scott shows how to put the play back in sport!

Rating:
Summary: Good reading for serious young sportspeople
Review: "Smart Soccer" is fun and inspiring reading for young sports people. Aspiring soccer players who want to grow into confident atheletes should read it for sound advice from a variety of soccer stars and other professionals of the game. In a nutshell, Scott shows how to put the play back in sport!

Rating:
Summary: AWFUL
Review: I was appalled by the atrocious grammar and general poorness of the book. Did a second grader write this? I am sure of one thing: this is the most pitifull excuse for a soccer book i have ever read. The author should not only lose her writing and speaking privaledges, but she should also be jailed.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Wonderful
Review: Smart Soccer is an insightful pleasure, a well-balanced mix of factual research and a mother's touch. Scott has clearly done her homework, and her question-format presentation is fantastic. A must read for anyone who plays soccer or whose kids play soccer.

Rating:
Summary: AWFUL
Review: this book was fantastic. it was great for me as a coach so i could be reminded that soccer is a game of decisions and MISTAKES. too often youth coaches focus on the mistakes and the kids don't want to play anymore. I loved it and my 11 year old son did too (it was his book). We bought this book for every kid on both our U11 Boys and U10 girls team. A must!

Rating:
Summary: smart soccer review
Review: this book was fantastic. it was great for me as a coach so i could be reminded that soccer is a game of decisions and MISTAKES. too often youth coaches focus on the mistakes and the kids don't want to play anymore. I loved it and my 11 year old son did too (it was his book). We bought this book for every kid on both our U11 Boys and U10 girls team. A must!

Rating:
Summary: Highly recommended for all young soccer players.
Review: This set of instructions on playing a good soccer game provides the basics on smart soccer performance, using advice from professional and amateur soccer athletes and coaches to provide examples of how attitude affects sports. A highly recommended pick for aspiring young athletes.

Rating:
Summary: "Some Good , Some Bad"
Review: While the book attempts to address the subject of negative thoughts and their influence on ones performance, the suggestions given, in some ways, suggest that the author has only a rudimentary understanding of this concept. For example, the author states "... to get into the zone and play your best - you must not let yourself worry about making mistakes" (pg. 18). One sure way to have someone "worry about making mistakes" is to tell them NOT to do it. For example, if I say to you "do NOT think of an elephant", more than likely a mental picture of one pops into your mind. The often misunderstood concept is that if you introduce the ideas of "worry" and "mistakes", even though they are preceeded by the word "not", these are thoughts that will now be present in the mind of the player. Suggestions MUST ALWAYS be phrased in positive terms. You must suggest what you want the player to think about not what you don't want them to think about. I also think that too much emphasis is placed on the word "mistakes". For example, saying that players will always make "mistakes". A better way to introduce this, if you wanted to address how the player should react to such, would be to say that players MAY not ALWAYS play perfectly, but that "perfect play" is not always required. The author could then suggest how a player may react to such situations. To do as the author says, is to give your players a direct suggestion that they WILL make mistakes. One should not underestimate the power of direct suggestion.