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Strong Team Culture in Soccer: Here’s 5 Ways To Make it Happen

Published: September 29, 2021
Updated: February 20, 2023
By: Jenn Ireland

Category: Coaching, Leadership, Team Culture

Having strong team culture in soccer is what gets teams through low periods and it is what keeps them balanced and focused when they are flying high. Strong team culture is what makes great teams great, it’s what allows them to play as a well-organized, synced-up, collective group of players that cares about one another. Strong team culture in soccer empowers individual players by providing them a supportive, value-driven, encouraging environment to maximize their potential as a player.

Strong team culture in soccer is what creates invested players. It creates players that are resilient, confident, and connected to the team – EVEN if the wins aren’t there. Strong culture also results in happier, harder working players. And while it can take a bit of time to get there, strong team culture in soccer is what makes teams come together and play their best soccer.

Whether you are a player, a team captain, or a coach, if you are a member of ANY soccer team – helping to build fantastic culture is one of the most important things you can do if you want to have a successful soccer season.

Here’s how I consistently create fantastic team culture with my girls soccer teams, plus ways you can define and build your own team’s culture from the ground up.

My top 5 MUST-HAVE soccer team culture values

Team culture is more than just trying to get your team to get along and respect each other (although if that is where you are currently at, it is a great first step). Team culture in soccer shapes both the collective group and the individual players within it. Team culture in soccer has massive impact on how the team plays together on the field and on your overall success as a group. It also has massive impact on shaping individual players.

As a soccer coach myself, I try to sit down at the beginning of each season to define what type of culture I want to create for the upcoming year. These are some of the questions I reflect on:

What are my current personal values? What are my current coaching values?
What things are important for me to teach my players? Things that will not only help them become better soccer players but better humans?
What have I recently learned that feels important for me to share with my players? Things that are applicable not just in soccer, but in life?
Also – what things do I already know that my players will NEED to have a successful season?

My team culture values have changed over the years. They have gotten more specific to the age-group and gender of coaching I typically do (middle school and high school girls) and have evolved with me as I’ve grown as a person and a coach.

Here are my top 5 most important values for strong team culture in soccer:

#1 - Growth mindset & healthy striving mentality

The top, very most important value for me when it comes to building strong team culture in soccer is having a collective healthy striving mentality. This means that everything we do (as a team and as individuals) is effort and growth mindset based, not performance based.

Winning is great and fun and awesome, but just winning and never experiencing struggle won’t bring you the growth and development you need to continue to progress forward and improve. When players understand this, they are more resilient, more motivated, more hard-working and can focus on the pursuit of improvement and move away from results based expectations.

When you strive to create a team environment where everyone is committed, works hard, wants feedback and has enjoyment and enthusiasm for the process regardless of game outcomes, you are creating a team culture in soccer based on healthy striving mentality. And you’ll see this translate directly to the field.

#2 - The power of the collective; team 'one-ness'

There is an (often untapped) power that lies in playing for the collective selflessly and with great intensity & passion. When players focus on something bigger than themselves, work to support each other and develop a genuine compassion for their teammates, MAGIC HAPPENS.

This means players taking a genuine interest in their teammates, including their overall well-being. And not just as soccer players but as people too.

Strong team culture in soccer and ‘one-ness’ is what separates good teams from great ones. It’s also what can help course-correct a team who’s having trouble and put them back on a forward-progressing path.

Former NBA coach Phil Jackson is all about team ‘one-ness’ and has famously transformed several teams of very disconnected, ego-driven individuals into true TEAMS. In his book Eleven Rings, he writes that each season his “primary objective is to bring the team into a state of harmony and oneness.” Jackson understands the power of the collective and he spent his entire career dedicated to helping his players understand it as well. He must have done something right because he won 11 Championship rings along the way.

Work hard to establish a team culture where players and coaches appreciate each other, trust each other, and have great respect for each other – and you’ll be blown away by what you can accomplish together.

#3 - Player accountability

Personal accountability is a HUGE part of strong team culture in soccer. When you have a culture where individual players are empowered to take responsibility for their own development, you get invested players who understand that they are in charge of how good they get.

Coaches can instruct and teach, parents can guide and encourage, but ultimately it is up to the players to take responsibility for their development. THEY have to want it and THEY have to do it. And strong team culture in soccer can inspire them to step up. It’s amazing to see when players begin to get excited about getting invested in their development, when the culture motivates them to give themselves and their game the care and attention they deserve.

A strong team culture in soccer that emphasizes personal accountability is one where players also eagerly seek feedback on their own. You want to have a culture where players ask questions, are hungry for information and are genuinely interested in self-improvement and in learning more about themselves.

Accountable, dedicated, driven players are amazing individually, but man, when you have a team culture in soccer that creates an ENTIRE TEAM of these types of players….All I can is that your opponents better watch out, because they don’t even know what’s about to hit them.

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#4 - Loving & appreciating the struggle

Here’s one of my favorite pieces of advice to soccer players, learn to love the struggle. You want to create a team culture in soccer that has a positive attitude toward inviting the struggle, inviting challenge. For a team to really thrive and grow, they have to WANT to purposely put themselves into difficult, challenging situations. Sounds crazy right? It works.

When soccer players learn to love and appreciate the struggle, they become more resilient, creative and confident. Both as individuals and as a group.

If soccer players never struggle because they are always doing things they know well and are comfortable with, then they are NOT progressing or developing. But when a team gets excited to take on a difficult, challenging tactical concept at a training session because it means that they GET TO GET BETTER and learn something new, the team has hit gold in terms of cultivating growth mindset and building it into their team culture in soccer.

#5 - Mental toughness

The last team culture value on my list revolves around teaching players actual, tangible mental performance skills to help them build their mental toughness.

Learning the mental performance skills to mentally prepare before competition is extremely important and players that grow this part of their soccer game will quickly elevate ALL OTHER PARTS of your game. By creating a culture where players learn regulate their focus and emotions and can get into an optimal headspace before hitting the field you are helping to create a team that can withstand difficult situations and still play their best soccer.

Including mental performance skills as a part of your team culture is important because players need direction & guidance in order to grow in this area. It doesn’t really work when players are just told to ‘be more resilient’ or ‘have more confidence’. They need to be shown, taught and given actual tangible tools to be able to do this – which is why this needs to be a part of the culture so that it stays in the forefront.

Coaches: defining YOUR team's culture

Now that we’ve dug into how I define MY team culture in soccer, let’s look at yours. As coaches, we all know how hard it can be to unify a group of people under a common set of values so in order to effectively create good culture there needs to be buy-in from the players. Meaning that they believe in it and they want to get behind it.

So, how do you figure out what your team’s culture should be? How do you define it and present it to your team and get them onboard?

Figure out your coaching 'why'

The first thing you want to do is figure out what you value most, not just on the soccer field but in life.

What things do you find yourself constantly and passionately going on and on about? What things do you always feel very strongly about? Some examples that a lot of people resonate with are work ethic, integrity and respect for others. These are all values that can easily be incorporated into team culture in soccer.

When working to build a team culture it helps immensely to understand your own personal ‘why.’ As in – Why do you coach? Understanding why you do what you do will help you define your values and also your strengths so that you can then bring them to your soccer team.

Here’s why I coach girls soccer:

Taking the time to very specifically define your culture is really important because if you don’t get detailed with what the team stands for, your players won’t be able to get behind it. When you take the time to carefully cultivate an environment that fosters growth and togetherness, your season is already on a path to success.

Coaches: building team culture in soccer

Now that you’ve got the important aspects of your culture defined, its time to figure out how to start introducing these concepts into your team’s day to day.

The biggest and best tip I have to start building a strong team culture in soccer is to simply START TALKING ABOUT IT. Start talking about your values in everyday normal conversation with the team. Bring it in as much as you can and normalize it.

If you speak from your ‘why’, from your core values, this won’t feel forced or awkward, it’ll just be an extension of you. When your players can tell that you are passionate about something they will be quicker to jump onboard especially if they already trust you and value your leadership. Here’s an example:

Creating a culture of accountability

So I’m ALL about accountability, ask any of my players and they’ll tell you that I never shut up about it. But instead of giving special speeches on accountability (which I know none of them are going to enjoy or internalize because they just want to play soccer at the moment), I just talk about it CONSTANTLY.

I pull it into everything we do. I make it very clear that they need personal accountability to reach their goals, to get to the top, to win games, to improve. I also am known to create systems and tools for my players to help them be accountable. I make it fun and I make it an integrated part of how I coach.

I make accountability a part of the culture by keeping it front-and-center and frequently discussing it. I am very passionate about this topic and I’m authentic in my belief of the power of it and because of that I embed it in the foundation of everything we do. And yes, they jump on board.

Be yourself, BE your values

Another way coaches can effectively help build team culture in soccer is by being very diligent and consistent about living out the values yourself. If you talk about being more resilient as a group, but then you yourself complain, yell or get bent out of shape at the slightest obstacle or struggle, you are NOT embodying your team culture. You have to show your team that you value the things you talk about in order to get them to take up the mantle.

The magic of strong team culture in soccer

Cultivating strong team culture in soccer positively impacts every piece of your team’s game. It reverberates and touches everything.

Strong team culture in soccer has the ability to make or break an individual player’s season and very often influences their decision whether to stay and play another year. Young female athletes quit organized sports at alarmingly high rates in middle school and high school and bad team culture plays a huge role in that.

Team culture directly impacts player’s perception of a season as good or bad. Setting high standards and creating structure right from the beginning helps immensely. Sometimes the changes are small and slow, but eventually the whole ship will start to shift as the culture takes hold and players start to come together.

When that culture shift starts to kick in, magical things happen. Team’s get stronger because they start to show up for each other, for the collective. They start to welcome tough matches and walk away from loses disappointed yes, but also inspired and excited to keep pushing forward and improving. They are able to reflect and be grateful to the other team for exposing their weaknesses so that they know what to focus on for next week.

Individually, players become better able to regulate their emotions and their focus and don’t let opponent’s get under their skin as easily. They start to take more responsibility for their individual development. They do skill-work and fitness on their own and hold EACH OTHER accountable when teammates aren’t keeping up and are holding the group back.

That is the magic right there, when the team starts regulating itself, but does so with respect, love, compassion and togetherness. It’s growth mindset and healthy striving mentality not just in one player, BUT FLOWING THROUGH THE ENTIRE GROUP. That’s the unbelievably fantastic unstoppable power of strong team culture in soccer.

Hi everyone! I’m Jenn and I create content to help female soccer players and coaches maximize individual and team potential by developing healthy mindset skills. Join other subscribers and sign up for the newsletter for all my best tips and advice!

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Hi everyone!

I'm Jenn, a USSF C-licensed youth soccer coach, mental skills coach & founder here at Expand Your Game. I created this site because it is the site I needed when I was a soccer player.

About me: I am a former newspaper photojournalist who loves downtempo electronic music, guacamole and books of every sort. And of course soccer! On days off you can find me researching tiny farms in Portugal , tossing a frisbee for my dog, or tending to my growing collection of indoor plants.