How to Build Confidence as a Young Player

Confidence is easy when everything is going well.

You have played well for a few weeks. The coach is happy. You are getting picked. People are praising you and the things you try seem to work.

Then you have a poor performance.

Or you move into a stronger group and are no longer one of the best players. You get dropped, make a costly mistake, return from injury or go through a period where your performances feel ordinary.

If confidence disappears every time the evidence changes, the player spends their sporting life waiting for somebody or something to give it back.

I would rather help a young player build confidence from more than recent results.

That does not mean telling themselves they are brilliant regardless of what happens. Good confidence needs some honesty in it. Players need to know what they do well, what they are still developing and what they have done to prepare.

The aim is not to feel certain that everything will go well.

It is to have enough belief in your ability to deal with what comes next.

Confidence needs evidence

If I asked a player why they should feel confident before a competition, I would not be looking for them to say, “Because I’m the best.”

I would ask what they have done that gives them a reason to trust themselves.

Maybe they have trained consistently. They have improved a particular skill. They have handled this level before. They have completed difficult sessions. They have responded well after mistakes. They understand their role. They have prepared properly.

Those are pieces of evidence.

This fits closely with psychologist Albert Bandura’s work on self-efficacy, which describes people’s beliefs in their ability to organise and perform the actions needed for particular situations. Bandura identified previous performance experiences as an especially important source of efficacy beliefs, alongside observing others, verbal persuasion and interpretations of physical or emotional states.

In sport, a large meta-analysis found a positive relationship between self-efficacy and performance, while also showing that the relationship varies across studies and contexts.

For a young player, I would translate all of that into something much simpler: give your confidence something real to stand on.

Do not only collect evidence from competition

This is where confidence becomes fragile.

A player decides whether they are good enough based almost entirely on the last competition.

Good performance, confidence goes up.

Poor performance, confidence falls.

The problem is that sport produces noisy evidence. You can perform well and lose. You can make a good decision and execute it badly. You can play against somebody much stronger. You can have an excellent month of development without producing a standout competition performance.

If the player only counts obvious successes, they ignore a lot of useful information.

Training counts.

Improvement counts.

Doing something now that was difficult three months ago counts.

Responding well to a mistake counts.

Making a good decision under pressure counts, even if the execution was imperfect.

None of those require the player to pretend a poor performance was good. They simply stop one result becoming the only evidence in the case.

Make confidence specific

“I’ve lost my confidence” sounds like the whole player has disappeared.

Usually, we need more detail.

What do you feel less confident about?

Starting aggressively?

Using a particular skill?

Competing against stronger players?

Making decisions?

Coming back after injury?

Performing while somebody is watching?

Taking responsibility late in competition?

Those answers lead somewhere.

A player might trust their technique but doubt their decision-making. They might feel comfortable in training but uncertain in competition. They might believe in their ability until they make an early mistake.

Treating all of that as one general confidence problem makes the solution harder to find.

Specific confidence gives you something specific to work on.

Do not wait for confidence before doing the thing

Players often make an understandable bargain with themselves.

“When I feel more confident, I’ll start taking that option again.”

But if they keep avoiding the option, where is the new evidence supposed to come from?

Confidence and action work in both directions.

Belief influences what people attempt, how much effort they invest and how they respond to difficulty. At the same time, successful experiences give them new information about what they are capable of.

So sometimes the player has to act before confidence feels complete.

That does not mean throwing them into something they are completely unprepared for. The challenge needs to make sense for their stage of development.

It might mean attempting the skill in a slightly more difficult practice, volunteering for a role they have been avoiding, competing against a stronger player or continuing to ask for the ball after making an error.

Confidence often grows while the player is doing the work, not while waiting to feel ready for it.

Make the challenge difficult enough to mean something

There is another side to this.

If everything is easy, success stops providing much evidence.

A player completes a drill they have mastered 100 times. That might maintain a skill, but it does not necessarily tell them much about whether they can handle the next level.

Useful confidence grows when players experience challenges they are capable of meeting but cannot take for granted.

They need moments where they have to adapt, persist, solve a problem or perform under some pressure.

This is one reason why our article on why some players perform better in training than competition looks closely at practice design. If training removes too much uncertainty, the player might build confidence in the drill rather than confidence in handling the sport.

The challenge should grow with the player.

Confidence built on praise has a weakness

Praise matters.

A coach telling a player they have improved can help them notice progress they have missed. A parent reminding them of something they handled well can provide perspective after a difficult day.

Verbal persuasion is also one of the sources of self-efficacy identified in Bandura’s framework.

But there is a problem if the player needs reassurance every time confidence drops.

“Am I good enough?”

“Do you think I’ll play well?”

“Was I bad today?”

“Do you think the coach still rates me?”

If adults answer the uncertainty for them every time, reassurance can become something the player keeps needing.

I would still support them. I would simply move some of the conversation towards evidence.

What did you do well?

What has improved?

What did you handle today that used to cause you problems?

What needs more work?

Now the player is learning to evaluate themselves rather than constantly borrowing somebody else’s opinion.

Comparison gives confidence a moving target

A young player can feel excellent about their progress until somebody better walks into the room.

Now they are watching the other player’s speed, size, technique, selection level or results.

Their own ability has not changed in the last five minutes.

Their reference point has.

Their own ability has not changed in the last five minutes. Their reference point has.Grantley Baugh, Founder of PlayerScout

Comparison is unavoidable in competitive sport. Selection exists. Rankings exist. Results exist. Players need an honest understanding of the standard around them.

The problem starts when another player’s strengths become evidence of your weakness.

Developing players do not all mature physically at the same time, receive the same opportunities or improve at the same rate. In youth sport, biological maturation alone can create substantial temporary differences in size, strength and physical performance between players of the same chronological age.

That does not mean comparison is meaningless.

It means you need to know what you are comparing.

Use stronger players to understand the level and identify what needs developing. Do not use their existence as proof that your own development has stopped.

Confidence after a mistake is more valuable than confidence before one

Most players feel more confident before anything has gone wrong.

I am more interested in what happens afterwards.

Can the player make an error and remain involved?

Can they miss and take the next opportunity?

Can they lose a point and still play the next one properly?

Can they receive difficult feedback without deciding they are useless?

Our guide on how to recover quickly after a mistake deals with the immediate response in competition. Over time, those recoveries also become evidence.

The player starts learning, “I have been in difficult moments before and I know how to respond.”

That is a different kind of confidence from expecting not to make mistakes.

It has already made room for them.

A poor performance should change the plan before it changes the identity

One poor competition does not tell you very much about a player on its own.

Several performances might reveal something that needs work.

Perhaps a technical weakness is being exposed. Perhaps the player is struggling with pressure, decision-making, preparation or a higher standard of opposition.

Good development responds to that information.

What I would avoid is turning performance into identity.

“I played badly today” is workable.

“I’m not good enough” is much bigger.

One gives you something to review. The other tries to draw a conclusion about the entire player from a small piece of evidence.

This becomes especially important during adolescence, when selection, physical development, changing teams and increased competition can alter a player’s position in the group quickly.

Confidence and nerves belong in the same player

Young players sometimes think confidence means walking into competition without nerves.

Then they feel nervous and assume their confidence has gone.

Those are not opposites.

A player can believe they are capable and still care deeply about what happens. They can feel physical nerves and still trust their preparation. They can have doubts and still compete properly.

Our guide on how to deal with nerves before competition explains why the presence of nerves does not predict how a player is about to perform.

For confidence, this matters because the player stops using nervousness as a test.

You do not have to ask, “Do I feel confident enough?”

A better question is, “What do I trust myself to do?”

Parents and coaches should praise things the player can use again

“You’re amazing” feels good.

“You were brave” might feel good too.

But useful feedback is often more specific.

“You kept asking for the ball after the mistake.”

“You stayed patient when you went behind.”

“Your positioning was much better today.”

“You kept making the right decision even when the execution wasn’t perfect.”

Now the player knows what produced the praise.

Research on motivational climate in youth sport has generally linked more task-involving environments, where learning, effort and personal improvement receive emphasis, with more adaptive motivational outcomes than climates dominated by comparison and normative success.

That does not mean results should disappear from competitive sport.

Players need to learn how to win, lose and meet standards.

It means development should give them more than one way to judge whether they are moving forward.

Keep a better record of progress

Confidence has a memory problem.

After a bad performance, players often find it easier to remember recent errors than the months of work before them.

You do not need a complicated journal.

Every week or two, the player can record a few useful pieces of evidence: something that has improved, something difficult they handled, something they attempted even though it felt uncomfortable and one area they still want to develop.

The point is not to manufacture positivity.

If nothing improved, do not invent something.

The record simply gives the player a longer view than today’s mood.

Over several months, they start seeing development that would otherwise be easy to forget.

Confidence should become more independent as the player develops

An eight-year-old will naturally rely heavily on adults for feedback.

As players get older, I would want that balance to change gradually.

The coach still matters. Parents still matter. Teammates still matter.

But the player should increasingly understand their own game.

They should know what good preparation looks like for them, what they are working on, what they do well and how to review a performance without needing somebody else to decide whether they are allowed to feel confident.

That independence matters because sport eventually gives every player periods where external reassurance is limited.

A coach might leave.

Selection might change.

They might move teams.

They might become injured.

They might enter an environment where they are no longer one of the strongest players.

Confidence built entirely on being praised, picked or better than the people around you struggles when those things change.

Build confidence from what survives a bad day

If I were helping a young player build confidence, I would not ask them to convince themselves that they will always perform well.

Nobody can promise that.

I would build the evidence underneath them.

Prepare properly. Train with purpose. Notice genuine improvement. Take on challenges that stretch you. Learn what you do well. Be honest about what still needs work. Practise recovering when things go wrong.

Then confidence has more than today’s result to work with.

A poor performance might still knock it.

Getting dropped might hurt.

Stronger opposition might expose something.

But the player does not have to rebuild their entire belief in themselves from zero every time sport gets difficult.

That is the confidence worth developing.