Coach Seedorf on building confidence in young players

Kwaku Ohemeng is hard to book. "People will tell you that I don't answer phones," he says. Once a player gets through, the relationship changes for good. "Once I trained you, you become my family."

He goes by Coach Seedorf. In Ghana, people said he played like Clarence Seedorf, and the name stuck. Some decided he was more skillful than that and added Zidane, so for a while he was Zinedine Seedorf.

He has been coaching for more than 25 years. Players he trained in Ghana at five and six are now 30. In England, his sessions have included Manchester United player Patrick Dorgu and Auxerre player Axel Tuanzebe.

Veo spoke to him because coaches at every level can learn from the way he works.

A family name for every player

“I have never had a client. I have family. Every player I train becomes my family," he says when asked about the relationship between him and the players.

He means it literally. Dorgu is his son. On Instagram, he calls his players “my family”, and he has never called one a client. "No matter who you are, whether it's niece, brother, sister, I have to give you a name within the family."

Status changes nothing about that. "No matter if you are a Premier League player or a U10 player, I put my heart into training you. And you have to love someone to be able to help them more."

The cost of honesty

Coach Seedorf thinks many coaches around top players hold back. “They’re scared to correct them. In their mind, if they lose them, if they tell them the truth, they’re not going to come back to me.”

He has no such fear. “I’m not doing this to please anybody. Money, fame and all that, it doesn’t move me.”

“If you are lazy, I will tell you, you’re lazy. If you come back to me, fine. It will shock you that these players sometimes want people that will tell them the truth.”

Strict because he loves them

Before and after a session, he jokes constantly. Once the session starts, the smile goes. "I smile with you, joke with you before and after the session, but not within the session."

A famous name buys nothing on his pitch. "When you step on my pitch, you listen to me. I don't care about your status. You can play for Real Madrid or Manchester United, I don’t care."

He sees the strictness as part of the love. "Somehow I'm so strict because of the love I have for them. Because if you have a son, whatever you're doing for them, you love them to succeed."

On their podcast, It’s All About Kids Football, Ben Welch and Mike Clark talk openly about how hard it is to coach their own sons.

Everything he teaches has to survive one fact. Once the match starts, the player is on his own. "When you step on the pitch, I'm not there."

So the first job with every new player is belief. "I can teach you everything, or you can learn anything from any coach. But if you are not confident, when you step on the pitch, I can’t do anything in that moment. So all that you are doing is going to the pitch and showing them. And showing them will come from your confidence."

He points to Zidane, whose instincts came from how he saw himself. "When you step on the pitch, you think you are the boss here."

Lessons from Ghana

The coaches who taught him as a boy had never heard of a coaching badge. "But they were very good," he says. He believes most of coaching is natural, a matter of passion and of leading players "in a way that will help them in their future. Not only on the pitch, but off the pitch too."

He accepts that qualifications are required by law. In England, they also carry the safeguarding training every youth coach needs.

His sharpest advice is about time. "You cannot compare an early developer to a late developer. They are two different things. Some people you train will get it quicker. For some, it will come in the later part."

He hears the cost of impatience from parents whose sons were shouted at for falling behind the other boys. "It's because the coaches don't have patience to know that people develop in different stages." Charlie Mulgrew saw the same with his son's team, where players "people would have said aren't very good" changed completely once they had a way of playing and the confidence that comes with it.

Advice for young coaches

Asked what he would tell coaches starting out, he kept it short. Learn from others and make it your own. 

"I'm not saying copy, but you learn and try to do your own thing." Believe in yourself, because a coach who is intimidated by a famous name loses the player. 

"If you let player status overcome you, you will never go anywhere." And be patient, because no two players develop at the same speed. Former Southend United player Rob Howard hated his first three months as a coach, and the Ferdinand Collective now helps new coaches like him get started.

Coach Seedorf has never run an advert. "The players that I work with are the people that bring people," he says. Other players see their work rate and come looking for him.

Those who get through join a family that runs from Ghana to the Premier League. “Once you step on my pitch, you are my son, or you are my nephew,” he says. “So I treat you with love and everything.”