How to Motivate a Team After a Bad Loss

The whistle blows, and it’s game over. The other team won, they’re running around the pitch celebrating, and the only thing on your mind is worrying about how you’ll talk to your team in the locker room.

They don’t want to be there, everyone is disappointed, and the last thing you want to do is pick apart the game to understand what happened and why you lost. However, your role as a coach is to motivate your team and lift morale — so how do you do it?

This blog post will provide actionable advice to help you come back from a bad loss, including tips on improving motivation and others to improve performance in certain areas of your game. 

Key takeaways:

• Focus on the positives 
• Set new short-term goals
• Lead by example

Focus on what the team did well

After a loss, it’s easy to focus on what went bad — maybe the team wasn’t working with each other, perhaps your possession was poor, or possibly the other team just played better than you. 

But instead of focusing on the bad, do your best to focus on the good. There are always positives that can be found, even in the worst of defeats. This is not something you need to do by yourself, either.

Make a team activity of it. After a loss, ask each player one thing they think went well, either as a team or an individual performance — it doesn’t have to be something they did well, it can also be a teammate.  

If you have eleven players, that’s eleven positives to motivate, inspire, and get you back on the pitch for your next game!

Analyze the performance and learn from the mistakes

While focusing on what went well, even after a loss, can be extremely beneficial, you still need to analyze overall performance and put together a strategy to learn from any mistakes.

For example, while your short passing may have been great — a positive to note down — perhaps your long passing could have been better. Make a list of things that didn’t go so well, and focus on adding these elements to practice sessions before your next game.

For the sake of example, let’s say you play football — your list of things to improve may look like this:

• Short passing
• Spatial awareness
• Crossing from a corner
• Applying pressure 

Focus on improving the weaker areas of the team within training, helping to improve performance for your next game. It’s a simple task, but a much-needed one.

Set new goals and get your team focused 

Once you have your two lists: one of the things the team did well, and another of areas that can be improved, it’s time to set new goals. And while you may already have long-term goals, short-term goals, i.e., for the next game(s), can help increase motivation and focus.

For example, you may set a goal for the team to control majority possession in their next game. If you know this is a weak area, then focusing on this will challenge your team to improve under pressure.

Even when things are going bad, and you can’t seem to catch a break, you can stack these smaller wins — you held majority possession, you improved your short passing, your crossing from a corner got better, and so on…

Over the next few games and weeks, you can turn weak areas of your game into not necessarily strengths, but stronger aspects of your game.

Don’t blame one player

At the end of the day, a team sport is exactly that: a team sport. 

You celebrate the victories together just as much as you celebrate the defeats.

As a coach, it’s all too easy to blame one player. But usually, this is not only not true, but if you were to blame one player, you’d knock their confidence and motivation. 

Instead, talk to all players…

Ask them what they think went well (and what didn’t go so well), and then you provide feedback on the same points. 

Try to give constructive feedback, such as: “Your short passing was great, but if we improve your long passing, we’ll control the field even better.” 

When giving feedback, do not blame one player. Instead, provide positive and constructive feedback to all athletes. Tell them what they can work on and what, if they continue to do, will result in great performances.

Foster a supportive team environment

Remind your team that you are not alone when facing setbacks — you win and lose together. You work on weaknesses together, and soon, you will win together.

Encourage open and honest communication. Allow players to express their concerns, frustrations, and ideas. Create bonding activities and experiences that allow players to get to know each other better, helping to grow as a team.

Inspire and lead by example

And finally, it’s important to lead by example. If you expect your players to stay late after training, you also stay late. If you want them to work on their weaknesses, you help them work on those areas.

If you expect (and ask) your players to be on time for training, you better be on time.

It’s easy to do, but you must stick with it. Plus, leading by example often helps foster a supportive team environment.

Leadership is a matter of having people look at you and gain confidence…If you’re in control, they’re in control.

Tom Landy, professional American football player and coach

To summarize 

A bad loss can kill the vibe of any team, bringing you down from the highest of highs to the lowest of lows. 

You can feel it in the locker room, on the pitch, and in your next training session. But the sooner you can put the loss behind you, the better. You — and your team — must focus on moving forwards.

Set new goals, evaluate what went well (and what could be improved), and create a game plan to help your team come back stronger than ever.