Not the England manager or who to take to the Euros, this.

England are finally moving out of the Dark Ages and you lot may start to see the benefits in your lifetime and us ABEs may be more fearful. Indeed, you may even see England win a major trophy in your lifetime.

Of course, like the "Respect" campaign, a lot of coaches and clubs may just pay it lip service so the EFA is going to have to make sure it is being carried out. However, within 5 years, if these are completely implemented or even taken further, I reckon you will see some real difference in 15 years time.

It's well worth downloading the accompanying Powerpoint

It all sounds quite encouraging, my experience of kids football (as a parent, not player or coach) includes:

- teams poaching players off each other at the age of seven
- kids being humiliated in public by coaches for making a mistake when the team is several goals up
- a large number of pitches being placed on the side of a hill, or on a bit of land prone to flooding, or covered in tractor tracks (maybe the latter is a local thing)
- ruthless competitiveness by coaches such that certain players can't get more than a token few minutes at the end even if the team is up by double figures
- club committee telling the coach of an under 8s team that they'll cut funding for the team if results don't improve
- parents telling their kids to 'snap' other kids
- coaches telling kids 'I'd rather you kicked the ball too hard than not hard enough'

I think it varies by local league but in ours, 11 year old kids play 11 a side on full size pitches, with full size goals, and non rolling subs, all of which is mental.

Thanks for saving this from a nil thread, WFD. Indeed, all those elements that you mention I have seen apart from the funding cutting which would have seen my team fold as I don't pay any attention to results

If you have a spare hour or so, you may be interested in this thread. It is quite long and convoluted but, to be fair, everyone on there, however much I may disagree with them, is reflecting on their coaching, at least, which is something that too few coaches do

They're just called the FA. No E in front of it.

In amongst all the stuff about getting lower division kids on the cheap, and scrapping the 90 minute travelling distance rule, there's a lot of good, encouraging signs in the Premier League's Elite Player Performance Plan concerning pitch and team sizes.

Like the EPL and the ERFU, we have covered the EFA thing before many times.

Unfortunately the 'getting lower division kids on the cheap, and scrapping the 90 minute travelling distance rule' are far more destructive to youth football than anything positive in the EPPP

And did it come out that you were wrong? Because you obviously are.
it's also "The Open" by the way.

Walt Flanagans Dog wrote:


Wow. Personally I see no value in playing competitive matches until kids turn 12 or 13. The first 5 or so years of youth football should be devoted to making sure the kids have fun and learn the fundamental skills. Its just utterly bizarre to me that adults place so much stock in 7 year olds winning. Seriously, what kind of sad fuck is that invested to where they miss the point entirely of why kids play sport in the first place: to make friends, enjoy themselves, get out the house and get a bit of exercise. I mean only giving the weaker players a miniscule amount of playing time, really?

I've covered it before but you would have thought that I was some sort of anarchist revolutionary the manner in which it was received by some parents (now, thankfully moved on) that giving kids equal game time would improve the whole team. I don't know what they would think now I actually use the Luther Blissett three-sided game in practice

Of course, most of the boys moved to a team that have just won the whole league and the cup so, of course, I have been proved wrong

Actually, I was astonished at how bad junior rugby is. It's almost as bad as football. If you showed some aliens a game of youth rugby, they would wonder why a group of bigger humans were standing around a pile of smaller humans barking at them

The question is why has it taken so long to make this decision, when Spain and Germany have had this transition for the best part of a decade.

But yeah, the problem doesn't lie in the existence of competitive football at young ages. It lies with the fact that coaches and, more commonly, parents put so much stock into the result that decision making, creativity and all round ability isn't going to develop.

Two words that damage a child's footballing development? Not "snap him", or "hurt him"....."big kick!" - I've yet to be at a match younger than U11s where it's not said at least 10 times, by parents on the sideline.

For me, it's not the the concept of competitive youth footbal that needs overhaul. It's the attitude of the people involved in it that does.

Exactly, it's simple, nick the ideas of the successful nations. The FAW even were a bit ahead of the EFA. It's also pretty cheap especially later on when you are home-producing players with better technique.

I sort of agree and disagree with your points regarding competitive football. We play competitive football even though I suggested to the other managers in the age groups that we ask the league if we postpone competitive football. It doesn't bother us though as I ignore any results anyway and the lads and parents tend to follow suit .

If all coaches and parents treated it the same, you could have competitive football easily but they don't so getting rid of competition is seen as the best option unfortunately. It is easier and quicker than changing attitudes.

The two phrases that I hate are "Hoof it" and "Get Rid" and still hear those too much.

Bored of Education wrote:


English rugby coaching is awful. To be honest, it would have to be, as England's lack of dominance in rugby is much more appalling than its lack of competitiveness in football given its huge monetary and numbers advantages.

I meant the attitude of the parents really but, from my very inexpert view, I can see a lot of things wrong with English rugby that are shared with football - overly competitive parents; playing on big pitches and with large teams too quickly; not enough playing time for all players regardless of ability; not rotating players in positions etc.

A team from Toulouse came over to play my son's team and, while they were beaten by my son's team being twice the size of them and having one or two 'star' players, the technique of the French team was outstanding and they will be beating the English teams when they are older. Apparently, in France, they are pretty much thrown a ball and just told to get on with it until they are 13. No scrums, no convoluted drills nothing.

Meh, I wouldn't sing France's praises too much. They're the second biggest underachievers in rugby after the English.

I was taught rugby by Kiwis and their attention to technique and basic skills is far above anything I've ever learned from an English coach. I feel reasonably confident that if you took a big guy with nothing but physicality and a little guy with skills, the big guy would get picked by 9 out of 10 English coaches. And the other coach would be some guy from the West Country who knows Welsh people, which would make him distrusted by the other coaches.

It's not difficult to see how that feeds down the levels. England in both sports prizes physicality over technique.

Bored of Education wrote:


But completely fruitless, as many clubs end up with parents asking what the poiunt is of uncompetitive games, and it's not teaching their children to have a will to win. There will still be cases of the individual coach/team/club keeping league tables.

Which is fundamental horseshit, as we know. Children will still be keeping score in their own heads and talking about the score. It's up to the coaches and parents to ensure that the result is not the first thing on their minds, and the development of the player is. Ask your match attending parents to keep a mental note of the first question out of wives/husbands/parents/siblings the moment their son walks through the door. Bet it's usually "how did you get on? What was the score?" rather than "how did you do? Did you play well?"

It's simple - adults involved in youth football should get a fucking grip and realise that it's their behaviour that damages it.

Oh, I know what you mean and I expect when they get to 16, they will revert to type but, bloody hell, you should see these kids. I was trying to get across to the coaches that, despite the win, they should try and take something from the French team's technique and, to be fair, he agreed but you still got the feeling that they would be playing the best players in every single game at the tournament tomorrow while a couple of others get 5 minutes. I say this as someone who whose son gets a load of playing time.

Kettle, I agree with you completely but, to be fair, it is difficult for any FA to change the intrinsic attitudes of parents. Coaches end up having to do it and there are very few of us that are stubborn and curmudgeonly enough to do it, even if we want to.

The bold: It's not as if you will coach competitiveness out of kids though. Humans are innately competitive, we want to be the best. Put 4 people at the dining room table playing a game of Yahtzee with nothing at stake and all 4 will still be trying their level best to win. What you are doing is putting the result into it's proper perspective, at under 8 level no-one will be able convince me that the outcome of a match is or rather should be all important.



Exactly. The priority should be skill development > daylight > result. I've never coached kids football but I would think small sided games on small pitches (without parents and coaches over emphasizing the importance of the result) should be the order of the day until kids hit their teenage years.

Someone once came up to me and said "you have to teach the boys to be competitive." I did mention that if boys aren't competitive by the time they are 8, as they then were, then I wasn't going to be able to instil it in them. Also, even if they weren't competitive, that shouldn't mean that they can't play football.

Indeed, one of the things that people really don't get is that, even if a player is absolutely shit, they should still have an opportunity to play football.