I started out as a coach to coach adults in an open age game - as a player, I loved the cut and thrust of competition, striving for 2 points (well, it was 2 points when I started!) ….and then 3 and I saw coaching as a way of giving something back.
I started with a men’s reserve team, then took on an under 18 team before going back to open age football with reserves and then a county league first team.
The open age, especially, was about setting up a team to maximise its strengths, minimise its weaknesses and provide additional knowledge of tactics and strategy, set pieces in terms of free kicks, corners and throws-in and providing some technical input to improving individual and team skills.
I have to say, it was great fun - at U18 and reserve levels, especially, it was about providing some structure and helping to teach players how to compete and win and at first team level, it was, without doubt, almost all about the win.
But owing to circumstances, I moved towards younger age groups - centres of excellence for girls and boys, community / recreational teams at a variety of ages.
CHILDREN’S / YOUTH FOOTBALL
There are different nuances and responsibilities to this type of coaching. Primarily, it is about enjoyment.
(I’m not THAT keen on the word “Fun” used as often as it is - you can have “fun” on a slide or at the beach, but if you want to learn football, you have to learn the techniques and skills of the game. So, I set my practices up to be enjoyable, rather than necessarily “fun” though of course there is some of that in there too!)
It’s also about giving players an environment to learn physical skills, (running, jumping, twisting etc) that were perhaps more easily and autonomously obtained in a bygone era, as well as the skills of the game and the game itself. It is also about giving them the opportunity to learn life skills of respect, teamwork, commitment, ethics, diversity, consideration and so on. That environment needs to be enjoyable.
Kids play football for a variety of reasons - when asked, children will tell you it is to play with their friends, to keep fit, to learn new skills and to have fun (D’Oh! there y’go!). Rarely do young children tell you it is to win leagues or trophies.
For boys football, the general tendency is for players aged 10/11 (U11 - Year 6 at primary school) to play 11 a-side on big pitches with big goals*.
At U11, they now enter a league, where games are played for points and a league table is kept and published.
And this is where you start to hear the verbal expression of the phrases of the title of this post.
Well, of course the games are competitive - my experience is that players (nearly) always all play to win, that’s the point of the game after all - they did at U10 in mini-soccer and there will be no change now they are U11.
But as for ‘Proper football’, well, it depends on your interpretation. Of course, they were playing proper football in mini-soccer - it’s just that there are fewer players on a smaller pitch, with smaller goals. And there are specific reasons why we do that.
It’s to give the players more touches on the ball, to be on an around the ball more often; to be able to make more tackles, shots and passes, blocks and interceptions, so that they can learn the game and the skills and techniques which are needed to be able to play it well, in terms relative to a child. It also gives players easier decisions to make because there are limited numbers of players.
But to return to ‘proper’ football - it is only proper inasmuch as there are similar dimensions to the pitches and goals (sometimes, infuriatingly to my mind, the SAME dimensions) and the number of players, plus an appointed official, as the adult game.
So, it is representative of the adult game but, at the risk of stating the obvious, it is NOT the adult game.
It isn’t the adult game because, well, they aren’t adults; they’re children playing the game. They are still learning the game and now they have to learn a whole bunch more decisions, consider a different set of problems, caused by extra players, the size of the playing area and the imposition of the full Laws of the Game.
But it is the representation, or possibly the imitation, of the adult game that can create problems.
Attendant adults - parents, coaches, managers etc, can, if they are not very careful, translate the feelings, perceptions and actions they have for their favourite or local professional team and project them into the children’s environment.
I have seen and been told of sad stories of parents and coaches screaming and shouting at children of either or both teams at the sight of mistakes, fouls, missed shots and so on, as though they were watching / managing a professional league team.
Young referees have decisions questioned by spectators which eventually (sooner rather than later it is sad to report) rubs off on the young players.
It teaches indiscipline, attempts to influence decisions they are unable to control, a loss of concentration, control. Constant intimidation / abuse etc forces officials from the game, some so young they have hardly started.
And do you know why referees referee? Because they LOVE the game every bit as much as a player, a fan or a coach - I know…I’m also a qualified ref !
And how often are professionals criticised in the media for not respecting the officials and opponents? Where does it start….?
This type of behaviour does nothing for the development of young players. In fact in can actively inhibit young players’ development as they become afraid to take a shot or try a dribble. Consequently they can become ‘safe’, but unimaginative, players who play to a perceived style that reduces the chance of a loss.
DEVELOPMENT IS A CONTINUUM
Another nuance related to player development is that of the “better” or “weaker” player.
Development is a continuum - it starts at birth and (as far as I’m aware) ends at the obvious point ! Players develop at different rates, at different times and in different ways.
Players who develop ‘early’ physically and technically, may develop later socially and psychologically and other players may develop in a different combination of those development criteria.
So, players who develop early can be perceived as being “better” than those who develop later.
But within an age group, players may be as much as eleven months younger or older than team-mates- which, at age 11 is more than 8% of your total life span.
Even if players did develop at the same rate, (which they don’t) if they start with an 8% deficit, that will have a noticeable effect on their technical, tactical and psychological / decision making ability in the game itself. There are exceptions of course, but it is the exception that usually proves the rule.
The problem of seeing players as ‘weaker’ is that the coach / manager may choose, or come under pressure, to leave those weaker players on the sideline or bench for longer, for fear that to include them would weaken the team, possibly lead to goals being conceded or even lose the game.
Now, the problem with leaving the less well developed players out of the team for longer means that their individual development will be truncated.
Practice is one thing, but if practice AND the game are tools for player development, the player will miss out on, possibly, up to half of their development time if they are not played in games.
BIRTH BIAS
Consequently and especially if they have a late birth date in the academic year (say, August), they will fall further behind the older players who, having more playing time, will have their development effectively accelerated over the less well developed players.
If those players fall further behind, they get left out of the team more and it becomes a self fulfilling prophesy.
There is an interesting book by Malcolm Gladwell called “Outliers” which examines the phenomena of different biological ages and is often referred to as “Birth Bias”.
I personally know a coach who will happily tell you that the ‘best’ players he had at age 8, were not still the ‘best’ players by the time they got to 18.
OUT OF THEIR DEPTH
Of course there will be players who may be further behind in their development for a variety of reasons (they may not have played the game for as many years as their team-mates, for example) and there may be some, whom if played in a game against “better” players (they are only further ahead in their development, remember!) may have their confidence so undermined as to make it difficult for them to retain their self esteem.
So, I am not advocating that players be played in games regardless - I would never knowingly cast a player adrift on a sea of confusion - but we should be very wary of leaving young players out of teams for anything other than the interest of the players’ development.
THE CHILDREN’S GAME
So, if you are a parent or a coach of young players who is concerned with a win / loss ratio, please ask yourself why YOU are concerned (and I think CONCERNED is the appropriate word) with the win or loss. So long as your child or your player has tried their hardest, has become a better player / decision maker by the end of the half / game / month / season isn’t that what it is all about?
Or do you consider how YOU look as a coach or even as a parent if ‘your’ team loses a game?
No-one wants to get hammered every week, for sure (rating of leagues / teams to allow appropriate levels of competition is a whole different subject on its own!), but that isn’t what I’m on about here. I’m asking coaches and parents not to get hung up on the score - to maintain a healthy concern for the player’s development first and foremost.
I think it was Ted Bates, ex-Southampton manager (and player, scout, coach, president, chief executive) who said:
“We teach them to win before they can play.”
LATE DEVELOPING SPORT
Football is a late developing sport - along with rugby, hockey and American football to name a few others. (early developing sports are those such as gymnastics and swimming).
How many teams at any level have young players who consistently hold their position in a ‘first team’ at open age? Not many - and again, the exceptions tend to prove the rule.
Football players are generally regarded as being at their peak around 27 / 28 (maybe a little earlier for females).
So if you have a player, or a child, who is “weaker” at age 11 than some of their team-mates; please don’t fret - they still have another 1.5 times their current life span to reach their potential.
And if we all help to provide the environment in which they can flourish, they may still love the game and may still be playing when they ARE 27 or 28.
"Young kids should be taught how to play in every area of the pitch, not taught to play a specific role. They don't need to be taught a role because it is innate. Every player has a natural disposition towards one role or another but first they have to learn to play everywhere." Marcello Lippi
* FA Rules allow 9-aside football up to age 14 which, to my way of thinking would be preferable so players could go from 7 - 9 - 11 a side football with a gradual progression in terms of pitch size and, more importantly, the decision making and technical skills needed to play in a full sized game. Unfortunately, leagues are run by adults for whom it is easier to organise football as it always has been, rather than having to be creative in the provision of different facilities.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT - Thanks to Give Us Back Our Game (GUBOG) for permission to use their images in this post.
