DOES LTPD WORK AT THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PHASE IN GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL?
Long Term Player Development (LTPD)
LTPD is a concept first developed, I believe, by Istvan Balyi, who is a sport consultant and expert in Canadian Sport for Life and long-term athlete development.
His concept was based on what he called “Long Term Athlete Development” and was developed in conjunction with Richard Way and Colin Higgs.
The principle looks at 7 stages of a person’s development in sport (any sport) from an Active Start (play) at the youngest ages, through to fundamentals of movement, training to train, training to compete, training to win and eventually, staying active for life.
Like many other organisations across the globe, The Football Association adopted this concept, calling it Long Term PLAYER Development to signify the specificity of the term as it relates to football.
However, the basic premise of a gradual introduction to sport/games in general, not exclusively football at the young ages, continued in line with Balyi’s thinking.
The approach mirrored LTAD through development of movement skills or ‘physical dexterity’ and then a gradual progression through the other stages of learning to train, training to train etc in accordance with the player’s / participant’s needs and aspirations.
Age Phase Priorities
Having integrated the LTPD principle and approach across the coach education courses for a number of years, The FA introduced England DNA in 2014 which included “Age Phase Priorities” breaking the development of players down across three broad age ranges:
The Foundation Phase 5 – 11 years
Youth Development Phase 12 – 17 years
Professional Development Phase 17 – 21+ years (for the sake of this article being related to grassroots football, I tend to refer to this as the ‘Senior’ Development Phase)
The aim of breaking this down into age groups was to help coaches determine the level of challenge and readiness of participants and to be able to create and facilitate age relevant / appropriate practices.
Essentially the outline of LTAD / LTPD put into fewer, readily recognisable categories and with the emphasis on football.
Young Player Development
It is true to say that individuals progress and develop at different ages, stages and speeds, with ‘early developers’ and ‘late developers’ (I was one of the late developers) and those that progress more in closer alignment with their peers. This is true in school, as much as it is in sport.
Relative Age Effect
There is a known phenomenon called the ‘Relative Age Effect’ or ‘Birth Bias’ which shows that people born at the young/late end of an artificial selection period (school term, sports season) can SOMETIMES be behind the development curve as a result of when they were born and be ‘late’ in terms of physical, cognitive, social or technical development.
I need to point out at this stage that this is not an absolute – it is a tendency and there are always exceptions to the rule. However, studies have shown that children born early in the selection period can have certain advantages over their peers.
For example, if you are aged ten and were born in, say August, at the end of the selection period, but a friend in your peer group was born in the previous September, at the start of the period and is eleven months older, you are over 9% younger, ‘missing’ that amount of your life’s development in comparison with your friend.
I should also mention that this phenomenon is consistent across the world and across sports no matter when you start the selection period.
Equal Opportunity
So, using the links between long term player development, how and when young people develop and the relative age effect, The FA recommended a number of changes to youth football including formats of the game (5 – 7 – 9 – 11 a side football), different goal sizes, adapted game rules, equal game playing time and especially plenty of ball touches and game-like practices ( eg 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 2v1, 3v2 etc) rather than ‘line drills’ with predetermined movements or over complicated patterns which often break down and don’t transfer well to “the game” anyway.
One of the keys being the equal playing time because if players don’t play, or don’t play so much as others, they won’t get better. If ‘training’ is practice, games are practice too.
Foundation Phase 5 – 11s Primary School Years
Now at this age group, I think, generally, the wider football community (both parents and coaches) recognises and sees the value of this principle. Whilst there are players at the youngest ages who may be nervous, shy and more inclined to be less involved in games at the outset, give them six months and you may find they accelerate past their peers in terms of skills, enthusiasm and game understanding. The joy of coaching players in these age groups is seeing their development and understanding grow – but sometimes at different ages, stages and speeds, as mentioned above.
Grassroots vs Academy (EPPP) Football
In grassroots football you will generally see a wide variety of skill, game understanding and application levels, even within the same age group teams.
Some participants are obsessed by the game, practicing at home or in the park, watching many games, live or on TV, or watching clips of their favourite players on You Tube where they can see and then try to copy the skills they have seen.
Other participants though are what could be described as more ‘social’ players. They enjoy the environment and the exercise, regularly attend team practice but are perhaps more driven by wanting to be with their friends and having ‘a game’ at practice than necessarily being driven to practice on their own, or deliberately trying to improve their skills at practice or even, sometimes, watching the game, either live or on TV.
Now, in Academy football, (and I am talking here about professional clubs’ Academies not the plethora of commercial, or indeed charitable, independent soccer schools) the skill and application levels are usually much closer within a fairly narrow band.
Of course, there are still differences between the most and currently, least developed players – Relative Age Effect, level of experience etc are all factors in why some players are ahead in their development, but they are still pretty close together, when comparing them with a grassroots team squad. Another consideration here is that the players are actively seeking to get better and, possibly, striving to become a professional - not all perhaps, but the majority, I would suggest.
Of course, some of that is because professional clubs Academies ‘scout’ or actively recruit ‘talented’ players with a view to supporting their development towards, hopefully, a professional career when they mature. Most don’t achieve that level – there are studies that show that much less than 1% of the intake ‘make it’.
For grassroots, community-based clubs and teams though, the playing squad is generally made up from players within the community who turn up at the club.
I am aware that some grassroots clubs actively recruit more developed/’advanced’ players, but that might be a blog post for another day !
Youth Development Phase 12 – 16s Secondary School Years
Now at the Youth Development Phase, providing equal playing time is still a sound approach, on the premise that playing in matches is as much of a participant’s development and learning as practice or “training”.
However, there are now more factors at play – that from U12 age group games become ‘competitive’. Now, all games are competitive but at this age, teams are entered into leagues with rankings based on results, not merely based on geographical location which is how most of the development games at U7s-U11s are scheduled.
In addition, as players go to secondary school, it is common that they develop new friendship groups some of whom will be footballers playing in their local teams as well.
If you happen to have a mixed ability squad with relatively few better developed players (for whatever reason), it is not unusual, whilst trying to help develop all players in the group, that the team lose more games than they win.
It’s not always the case, of course, but certainly we can all recognise that that does happen. In some cases, there will be heavy defeats which can be very demoralising. Not in all cases though – you can lose a majority of games but if they are competitive, close games, it may not be such an issue – and the fun is in the challenge and being competitive as well as enjoying a win.
If your team loses or wins heavily most weeks, I suggest there is less enjoyment to be had.
Now, in theory, such a group are all friends, have often all come from the same community, been at the club, sometimes since they were 5 or 6 and you would think would stick together. It is also definitely the case that young players get over a defeat pretty quickly, generally.
However, for some of the players who are more obsessed with the game and are actively seeking to become better footballers, for whatever reason or at whatever aspirational level, constant losses can be a factor in demotivation.
For some of those players, new friendship groups including people who play at other more ‘successful’ clubs will entice their new friends to come and play with them at their team.
If that does happen, it can present a problem for the players remaining at the original team.
I have a friend who has experienced this over a number of years where his club has lost whole teams because of the exodus of some (currently) better developed players to other more competitive (or winning) teams.
The consequence of this is that the remaining players, form a less competitive team, often losing more games than before, when more players drop out as losing often, is no fun.
A further consequence is that they have now lost so many players over a couple of seasons that they have had to pull the age group out of the league as they are now unable to field a team because of a lack of numbers.
Participant Drop Out
I believe it is still true that the majority of young players drop out of football (in this case) between 13/14 and 16/17.
There are a variety of reasons why players drop out – school/college studies, part time work, other interests and pastimes, football has become less important, they have reached the end of their interest or in the case of losing often, less fun.
There are of course other reasons; pressure from oppressive coaches or too intense parents but I am mainly focussed here on the more organic reasons for drop out.
LTPD
So this is where my question originates:
Does LTPD work at the Youth Development Phase in grassroots football?
We try to integrate and develop ALL players at both practice and games including equal playing time, as far as possible.
But if players drop out between, say, 14-16 anyway and we lose (currently) ‘better developed’ players to other clubs, causing further and sometimes earlier drop out for the remaining players, how can we rely on the long term to develop players into adulthood and to keep them playing?
Additionally, do 13 / 14 / 15 year olds understand the concept of Long Term Player Development? Are they even planning to stay and play the game into adulthood?
LTPD/LTAD is, I believe, mainly aimed at the coach and club – to encourage them to develop all players, to not just focus on and perhaps play the currently better developed player to the exclusion or at least the detriment of those ‘striving to catch up’.
Are those more ‘social’ players mentioned above genuinely striving to catch up… or is football just part of who they are, or just something they do for fun rather than something they want to pursue for as long and as to high a level as they can?
Certainly in the Academy system, LTPD is absolutely a relevant and appropriate concept to apply. There is an end goal for coaches, club and (most of) the players in attempting to achieve high skill levels and professional status, either at the club at which they are being developed or perhaps, eventually at another professional club.
For the grassroots player though, are grassroots coaches (I am one) guilty of inappropriate expectations of the players we serve - that they will all develop, they will all stay in the game, that, actually, they even want to?
Streaming Players
One way to allow players to find their relative level, to keep them playing and achieve their potential is to employ a system of “streaming”.
The concept is familiar from school days and the idea that groups of individuals can be appropriately developed and challenged within a relative peer group based on current levels of ability (whether that be in maths or football).
The challenge now is to determine when streaming should begin, what does streaming look like and how it is practically implemented.
A club could decide to split the group with the currently more competent and the less competent in two team groups playing in different divisions relative to their current ability level.
That depends on whether or not you have enough players to form two teams and enough volunteer coaches to run another team.
You could decide to play the (currently) less well developed players in selected games where the level of the opposition is likely to enable them to make a competitive contribution to the game. But, as stated above, if they don’t play in games as well as at practice, they are missing out on part of their development.
Additionally, you may have to consider charging less for subscriptions if you are deciding that some players will play fewer games. If a child gets a lesser service, surely the parents/carers should have to pay a reduced fee.
Another way is to, again, charge a reduced subscription and then hand select friendly games, say, once a month, specifically for the less well developed group so they can play competitive games against teams matching their current development level. I am aware of teams that do this. They actually form a team and register with the County FA but don’t join a league and hand pick games against similar level teams. The savings on league affiliation, referees etc help facilitate reduced subscriptions.
TUAP – Turn Up And Play
The other question is: Do you HAVE to play in a league? The short answer is No ! There is no obligation to play in a league if you consider that not to be appropriate for the development level of a particular group of the players at your club.
Not too long ago a concept and project called ‘Give Us Back Our Game’ (GUBOG) and run by Paul Cooper (‘Martin Mucklowe' from the BBC comedy - This Country) advocated Turn Up And Play sessions for minimal costs. No expensive kit (save the basics of boots, shin pads and whatever kit the players had), no ‘coaching’ as such, no substitutes, no leagues. Just a series of small sided games, players put into small teams (3v3 / 4v4 / 3v4 etc) and encouraged to play a variety of games (4 goal game, end zone game, traditional game, switching play game etc) on a rota over, say, an hour. Just play, effectively, but where the game design allowed players to figure out the problems set by that game.
That way, players could enjoy playing (they were encouraged to switch players around as they would in the playground if the sides were unbalanced) with it being less likely that there would be one sided games. Then, after 15 minutes, they would rotate to another game with the intrinsic learning of playing that game.
Retention
So, if your club/team is experiencing a retention challenge are some of these suggestions ways in which you could retain players allowing people to find their own level and perhaps stepping (back) into competitive football as they develop rather than being discouraged from playing via early mismatched games?
Late developers or those who are unable to commit to practice and games regularly, especially via the GUBOG model, can be retained as club members.
Future View
Keeping young players playing the game in a fun yet competitive, even if not in ‘a league’, environment may also spark other interests; refereeing, coaching and, as they get older, planning, organising.
The people who may not become players for adult teams may easily become the club’s future volunteers, committee members or, if running their own businesses as adults, become club advocates and sponsors. Of course, if your club provided a great experience, you may well find that in future years they will bring their own children to your club and so the cycle continues.
Discussion
So we can perhaps recognise that there are multiple ways in which to keep young people involved in your club, playing sport (football) with all the social, physical and mental health benefits that brings even if not in a formal “League” environment.
However, I believe that the opening question remains:
DOES LTPD WORK AT THE YOUTH DEVELOPMENT PHASE IN GRASSROOTS FOOTBALL?
Please feel free to comment below.
