Former FA regional coach mentor, Ceri Bowley, looks at how coaches can ensure that players, and not adults, are the centre of the matchday experience.

Matchday is a significant learning opportunity for players and should be treated as such

As a coach, you need to focus on helping each player to maximise this opportunity and embrace the matchday experience. A good starting point is to be clear about what players will try to learn on matchday. Too often, coaches try and fix everything, which can lead to a lack of focus and confusion for players.

When planning for matchday, you need to consider:

What is success?

What success means, and looks like, generally differs from player to player. To enhance your understanding of the individual and their motivation, you should develop an appreciation of each player's perspective. Remember that a coach's role is to help their team. Both training and matchday are about the players – not you. Consequently, when it comes to determining 'success', this shouldn't be down to you (alone) or dependent on the outcome of the match.

Consistency with training objectives and focus

By continuing your training themes into matchday, you allow players to demonstrate and extend their learning. It can also help you to be specific in your observation and feedback – meaning that the messages you communicate to players have purpose and support learning.

Top tips for selecting a team

1. Provide equal opportunity to learn

As a coach, you have a duty of care to ensure you give each player equal opportunity to learn. It's important to make sure that individuals have the same amount of time on the field and are provided with personal, relevant challenges.

2. Select teams on rotation

Give all players the chance to start matches and, if they don't start one week, make sure they start the following week.

3. Encourage and provide opportunities for all players to experience different positions

Rarely will a young player play in one position throughout their footballing experience. Exposing your players to different positions presents them with a variety of pictures of the game. This helps them to learn many roles and responsibilities, and enables them to make the link between different positions.

4. But don't rotate positions too frequently

Be careful not to rotate positions too frequently as this can hinder motivation, confidence and learning – particularly as players get older. Consider the player who finally gets an opportunity to play as the striker but doesn't see much of the ball because the opposition are stronger and dominate the game.

Three games in any given position presents opportunities for a player to familiarise themselves with the role. It also allows them to face different opponents and challenges – which helps learning to take place.

5. Player ownership

Allow the players to pick the team. Young people select teams, players and formations on computer games such as Football Manager and FIFA – and are adept at doing so. Allowing them to choose the matchday team engages players in peer learning, which is a powerful form of cooperative learning.

To maximise the learning opportunity, affinity groups of 4-6 players are recommended. This encourages all players to share their views and reduces the dominance of individual players.

Team and individual challenges

Magic three

It's crucial not to overload players with information that they won't remember: three simple bits of information is enough.

One way of structuring challenges is to set one for the team, one for each unit (defence/midfield/attack), and one for each individual. This format encourages teamwork whilst allowing for individual achievement.

Challenges can be set by the coach, players, or using player challenge cards.

Challenges set by the coach allow alignment with the training objectives and ensure challenges are pitched appropriately. Coaches should reflect on recent training sessions and ask: "what were they good at? Do they need more help with something – or time to practice?"

The challenges should emerge from your answers. Importantly, you should alternate the challenges to ensure the player has a chance to showcase what they are good at as well as what they need more practice on.

Allowing players to set their own challenges can lead to increased buy-in. However, be sure to ask why they've set the challenge and what success will look like. When players can articulate the meaning of the challenge, it shows an understanding of the game and an awareness of where they're at in their learning.

Language

The language used when setting individual challenges should focus on things under the player's control. When attempting a challenge, many variables determine success. Challenges such as "score three goals" or "make five tackles" are not within a player's control and should be avoided.