The FA’s Pete Sturgess adds to his first blog series, which is designed to help people who are taking their first steps as a coach with players aged 5-11. Here he asks coaches to support the key message of staying on the ball.

The last blog post emphasised the value of small-sided formats and how they should be the “staple diet” for all our young players. These formats can also help the coach develop their observation skills leading to much greater accuracy and confidence when noticing the small technical details in a game.

This blog asks coaches to support the key message of staying on the ball when coaching young players and uses two short video clips to illustrate the benefits of doing this.

We all want our youngest players to be fearless in possession and creative in their play, but this is a challenging thing to achieve, particularly in the short time many grassroots coaches have with their players, but we have to start somewhere.

The priority for development at this age must be the individual. We can equip each player with a range of skills and abilities in all corners of development, and we must not let them down.

Including a wide range of experiences playing in small number games and encouraging greater freedom in their decision-making may lead to improvements in creativity and confidence on the ball.

Only by immersing the players in this kind of environment will they be able to improve mastery over the ball, their body and ultimately the decisions that they make. It’s not a time for team tactics, set positions and formations – these are important, but they must come later.

In the video clips below, I’ve chosen two examples of where this approach has been prioritised.

Each player looks comfortable on the ball. This leads to growing confidence in the touch and feel they have for the ball. This then allows more time for scanning and an appreciation of the situation each player finds themselves in.

This is what happens when you prioritise individual technique. If you want to create more space in the brain for decision-making, then individual technical actions need to become automatic.

If a player no longer has to look down to focus upon the ball and where it is in relation to their feet, then they can look up. This opens up endless possibilities for seeing spaces, teammates and the positioning of opponents.

This kind of information has got to improve the decisions being made.

In the clips, each player can stay on the ball for longer. Interestingly, this may lead to a greater awareness of when and where to share the ball - which has been put forward as one of the main reasons not to adopt the approach of encouraging players to stay on the ball for longer.

Instead of producing lots of greedy, selfish players, building a secure and unbreakable bond with the ball could provide the opposite; players who can look around for their next action and this is likely to involve teammates as well as increasing their own individual time on the ball. This now gives each player more options.

There will never be a quick fix and if coaches want to rush the process of developing young players, then they probably will, despite the growing evidence to slow down the rush to 11v11 and help each player master the ball and their movements.

I want to present a watertight case urging coaches to prioritise different things to those that have left our players lacking individual brilliance (on a global scale) settling instead for players who are “OK” technically, when, with just a few changes, they could’ve been so much better.

Enjoy the videos.

What do you think to Pete’s thoughts here? Have you been enjoying his blogs so far? Let us know in the comments below!