Hi Chris - I don't personally think a template is needed as much as maybe a slide on powerpoint to support the things that you want to reinforce as your philosophy. Ironically I think this can be overly philosophical .. where a simple clean perspective…
While a historic post, I'll give my two cents because we are in the exact same position right now re the 4-9 age group. We have two training nights, so we have the 'reception' kids on one night and the rest on the other. The younger kids are actually…
Hi Paul, thank you for taking the time to interact with the blog post and for the great question.
The first question we’d always pose would be, what age group are your players? Their current lack of accuracy or power suggests they are quite early on…
The other thing to remember - they're 11 and 12. There is a lot going on in their lives and a fair few of them live on xbox/phones etc. So for some it may be the only chance to ping balls at each other, try tricks etc? One of the things I found really…
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 encourages the use of small-sided games.
Hi coaches, in the first blog I asked you to think…
I've just started assisting with the coaching of my son's under-9 team. One particular child has been causing issues with his behaviour which I've tried to address via various methods, with little success.
However, I think the biggest issue is that…
Sarah Lowden, FA coach development officer (diversity and inclusion), suggests a creative way to introduce challenges so you can keep your players engaged in training.
We all love a challenge and trying something new - your players are just the same…
When we went to u11 we nearly folded due to lack of players, so we took on some kids who’d never had any coaching into an experienced team who had. It really showed, their technical ability, positional sense and decision making were all not quite right…
I've been able to run the same session for an U7 and U15 side. Small alterations to pitch size, target areas/goals. Personally for me an U7 session would look more at the technique of some of the core skills where as my U15's in the same session we would…
Hi Paul, thanks for sharing the challenges you are having with your 8 year olds. Rest assured, it is not an uncommon one simply because they are 8 year old children...... and want to PLAY, whatever that looks like. Naturally, this needs to be safe both…
