Quality over quantity when it comes to touches of the ball

What do we mean by effective touches?

The child who tries to dribble past a defender 20 times learns more than the child who dribbles around cones 100 times

The child who tries to pass to a teammate with a defender in the way learns more than the child who hits a ball against a wall 100 times

The child who shoots at goal against a keeper 20 times learns more than the child who shoots against no goal keeper 100 times

There’s a myth that the more touches a player has the better they get.

Not technically true.

The more effective touches they have the better they get because here they get better AT football and not just WITH a football (see the difference?).

Dribbling around cones doesn’t make a child better at football…it makes them better at dribbling around cones.

Is there a time for things like ball & wall, keepy-ups, dribbling around cones etc?

Sure, it’s much better than being sat inside on a screen and it’s great for kids to get out and be active.

And you could argue getting out and practising corners would have it’s advantages (step forward Mr Beckham!).

But it shouldn’t come at the expense of a good quality opposed training session – this is what we want to emphasise.

This is why most of our activities are opposed and games-based, even in our youngest/beginner classes.

The sooner children have chance to play in those sorts of activities the better as they learn so much more, which helps their decision-making.

Progress can ‘look’ slower but the football brain is developing.

Parents can be deceived by the Insta kids doing tricks and dribbling around cones really fast.

Great for the ‘gram’ but not that great for getting better at football IF it is at the expense of group training or opposed activities in a group session.

It’d be so easy for us to do things like this because it LOOKS like a child is getting better.

But we’d be doing them (and the parents) a disservice by allocating our training time to unopposed ‘skills’ work.

Just a little thing to think about as we’re definitely starting to see more parents asking us about things like this.

We’ll leave you with a quote from the legend, Johan Cruyff who sums it up nicely:

Technique is not being able to juggle a ball 1000 times. Anyone can do that by practicing. Then you can work in the circus.