Should we stop giving fouls in the younger football age groups?
Should we stop giving fouls in the younger age groups?
Now, for the keyboard warriors who only read the top line…
We mean those accidental fouls you see a lot with younger players. NOT deliberate, violent or gamesmanship style fouls.
So, what are we on about
A quick story before we get into it:
When Cristiano Ronaldo first went to Man United he was clearly a good player. The issue was, he wouldn’t stay on his feet.
It infuriated his teammates (and coaches) because they knew he missed out on good opportunities by going to ground too easy.
What did they do to stop it?
One of the United coaches banned fouls. In other words, his teammates could foul him in training and nothing would be given.
Clearly, they didn’t see that as a free pass to two-foot him 
But it meant they could be tough without him conning the coaches into giving him fouls.
It worked and it meant CR7 toughened up and dealt better with what he would come up against in PL football.
This story got us thinking about fouls in the junior game.
Think about some of the issues in grassroots football:
Stop-start games (flow interrupted/ball time reduced)
Kids scared to tackle
Players falling over, diving or feigning injury like they see on TV
So, what if we did what United did with Ronaldo and banned fouls?
Stop-start games
Most children don’t foul on purpose – they simply can’t yet time a tackle.
Count up how many times a game is stopped because of these accidental fouls and think about how much more flow there would be to games.
For development purposes, letting play continue could be far better than punishing every little incident at the younger ages.
Kids scared to tackle
The number of parents who ask us ‘can you get them to tackle more’ is insane.
But think about things for a second and we might see why some kids are scared to tackle.
At a busy grassroots game a 7 year old commits an accidental foul.
It is met with shouts from the side-line, a loud blow of the whistle from the ref and a moan from the opposition coach.
Do you think that is a positive experience for that child? Do you think they’ll want to try to tackle again?
Maybe, maybe not. But it probably won’t help.
Kids diving
This is something creeping into the junior game and it needs to end.
Very much like the Ronaldo example, banning fouls would help put an end to this nonsense.
It would also likely help make our kids that bit tougher/more resilient.
Obviously there comes a time when kids need to know right from wrong and fouls need to be given regardless of intent.
But at that those younger age groups the focus should be more on development of skill. If we stop the game every 2 mins for miss-timed tackles we are losing precious time.
We’ve started doing more of this at our sessions.
The games at the end are better, the players police things themselves (great for social development) and we don’t see them diving around as much.
What are your thoughts?
