The problem in football is you learn to play the wrong way around…..
They say that you only really learn to drive after you pass your test and get out on the road.
In golf, you can spend hours at the driving range but most believe actually getting out on the course is when you see the biggest improvement.
Why?
Because it is realistic and varied…i.e. there is real-life context.
Constantly doing a 3 point-turn in a quiet street with an instructor talking you through it, only gets you so far.
As does hitting a golf ball off the same surface time and again at the range.
The same applies to children’s football training.
Old school coaching involves teaching things like passing, shooting & dribbling without any opposition – no context to the game itself and therefore no match-realistic decision making.
‘Today, we’re doing dribbling.’
You’ll then see nice neat lines of kids dribbling around cones followed by a match at the end.(Worse still are those coaches who insist on doing 15-minute warm ups without a ball!)
You can’t expect a child to improve by doing it this way.
Sure, they might have improved their technique.
But that counts for nothing if they can’t then do it in the game and have little understanding of how to make the right decisions based on what’s happening around them.
How many people reading this knew of kids/players who could do anything with a ball at their feet but put them in a match and they were terrible?
Coaching has moved on and it is much harder now than it was…IF you ACTUALLY want to develop players the best way.
The easy way is to put loads of cones and poles everywhere and have kids lined up ready to do the ‘skill’ in isolation.
It looks great to parents because they’ll see their child doing loads of successful passes or dribbles. But the success is only coming because it is too easy.
What that parent won’t like is when their child is then in a match on a Sunday morning looking lost and out of their depth…with no chance of them improving in the short-term because they aren’t being coached in the right way.
They can execute a pass, but they can’t do it when they have 2-3 decisions to make i.e. where are my team mates, how close is the defender to me, should I pass or would dribbling be better?
The right way to coach, and the way that actually gives value to parents and players, is to make game-like activities that help children learn the key skills of football in realistic situations where they are constantly challenged to make multiple decisions.
It doesn’t always look pretty.
It is VERY tough to plan as a coach.
And it needs a very individual approach.
So, most will shy away from it and revert back to the old ways.Street football was the best way to learn when we were kids.
Now it is a case of making street football but for today’s kids and adding in what has been researched around how children best learn.
That’s what our parents and players get at Foot-Tech and if you’re a coach reading this who wants to know more or you’re an interested parent who would like to seek some advice – please do get in touch.
