‘The Power of Play’

They started engaging in football around 4.5 years old

They also played around 2-3 other sports but football made up around 90% of their time in sport.

A lot of the early engagement came in play-based environments such as street football

On average their informal play-based football accounted for around 200 hours per year/4 hours per week between u6-u10.

Coach-led practise hours were much less in the early-years but averaged around 4 hours per week by u10.

Now, this is not very surprising.

It should go without saying that accumulating many hours of practise is going to help a child improve.

But this is where it gets a bit more interesting…

Data was gathered from players from Premier League academies.

They looked at players who were released at 16 and those who were offered professional contracts at 16…

Between the ages of 6-12 the players who were offered professional contracts had accumulated many many more hours of play-based, non coach-led football.

There’s likely more to unpack and other external factors make up the whole story for each individual.

But things like this give us something to think about…

Could more free-play based sessions be key in helping kids progress and learn?

Is it the number of hours of training or the number of hours in ‘quality’ training?

Or could it be that some coaches are just far too restrictive with their training which stifles development?

The thing is, society has changed so kids have less access to informal play/street football.

With that in mind, should coaches allow for more free play at their sessions?

Studies like this show that the very best players accumulate a lot of informal play and success leaves clues.

But there is a lot more info out there in terms of how play is simply a powerful learning tool for children generally.

In football terms, the free-play side of things can be so powerful for learning regardless of the level a child is currently at.

We have been big-believers in informal play/street football for a long time and it is the reason why we coach like we do.

We aim to guide as opposed to being overly-instructional and we also make sure to allow children to explore and work things out for themselves.

We have our tournament weeks where we simply let them play and have recently started our new 3v3 night which follows the same guidelines.

Coaches can be a big help but they can also be a massive hinderance if they set up sessions whereby they control every single thing and constantly tell kids what to do and how to do it.

It’s about balance.

If you’re a coach reading this, what are your thoughts?

Or parents, what do you think?

Study Credit: Mark Williams, FIFA Training site