What is representative football training?

What is representative football training and why parents need to know about it…

It’s training that mimics a real game

Activities & drills that are as close to the actual game of football as possible…

Why is it important

This style of training better prepares children for ‘real-life’ football matches by improving their decision-making and developing the skills they really need.

What does it look like

The activities will have:

Opponents

A direction of play

Goals/passing targets

A consequence for an action

It can look like chaos…and that’s not a bad thing!

But what does it not look like…

Kids in long lines waiting for a turn

Drills with no goals

Kids in two’s passing to each other with no defender

Kids running around a pitch to warm up

Individual ball skills/ball mastery

Activities without a ball!

Why parents need to know

If your child isn’t doing representative football training they aren’t improving for the actual game of football.

Your child might ‘look’ better i.e. they can do loads of skills etc but once they play a real match they’ll be far behind players who do representative training.

Why don’t all coaches do this training

It’s harder to coach

It doesn’t always look pretty parents

Coaches actually have to understand the game…

But don’t worry Foot-Tech members – this is exactly the style of coaching your child is getting with us.

There are times to use the odd ‘fun’ activity that isn’t representative but the idea should be to keep sessions as representative as possible if you really want players to improve (and therefore have more fun playing the game they love).