What’s Better: Well-Drilled or Freedom to Play

In grassroots, how often do you hear – ‘That team are good. They’re really well organised’.

What strikes us is that when people talk about such teams they rarely mention an individual player/s who stood out.

Our sessions at Foot-Tech aren’t set up to ‘drill’ players.

Nor will we organise them when we take some players to play matches and nor will we tell them where to stand etc when we have our training games.

We could do. But the question is – what is success when it comes to junior football?

Take two u7 teams. Reds & Blues.

Reds are well-drilled, practice formations, know what each player should be doing.

Their coaches tell them what to do & when to do it.

Blues, on the other hand, are free to play, free to explore the game and make their own decisions on what to do based on what they see happening.

They learn for themselves along with some guidance. This is extremely powerful.

Reds may win a trophy or two. Blues may lose every game that season.

But what if a blue player goes on to make it professional and a red player doesn’t?

What is success then?

Let’s think about academies. The Holy Grail for a lot of parents in grassroots football.

For academies it is all about the individual. They don’t care about an U7 trophy or how good the team is.

They care about a future potential first team player worth millions of pounds.

When we let players play & don’t constantly instruct them from the side-lines, we are able to see the player they truly are. We see their own understanding/decision making.

When we do the opposite, we see which players can follow an instruction, which ones are compliant.

This could help to win a game right now. But in another game, in the heat of battle – the best players (the creative ones) are those that make the best decisions, their own decisions – not those that rely on following instructions.

We are asked a lot about what scouts look for.

Scouts are looking for players who have a higher technical level/game understanding than other players their age.

Not for players who need constant instruction.

The game is for the players as played by players, and yes of course top teams are heavily coached, but top coaches also recognise that it is the players and their individual abilities that make the difference.

If we constantly drill a team we will likely get good RESULTS  but we will have probably damaged the DEVELOPMENT of our players longer-term.

Let’s say we drill them, and one player in particular shone in a game against an academy.

They followed our instructions to the letter, went exactly where we wanted them to go: where to press, when to pass etc.

If they are just good at taking instruction and playing in a rigid system then how will this player do when they get to their first academy session/match playing with players they’ve never met in what would be a completely new system?

They would lost!

They would be left with their own understanding/decision making. And if that was not up to scratch they wouldn’t last in that environment.

As we say a lot – academies are not the be all and end all. Football is more than that.

Football is about fun and for children that means:

Not being forced into a position from an early age

Not being constantly told what to do from the side-lines

Being allowed to try new things and be creative

Getting plenty of touches of the ball on match day

Continuously improving

An academy might not be a reality for most. Success can look different for everyone.

Success could mean that when they’re older they are good enough to get into the high school football team.

After that maybe they can reach a semi-pro football level.

Or maybe success is simply getting into a better grassroots team.

Believe us when we say that the player who has been allowed freedom (and has not relied on constant instruction) will have a better chance of the above than the one who has constantly been told what to do, how to do it and when to do it.

Don’t be fooled into thinking winning with a well-drilled team means your child is actually maximising their potential.

If you’re only bothered about them winning then maybe for you that is success.

But the goal should be to create technically advanced, creative problem-solvers…

Not half-decent instruction-followers.

And we should say that this approach doesn’t just help them on the football pitch. It can help them in anything else they do i.e. they learn to work things out themselves.

Sure, we coaches needs to offer guidance, give them some ideas and, from time to time, show them what to do.

But then it’s time to let them play! Especially come match day.

As parents and coaches, we should be there to encourage, to cheer-lead, to console, to congratulate, to celebrate.

We shouldn’t be there to play a real-life game of FIFA where we control every action of our players/children.

Coaches can then stand back and assess the needs of their players based on what they see them doing and design game-like training sessions to help their players find the answers next time.

Some food for thought for coaches when planning sessions/matches.

And something for parents to think about when judging the long-term ‘success’ of their child’s football journey.

As always, these are our opinions but we’re here to offer any help to parents or coaches if required.