Filed under: Dave Clarke, Soccer Coaching, Soccer Team Management | Tags: football coaching, football fun, football skills, jumpers for goalposts, kids playground, passing running, soccer fun, soccer playground
I was watching a group of boys in the playground of my son’s school in England last week, and how they sorted themselves out for a game of football.
It was all ‘John and I are the best players so we can pick the teams’. And I saw and felt the embarrassment of the last player to be picked. ‘You can have him – no you have him.’
The teams were pretty even, lots of running and not much passing. Of course the boy who was last to be picked was stuck in goal and probably never got the chance to play anywhere else. What will he think of football when he’s older?
This is why good coaches like you and I can have a huge difference in the lives of a lot of children. I’m sick of hearing from various figures on TV (and from my father-in-law) that coaching at youth level has nothing to do with the kids anymore. And that it was much better in ‘the old days’ when boys picked teams and organised themselves. The ‘Jumpers for Goalposts’ era of skills and innocence where boys flourished into footballing idols. So where are all the glorious England teams of the past?
I’ve made boys who would have gone in goal in the playground and never left it, into extremely good players. In fact one of them now playing at under 16 was a player no one wanted in their teams when he was 7 or 8. Through my training he is now the leading scorer for the team and one of the first names on the team sheet.
A lot of what we do as coaches is give children the chance to play in teams, the chance to play up front or midfield or at the back. And giving someone a chance in life is a great gift to give.
There are bad coaches I don’t deny it, but there are hundreds of coaches out there – usually the ones that read Better Soccer Coaching so I’m preaching to the converted – that can change the lives of a lot of children.
