From watching to coaching
This blog will hopefully offer a glimpse at a world that you may or may not know about: the world of Saturday morning kids’ football.
In a previous life, my weekend mornings just like most adults’: spent on mundane matters like weekly shopping, going for a walk or just staying at home recovering from a demanding week of work.
No way did I have to know that, just around the corner, and like in many other parks up and down the country, come Saturday or Sunday morning cars were arriving, cones laid out, goals assembled and bibs sorted out, before groups of boys and girls arrive and, after a few hellos and a bit of small talk, drills and matches would start: kids running after footballs trying to score goals, all to the pleasure of parents and coaches standing by the sideline, enjoying a lovely morning as is they were kids themselves.
Time for the end-of-course certificate
My son Stéphane started playing football at the grand age of 4, first at Little Kickers and eventually graduating to 5Ways Soccer. About a year and a half ago, he was given the opportunity to join a new Under-9 team at Withdean Youth - and I happened to volunteer to become assistant coach for his team.
These last 18 months have been quite a journey, and a very enjoyable one at that, during which I probably learnt as much as my son did - him about playing in a team, and me about how to help out a brilliant group of boys have fun playing football.
So what have I learnt - what are my ‘key learnings’ in management-speak? There are too many to list here, but three stand out:
First, childrens’ motivations for playing football are as varied as they are interesting to understand. The common message amongst coaches nowadays is that kids just want to have fun, be with their friends and don’t really care about winning matches. Hence as a coach, you should dampen parents’ and coaches’ expectations of ‘getting results’ (possibly born of misplaced ego), and shield the kids from any such pressure. What I have seen though is that, even as young as 9, many (by no means all) kids already have a drive for winning - they just feel good about scoring and coming out as the better side, and while the odd defeat isn’t an issue, getting beaten time and time again is a real cause of frustration and unhappiness. Which makes for interesting coaching challenges
Second, and in spite of all its shortcomings, the English Football Association has created a well-structured training program for would-be coaches, starting from the Level 1 course for ‘community’ coaches all the way to the Level 5 / Uefa professional licenses
Third, as part of these qualifications, coaches are taught how to follow a Plan, Do, Review approach to their training sessions. In short, this is the Lean methodology applied to football coaching: how to iteratively, quickly experiment with new drills and coaching techniques, and learn from real experience what doesn’t work, what works and what works better
So, what do I still need to learn? Well, pretty much everything!
Football coaching is all new to me. Until recently, apart from having read Coaching Youth Soccer, I have been relying on hunches and gut feelings during training sessions, matches and tournaments. The lack of theory and reference points was becoming more obvious over time and I knew I could be doing a much better ‘job’ of coaching. Hence I decided to sign up for the FA’s Level 1 Coaching course, about which I will be blogging soon. Watch this space!
