It's Not Non-Competitive. It's Child-Centred Competition.

I think it's time to clarify, clear up, eradicate and move on from some of the nonsense I keep reading about some of The FA's plans for youth football. 

Let's get this very clear from the outset: The FA is not making youth football non-competitive. The game is a competition; the battle between two teams to see who wins over the period of time the game goes on for, whether you are 7 or 57, the game is still about seeing if my team can beat your team. End of story. Hope that's now clear. 

Non-competitive implies everything is a friendly, like the game doesn't matter. That's simply not the case. All games matter to the kids, for some adults it matters too much and therein lies a lot of the problems.

What the plans are looking at are about making flexible competition, where children can still experience the importance of winning and losing, still feel the highs, the lows, the exhilaration and depression that all get associated with the game we know and love. However, this is about making sure that they experience a children's approach to competition, not an adult's approach. 

We have taken the adult model, league tables, three points and goal difference, and imposed this on young people. What we have found from listening to young people is that it has increased pressure and is a reason they leave the game. I can't find any academic research that says pushing children down an over-competitive route is good for enjoyment or development. None. All I can find is the opposite, such as the writings of Lynn Kidman. 

I have heard from managers about children being sick before the game because they are so nervous about losing a game in a relegation battle and children not turning up or wanting to go on because they were so scared at doing something silly and making a mistake and they didn't want the repercussions. The repercussions from adults after a kid makes a mistake?! I heard one manager about Christmas time last year say to his U11 team that today was a "must-win game"! Nothing is must-win when you are 11. Please, give it a rest!

However, children have also told us they like seeing their progress and they like to see themselves get better, something they like from leagues. We simply have to find the balance between the two that enables development and enjoyment from a young person's perspective. 

So, the plans are this; Give leagues the flexibility to organise football for the children in the primary school age group which involves periods of development matches, time to learn the game, interspersed with periods of competitions, where they might play for a trophy or two. 

And this flexibility is open to the league. For example, one of the issues we have found from looking at youth football around the country is in most leagues there are only two maybe three teams that might win the league and they invariably know this before the season even starts! The teams that aren't great know they are never going to win anything either, therefore might monitor development and progress in a different way - losing by less goals, sneaking a draw here and there, social and player outcomes etc. 

What we are saying to the leagues is this - can you find a better way that encourages and promotes more opportunity for more teams to be competitive? So, in a division of 12 teams, have 6-8 weeks playing development matches, putting into practice what you have been learning and then some form of competition, but be clever and smart with this. Organise a little competition for the top six teams to play for a trophy and the same for the bottom six, where the teams in the bottom six now have a realistic chance of winning something, of feeling good for this, or feeling down because you lost in the final. Something the kids might otherwise never have felt. 

And use the scores from the blocks of development matches to get teams in the right groups. No team wants to have games that are too easy or be beaten by loads every week so there is a crucial role still in the administrators making sure teams get pitted evenly against others. 

One guy from a league said he had 32 teams at the U10 age group, could he organise a World Cup format with 8 groups of four, little round robins and then go through to a knockout and a final? Absolutely! Do things that are going to capture the attention of the kids. Just don't stick them in one league for 8 months a year!

When this has been discussed and understood by people on my travels they have started to get it, to understand why. Not listening to hearsay, fourth-hand information or making up their own spin on something because it suits them. I met the KNVB (Dutch FA) Technical Director, a UEFA Grassroots Panel member, a month ago and discussed these with him - he was hugely impressed with this modern approach and asked if I would meet with his team to discuss further what we are planning. England leading something in football and the Dutch liking the ideas of!? There's a first!

This isn't saying what we have doing has been wrong for years, we are saying this might be a great way of engaging more kids in the game we love, for longer, in a more modern way. We have to move away from the win-at-all-costs culture in this country, we quite simply have to. It is ruining the game for everyone, stifling development and hindering enjoyment. Winning is important, but somewhere down the list behind a number of other more important factors. 

Striving to win? Absolutely important.The score? Not as important.

The game is evolving rapidly; new types of player and no longer just giant athletes, new types of football and no longer just 4-4-2, new formats of the game and no longer just 11v11. 

"The difficulty lies not in new ideas but in escaping the old ones" (John Maynard Keynes). And he was a smart man. 

A quick update...Consultation and Politics.

Short delay; afforded a break in Italy and a friend's wedding, but very much back to the day job since then. Interesting times are afoot and with the culmination of the "Your Kids, Your Say" Roadshows imminent, the next stage of the planning and implementation process begins. 

I have been asked many times, at the consultation events and via Twitter, why can't The FA just implement these changes straight away? For the purpose of clarity, I'll just outline some of the procedures in place and how we arrived at this destination. Things are never quite straight forward in terms of decision-making (both on the pitch and off it, it would appear) and there is a process to follow. 

So, sit down and strap in, this could get political! 

We started on this road about 18 months ago, with some early discussions with different football bodies; coaches, clubs, children, league administrators, internal FA staff, professional game etc. to find out if there actually was a requirement to develop children's football. The overwhelming feeling was yes. Since that point we have conducted meetings with 900+ youth clubs, 1000's of grassroots and professional coaches and well over 300 youth leagues. On top of this, we have completed 50 focus groups with 8-12 year old children (more on this in the next blog). Broad, wide and national.

This has shaped the proposal to date. None of the planned changes are my ideas from sitting in an Ivory Tower at Wembley (although I work from home so from rural Sussex), these proposals have been led, shaped, dissected and pulled back together by the grassroots infrastructure. My remit, in this role, is to pull all the evidence together and give it some shape and coherence. Personally, would I do something a little different, maybe, but the majority of the feedback has shaped to where we are today.

From this initial information-gathering, this was then taken to several FA Committees with the key messages and permission gained to 'formally consult' on the new proposals. Since this date we have completed 12 regional consultation events around the country with four more to come this month. 

There are suggestions from a few that this is a 'fait-de-compli', a done deal in some's views and the consultation is pointless. Well, let me absolutely confirm, it is far from that and never has been. Where we are today and from where we started, the proposals have shifted and changed, fluidly moving to reflect the evidence, feelings and feedback from the grassroots world. The Roadshows have time for debate and discussion, input and answers. Controversially, I could actually say those that suggest this is fait-de-compli are those that disagree with the changes...

I've always said, right from the outset that if someone can provide the research and evidence that says the best thing for U8's should be to play 11v11 on full-size pitches in competitive leagues then we are more than happy to take it on-board. This is about building a player pathway that reflects the best possible development system for young people, not one built on gut feeling, tradition and what we have always done, but steeped in research, evidence, meaningful data and information. My role, as mentioned, is to shape this and I have painstakingly sought research to balance different views, to see if I can find something that supports, for example, the value of adult forms of competition on young people. No pre-determined agenda, no hidden desires. A clear, transparent, evidence-backed process. 

So, we have four regional events to go. Once completed, we will pull all the evidence together and then start the internal process. This requires a variety of committees to hear the feedback through the next three months before going to FA Council in January 2012 and then FA AGM in May 2012. It has to go to the AGM because there are Rule Changes that need to be ratified, and this is the body that completes this. From this point, if successful, it becomes policy and the way forward for youth football in England. 

How can you help? Well, we need the whole grassroots world to get behind this. To explain to people why we are doing this, how this is about the children and putting in place a modern, enhanced system to help them enjoy the game more, develop further and become better players. 

Not everyone will agree with some of the fine details, whether we should have 9v9 at this age or another, or the pitch should be a little bigger or smaller, but the general consensus is we need to change. We need to move forwards for their benefit. Forget being adults and what we want, let's focus on making the game better for the players. 

So please, influence your fellow club coaches and committees, fellow league volunteers and groundsmen and all those in the game and help them understand why we are seeking to invest in the children of the future, to help them become better players of the modern game and to help them fall in love with football. 

The early steps...

So, this is like my nephew right now, just turned one years old yesterday and learning to walk...i'm in the same place as him but learning to blog! I would guess that the first post will be seen by one person, me, and the rest by potentially more, as they get better and more interesting. I will try and work out how to send out via Twitter, being in the modern world and all that. 


The plan is going to be to use this blog as a reflective journal; for both my daily life within The FA and things that are going on there, and for that of my coaching hobby, working with the Under 10's at Fulham FC Academy. 


I'll try and keep it updated as best I can, with information on the future of youth football, some of the discussions we are having nationally, sharing some of the feedback from around the country on my travels and general information that might be of interest. If its not of interest, i'm sorry, skip on past those bits!


I will also use it to update on my coaching sessions, things that have worked or not worked, and some feedback from the season. That way, I can use it to effectively reflect on performances of both myself and the boys and use it as a tool for my own personal development too. Ten years coaching without reflection is like one years coaching, repeated ten times, said Gilbert and Trudel a few years ago, and incredibly true sentiments there indeed. 


Any help and guidance from people of more experience in the blogging world, please feel free to suggest away, as all help welcomed. 


So, time to hit "publish post" and see what happens...