A great article on grass roots

Kevin Davies (ex-Saints) has just written this article for the BBC;

http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24523343

He is absolutely spot on. He makes a load of great points, and has summed up almost exactly how I feel about grass roots football. Ie; we need to focus on the coaches, not the kids.

The anecdote he uses about the psychologists sums it up perfectly. We have to believe that almost any young boy or girl can be trained to play to a very high standard, just so long as the coaching is done right, rather than believing that talent is some sort of blessed innate gift.

Well said Kevin!

 

A great article I hope everyone reads this .

 

Bit simplistic though.

Much of the coaching done at young kids age is by volunteers. People who give up their time free of charge, who don't have the time or money to be doing coaching badges. These people are probably more the life blood of kid/youth football than anything done by the FA or clubs. Therefore, its then not fair for people higher up in the game or in the media to be criticising the standard of coaching... unless they themselves are willing to put their hands in their pockets and start helping the thousands of volunteer coaches.

 

What CBK says is true.......people all over the world give up a load of their free time to support their offspring in playing football. However just getting a coaching badge is not the be all and end all. A coaching badge is not going to be able to teach you about football itself, how to develop talent how to recognise talent, tactics etc. It is not going to give you a feel for the game either.
Kids need to develop naturally. The coaching should be given in schools, colleges, universities. This is how they do it abroad as well as the weekend league clubs. Colleges abroad are the equivalent to our academy except they have many more of them. So instead of having half a dozen decent academy's in a country roughly the same size as us they will have perhaps hundreds. Certainly more than we have here. The dad's on the touch line is only a starting point and is a good start for the kids to find out how much they like the game.