Foundations are the Key

The tallest buildings in the world wouldn't stand if they didn't have the correct foundations, neither in fact would the shortest. When starting with a building project you have to start from the bottom and build up, and make sure you get the experts dealing with the appropriate stages; plumbers do the plumbing, electricians do the wiring and so on. Follow these rules and you will have a safe and reliable building, and when the planning and attention to detail is meticulous you can end up with something magnificent. Now replace this metaphorical building with a young footballer and the same rules still apply.

The general school of thought in football is that the best coaches work with the oldest players and the newest coaches have to do an apprenticeship with the younger players. I believe that this is a huge misconception; coaching u6/7 is completely different to coaching u18 and requires a different approach, something that not every coach can adjust to and expecting them to do so would be similar to hiring an electrician for your pipes and a plumber for your wiring.

Coaching a u6/7 age group can be frustrating at times, but the rewards far exceed the negatives. With this age group you have a completely blank canvas and can teach good habits and work on the foundations to build a solid technical footballer. Many people think that you have to over simplify things and treat them like infants, but speaking to and treating them as equals is a refreshing change for 6/7 year olds and gives them an extra impetus. Getting things right early on means you start to build a better and more intelligent footballer and you may even surprise yourself with how technical or complex you can be.

With older age groups the style of coaching is very different, the focus shifts from teaching to refining. You have to be able to notice subtle and slight faults with a player's technique and know what minor changes are needed to make the biggest difference. Football is a game of habits and it is unlikely you will completely reinvent a player at u18 so your focus is on making their strengths even stronger and their weaknesses less so. The latter age groups in youth football also become a lot more tactical, you need to teach players not only their roles and responsibilities but that of their teammates and how they must all intertwine to create a harmonic machine.

With the introduction of The FA's Youth Modules more emphasis is being placed on age appropriate coaching but there also needs to be an incentive to encourage the strongest coaches to stick with an age group if this is where their greatest skill-set lay. It is human nature to want to grow and develop and moving to a new age group gives you a new set of challenges, but maybe the stigmatism that often goes with coaching the youngest age group forces coaches to move to older age groups earlier.

Slowly and surely attitudes are changing in football, and new ideas come in thick and fast to help different aspects of the game improve. Hopefully we reach a point where we do not judge but show appreciation to those who are patient and inventive enough to get most out of the youngest age groups, without them there is a far greater task further down the line.