“English football is a tanker that needs turning”
Those were the words of Greg Dyke when he began his tenure at the Football Association. An expensive, far reaching review was launched. Of course questions were immediately asked about how far reaching the review would be? What qualified the people appointed to sit on the panel? Was it a panel of quality?
Eventually the dust settled and they were allowed to get to work. A year later, the results are in.
The commission has promised that by 2020 there will be large artificial pitches available for grassroots football in thirty cities. The net result of this will be over 1000 all weather pitches in England. Still fewer than Germany and Spain, but each step forward has to be seen as positive. The thirty cities will provide the bulk of these pitches in ‘hubs’, mini versions of St George’s Park. Coach education will take also take place at these facilities. The FA plan to appoint a new Head of Education and more full time tutors to deliver coaching courses. Steps forward.
There will always be arguments about whether this is enough. The answer is quite obvious that this plan alone will not be enough. However, trying to get everything at once can be dangerous. Improvements have to be done a step at a time. As a first step, this will suffice.
Does it address the real issues?
Well that depends on what you consider the real issues to be.
Not all grassroots football is equal. Some clubs are rich. Some poor. Some well staffed. Some struggling to find coaches. Some are fortunate enough to have a facility available. Others make do with the park. What may be an issue for one, may not be for another.
I have coached in grassroots football for a number of years. I have worked at a club in an area that some would consider deprived and with a club in a more affluent area. Both had/have problems but only a few are shared.
At both clubs the a major problem involved coaches. At one club the reliance was on volunteers. This came down to either parents and relatives or those looking to pick up some experience. I fell into the latter category. This had an effect on the quality of coaches. A number of those who were parents of relatives showed a great deal of reluctance to further their development once they gained their Level 1 qualification. The coaches who did have greater experience and qualifications were reluctant to give up their time for nothing. This eventually happened to me. As my experience and qualifications grew I asked myself why I gave up my Saturday morning for nothing? I didn’t receive help toward the higher end qualifications. The qualities of ambition that had made me an asset were the same qualities that drove me to leave.
I joined a club that paid it’s coaches. A club that helped pay for further qualifications (this wasn’t just a way to lure me in, they have contributed). Their philosophy behind paying the coaches is that they will attract a higher calibre of coach. The qualification and experience levels would be higher than the average of those who rely on volunteers. This brings about another problem, one of costs. The club strays away from inclusive towards exclusive, feeding elitism. The players fees are amongst the highest in the area, yet a second training session a week remains out of reach. In order to afford the extra facility and the extra costs of coaches, fees would have to increase to an either higher level.
Recently the senior section of the club gained access to an all weather facility. The youth section has use of this, but it is not free. We pay the seniors to use the facility. This has had differing results. The first and most important one is an increase in training time. During the dreadful weather of last winter our club was able to continue training while others could not. Conversely costs have been driven upwards considerably. The time that had been lost in previous seasons had served to mask the true cost of coaches as they had worked a disrupted schedule. This was in addition to the price of the facility itself.
Aside from the increased contact time the all weather pitch has had another effect. At the beginning of this season the number of players looking to join was more than we could handle. Word had spread that the club was well run, but also word of what we had access to. In truth the club had always been well run, even when our training facility was a park. Now there was an edifice to dazzle newcomers. This has created a new problem. The number of players looking to join was too much for the current number of coaches. Since the start of the season the club has been pushing to recruit more coaches yet the returns have been poor. The response to the advertising has been strong, but the phenomena of coaches responding and then not showing up on Saturday morning has been all too common. From twenty plus coaches who have had discussions about attendance only four have made it to the session. The promise of a payment and a facility has not been enough to dazzle them. While the reliance on volunteers who may or may not have the required coaching experience can not be good for the long term health of the game, it would require a great deal of supplementation from above for anything else to be possible on a wider scale. That or the cost of grassroots becomes ever more expensive and ever more elite.
Just how important are these facilities anyway? In the Talent Code Daniel Coyle describes how unimpressive the facilities were at some of the world’s talent hot beds. Sometimes having the best facilities can create feelings of entitlement and dull the competitive edge. In one school he visited the children had to earn their desks and then earn the right to keep them. This was a school that specialised in turning round the fortunes of troubled children. It is possible to develop without access to shining 3G or 4G pitch but in northern Europe it is wet. It is obvious and barely needs stating but with the lack of street football the reliance on organised, coached football is incredibly high. Each time a session is called off because of the weather is far more important now than thirty years ago. Thirty years ago they could catch up in the street with their friends, the likelihood of that happening today is slender.
The ability to play all winter is clearly vital with the current schedule. Playing football on both grass and artificial surfaces will also provide benefits with differing challenges on each. Yet this precludes other types of football. There remains an attitude that only football played on grass is real football. While training would be able to take place on all weather surfaces during winter the reluctance of many leagues to allow games on artificial pitches mean that matches would still be scrapped, leading to the horrible end of season log jam that is a common experience. Indoor football and futsal remove these issues, but only playing futsal will create futsal players rather than footballers. A radical step would be move the current schedule. To play children’s football outdoors in the summer and then leave open the possibilities for supplemental indoor winter leagues. My personal preference would be to play futsal through the winter, but this would be open to individual philosophies. The more experiences that young players have the better. Only playing one type of game limits those experiences.
On a Sunday there are many differing approaches on show. Many differing attitudes as well. These attitudes come from coaches, parents and players. Each time I believe that steps forward are being taken I will see or hear something that represents a step backwards. Recently I suggested to a coach that he might want to take off his captain as the player was attempting to start fights every few minutes. The game was already over in terms of result and they would take the victory, the captain had played every minute. Their coach responded by nodding, nothing more. The captain completed the game.
Attitudes towards winning are always up for discussion. It is not about not wanting to win, or not caring whether you win or not. It is about whether winning is the most important thing. Development of the individual should come first for coaches. Development of the individual may mean something sightly different depending on how old the players are. At some point their individual development becomes understanding their individual role within a team. However, if that is focused on too early technique will suffer.
The attitude of the players will also make a difference. What do they want? If they are desperate to improve then each moment of contact can be maximised. If they are there to have fun with their friends and are not worried about improving or willing to understand and act on what is required to reach high levels, a coach can have all the qualifications the FA deem appropriate to a grassroots coach and be unable to make every training session attain maximum meaning.
In the end what grassroots football needs is help. It needs help from above. There is a feeling of detachment from the rest of the game. Detachment from other grassroots clubs. Ultimately clubs are not rivals. They should be united in the common goal of producing the next generation of footballers, but sport isn’t like that. It is tribalism and the desire to be better. This desire upscaling from grassroots club to grassroots club, semi pro team to semi pro team, club to club and finally, country to country. If the desire to be better did not exist the end result of the exercise, making England World Champions would not exist either. The help required should come from the elite regions of the game. As a coach I have often felt unsupported. Recently I completed an FA course. Since then I have met up with other candidates, at their request, to aid them. As one said to me recently, not many people would take the time to do that. The question is why wouldn’t they? As a club or player it is one thing to try to maintain and advantage, but to try and ensure that you are better than other coaches is contradictory and damaging. Thankfully social networking has shown that there are numerous coaches out there who are keen to share the knowledge and experiences that they have.
The FA have launched a regional mentoring scheme, but only a small number of clubs will receive this support. At present clubs monitor themselves, some don’t even do that with coaches left to their own devices. In order for a unified philosophy and playing style to flow through English football some form of monitoring is needed.
Help is needed in other areas too. The world is internet reliant, but how many clubs have a really good website? They are always in a state of flux but many are a long way out of date. Few clubs will be fortunate enough to have someone involved who is able to set up a website for them. Is this another area that the FA could help in? Then there is the issue of exit routes. Where does it end for our players? Some grassroots clubs are connected to semi pro teams but even then it is common for the first team to have no interest or active connection to the youth section. One of the aims I have for my club is to send the under 16 players on Level 1 as soon as they are eligible and hope to create our own coaches and maybe spark a few off on a coaching journey of their own. This would be far easier with the support of the local FA and the knowledge that there is funding out there. I am unaware of either being in place at present.
The final issue is one of access to coaching courses. Once more money is a factor. The cost of courses being prohibitive to many. Although there are those willing to pay but prevented from going on courses. In some regions there are not enough tutors to cope with the demand. The scoring system that is in place to help decide who receives priority could be seen as ensuring the shop stays closed to only those already within the system. Greater access can only be beneficial to the pool of knowledge but there can be a downside. There would be a large pool of coaches qualified to work at a professional level but without enough well paid jobs to go round. Pay is less relevant to grassroots football, but who will pay that much money and put in that many hours for no reward?
Time and money. Every problem comes down to not having enough of either. Football, at all levels, is like life. However much time you have, you will need more. However much money you have you will need more. The great frustration within football is how clear it is that there is money in the game, but none in grassroots. That there are hours in the week, but a lack of money mean the hours cannot be used by many who need them. Time and money are things that the elite game can help provide grassroots with.