Vision on youth football

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Youth football is one of the most debated themes on football. What is the best model? What do we have to do to create Messis and Cristiano Ronaldos? What are the solutions to have the best players in the world coming out of our academy/club?

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Base (roots) football

Base football is the beginning of the formative process, the first contact of the kids with that strange phenomenon of kicking one ball with the feet. It is the process of creating passion in the kids for the sports until they achieve the competition age groups.

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First of all, there are no right or wrong answers when it comes to football, even less when it comes to base/roots and youth football. And the "copy paste" of a formula that had success in other club/Country doesn´t mean that it will work for you. What you are doing, even if you are doing the same as others who had success with that formula, is not a predictor of success. It depends of several factors that influence the growth of the players and must be taken in account when you create your formula for success, like cultural factors, physical aspects of the culture you are in, social economic factors, (...).

Taking my background in youth football in Portugal and China in consideration, I can't coach and have the same plan for youth for both Countries. The cultural differences are too big to achieve success working the same way. In Portugal the kids have more freedom outside school, they watch football since they born, they start in football clubs in an young age, all of them want to be Cristiano Ronaldo or Quaresma and try to imitate their feints, there is a football culture, players have their own decision making from street football. In China it is normal to find players that never touched a ball before entering football, the teachers infuse a culture to follow orders which leads to a lack of decision making, the teaching of football is based in "kick the ball away from the goal” and “pass the ball to your teammate" even if it is not the best decision to take, the players have no joy in what they are doing, the culture is based in "winning at all costs", there is no culture to teach to do things well and no long term planing, the teaching is mostly done based on isolated individual skills with no connexion to the game. All that leads to the coach to have a different approach in teaching football and set the basis for success.

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But in my opinion, there are some points that can be used in all cultures for teaching football that can approach them to success in creating good players.

1- the first item must be "football is a game". Therefore, we must teach it like the game it is. There is no point in teaching the young players individual skills that they don´t know what they are used for. There is no point on putting the players dribbling one ball over the lines of the field if in a game they will never do that. There is no point on putting the players on lines waiting to do the exercises around marks if in the game they will not have lines or marks, they will have opponents. So, the teaching of football must go in that line of thinking, if football is a game with teammates and opponents I will teach the players to have those elements in all exercises of the trainings. This doesn't mean that I can't put the players to dribble a ball in trainings, it just means that I can create an exercise that he needs to dribble the ball but closer to a game situation, for example putting the player to dribble the ball with an opponent chasing him. This way he is training his dribble, he is changing directions to avoid the opponent, he is trainings body movement and feinting, and all of that with the pressure of having one opponent after him trying to steal him the ball.

2- the second item must be "train the game". This means just and only this, in order to have success developing the players to playing the game you must play the game in trainings. Most of the exercises on trainings must be game or game related exercises. The players will only develop their skills of the game if they actually play it. It seems simple if you think about it, but my experience tells me that some cultures find it hard to understand.

3- initiative. What kind of players do we want for the future? Players that can unbalance the game or players that only know how to pass the ball (both of them are necessary in a football game, but in my experience it is easier to train latter a player to do passing that a player to feint). So incentive players to have initiative, to progress with the ball, to feint, to create space where there is none, whether they are defenders, midfielders or attackers. This will boost their confidence with the ball and will make them be more creative.

4- the most important thing in football is the decision making. You can have the best player in the world in your team (talking only in technic and skills) but if he can´t take the best decisions for the team it won´t lead him and the team anywhere.

5- do not take the decisions for the kids. It is a big error that I see lots of coaches make, is being in games and command the decisions that players have to make and the players act like the coaches want. If you really want the future success of your players in football (and here I must add the success in life too) make them take the decisions, do not make them follow your commands. That will make them don´t think in what they are doing and don't create the necessary decision making for the future. When they get a new coach or go to another team, they will not have nobody commanding them and they will not be able to take decisions.

6- make them "commit errors". Make the players in trainings commit errors, make them having the ball in their possession, make them be confident on their skills, make them know their limitations, make them create a mental base of what they can do that leads them to be successful in a particular game situation and what they must not do in that same situation. Only with that mental base of "cans and cant’s" they will have experience to face the game situations.

7- correct the players. You must not take the decisions for your players, but you must correct them when they make decision errors, and it must be as soon as he makes the error (if you are in a training stop the training to correct him). This correction must not be "you should have done this or that", you must make him think what he has done badly and what it could have done instead. In a training it is quite easy to do that, you stop immediately the training making all the players stay in their position, then you ask what was the error, you make him think on other solutions to the "problem" and continue the training with a different solution. This will make the player(s) be aware of their errors of judgement in game and make them think in other solutions that they will use in the future. (just an add, do not tell your solution to that "problem" to the players before making them think about it...sometimes the players come up with solutions to the problems much more creative than the ones we were thinking and that will lead to a better continuation of the play/goal scoring situation).

8- the focus of base football is(are) the player(s). One of the biggest mistakes of youth coaches is that they see youth teams as a bridge for a big career in adult football and in order for that to happen they only see the score. They think winning is the only solution and don´t see it as the consequence of a good work. If you want to coach adult teams to win (money and competitions) please go to adult teams, if you really want to be a youth football coach you have to realise that winning and losing is part of the development process and normally winning comes from a good base that the coach gives to the players (and it can come sooner or later according to the ability of the players, their physical development, coordinative development, ...). This doesn´t mean that we have to teach players to lose, it means that we must have to teach kids that they have to fight for the win doing what they learned in trainings, keeping in mind that we are playing against other teams that also want to win and with different levels of development. Teach them to win, respecting the other teams in wins, not being over frustrated in losses (competitive players and coaches will always be a little frustrated) and treat all the people involved in the game with respect. The focus of the trainings and games must be in technical and tactical (decision making) aspects, the development of the individual inside the group. You are preparing kids to be players in the future, so you must give them the basis for the future.

9- respect the levels of development of the players. We all know that there are some physically more developed players than others of the same age, there are players that are more developed in terms of skills than others, there are players more developed in terms of decision making that others. If those players are "too good" for their age group put them competing in a higher age group. The young players develop more if they are put in a more competitive environment and will stop their development if they are in an environment too easy for them. I know that sometimes that player makes the difference in our team and without him we will lose games...but are we really developing the kid with that or are we just improving our ego by winning games? If the level of development of one player is too big for your age group, put him competing against older players to give in an environment where he will face different problems (new problems are good for them to try to find new solutions).

10- do not ask your teams to be miniature adult teams. Learning football is the same thing as learning a language in school, we do not put the kids in the first day of school to write a novel. First we teach them the letters, then the words, then sentences, then we put them to read short stories, then we incentive them to write simple sentences, then we put them to read novels, then we incentive them to write short stories, we put them to read a lot and different authors and styles and only after that he is ready to create something beautiful out of his own mind. Respect the times of learning, teach the players to think on their own, teach them to create for themselves. This will take years before he can master that. Only after he master all of that we can start to ask them to apply is skills in a game philosophy.

11- take your job seriously. You are responsible for a group of kids that see you as a role model. You must make trainings and the learning process of football fun but also ask for commitment and discipline from the players. That can only be achieved if the commitment and discipline start in the coach. Only less than 1% of all youth players will become professional players, so you are teaching them how to be men and women with principles and respect. Give respect to your players and ask in return the same respect to you, to opponents, to referees and all the people involved in the game. Ask for simple things like leaving the field and the locker rooms clean, this will make them create awareness to respect the environment and the others. Do not insult others, football is a game played with teammates, against opponents, with coaches and referees and supporters. We must respect them all so football can continue to be a sport for everyone. Demand discipline, only the players working hard will achieve success, in short and long terms. And this must start with you (coach), planning your sessions with objectives of development, with linked exercises to lead your players to that objectives and criteria for success. Not only for the training but also for all season or for all youth path.

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I didn´t come up with anything I wrote here, but in my opinion these are the main factors that you can use in every culture to create better players, more confident, more aware of the game, with better decision making processes, with more game experience. Ultimately all of that is the base for success.

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In a more organizational perspective (mostly for Football Associations or other entities that rule football) I believe there are also simple steps that can be taken to incentive the growth of the youth players.

1- football is for everyone. There is no doubt about this one, football must be for everyone that wishes to participate on it, independent of his gender, race, social status or amount of money. Yet we see each time more examples of “elitization” of football. More and more "football academies" that ask for money to allow kids to play. I don´t have anything against these football academies, everyone has expenses and if you want coaches with education on football it costs money, and if parents have the money to spend...but the FAs must incentive the football in areas without that money power, must incentive the creation of charity teams (teams that "work" in poor areas to develop the kids that have no money to enter football academies), must go into schools and support the creation of teams to the ones that can´t afford to be in one football academy, must incentive the creation of class competitions in schools and kindergartens, go into neighbourhoods and incentive the creation of teams for base football. Football growth was always about passion, if we are only putting the ones with money to play that will be lost. It must start when you are 4, 5 or 6 years old with the only objective of deliver the kids the passion for playing football, the passion to compete, the passion for dreaming.

2- no champions until the U11 age group. When I say that there shouldn't exist champions under that age I'm not saying that there shouldn't be competition (and you can read it in the next point), I'm only saying that it is not good for the development of players to have that. It is simple if you think about it. The early years of football must be about creating the passion for the game for the larger number of kids possible. Kids grow that passion by playing, by competing against others. Having champions is more important for the boost of adults (parents and coaches) egos than for the kids. The kids think in the moment, now, they want to win the game, they are not concerned with their chances of success in a championship that will only end in 8 months. Every kid is competitive by nature, they all want to win, they create new challenges to compete with themselves. Not having competitions won´t remove to the kids that spirit of competition and taking them that spirit will never be the objective because that is why they improve and learn so fast. So, if the kids are not the problem, what is the problem? The problem is simple, the parents (putting pressure in the kids to be champions), the parents again (in order to achieve winning they yell in the games to their own kids, to other kids that they are weak and they should quit, or even calling them bad names...and those same kids are friends of their sons, and they play all the time together, and they go to the same school, and they share the same playgrounds...the shame of having their parents being cruel to their friends must be awful for them), the coaches (they want to be champions so they go get kids of other teams to create competitive teams and the players they had don´t play anymore), the coaches again (they put pressure on the kids to win and with that they are removing them the passion for doing something they love to do and make some kids drop out), the coaches again (they are only focused on winning that they forget the essential on base/roots football, to teach them how to play the game, to make them improve, to put them to play), the directors (that put pressure on coaches and players to win no matter what and sacking the coaches if they don't). All of that is real and it is one of the reasons for earlier drop out in base/root football.

3- the more competitions the better. Even without a champion, there must be regular football competitions, starting in U5 and not skipping any age group until they are in 11 a side football. Having small "championships" the entire year, selecting after those small championships the teams that won more to play with the others of other groups that also won more, and the teams that lost more to play against the teams that also lost more. It is not good for anyone to see scores of 15-0, so this process will allow to go selecting the teams according to their level. The evolution of players can only be done by providing competition to the kids, make them play against different opponents...no training will ever teach the kids to compete. Only by competing they will develop their game, they will face new/different obstacles, they will have to come up with new solutions, they will have to be creative to overcome those obstacles.

4- Starting with small sided game forms and evolving to 11 a-side football (I'll talk more about it down this text). The less players a game has, the players will have more times the ball in their possession. And for developing kids it is fundamental to have the ball to succeed in their evolution as football players. So we must start with small sided games in the beginning of their formative process and go increasing the number of players and the space of the game as they move into other age groups.

5- the people that are working in base/roots football must know what they are doing, the level they are coaching and the expectations over a base/roots coach. This seems basic but it is not. Most coaches want to get to professional football, so they act in base football the same way they would act in professional football (playing only the better ones, care more about the winning than the development of players, ...). The organizations that rule the base/root football (FA, Education Bureaus, Clubs, ...) must give clear indications to the coaches of what it is expected from them. What to coach, the objectives for the development of players, the way to act with kids, ...

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I support the idea that the initiation of football must be made with the only purpose of incite the passion for the game. Therefore, the first years in football (4 to 7 years old) must be focused on the game and having little intervention of adults. Literature on the subject claims that the ideal age for motor skill acquisition is between 2 and 7 years old, so incentive the kids to play freely and try new things at those ages.

The trainings must be focused on playing the game, in game related exercises and fun games with technical skills and opposition (do not tell them what and how to do things…create objectives in the fun games and they have to get there by their own. You can and you must play with them those fun games, the kids will see what and how you do it and will try to replicate those gestures/actions in their own way). In the games the players must play freely, let them express their creativity without coaches and parent directions. There should be no coaches for these age groups but educators. These must be responsible for the game trainings (at least half of the training time must be game), organize fun games to improve their skills and refereeing the games against other teams. The referee must educate the kids to the game and not only enforce the laws of the game. He must explain what the foul was, explain and exemplify what can the player do instead of the foul behaviour. If the players do the correct action but the gesture was wrong (example, throw-in with both hands and ball starting behind the head but they jump doing it) let them continue the game. The less stops in the game the better.

After the age of 7 and to the age of 11 it is, in my belief, the ideal age to start having coaches that will teach the players basic positioning, basic tactical directions, playing in team (psychology says that before 7 they are self-centred) and correction of the decision making by asking them to read and understand the game around them. But always keep in mind to incentive the players to create new things, have initiative to unbalance the game and keep and offensive mindset.

Talking a little about the game forms to the different age groups, and putting in consideration all that was written before, my belief is that the organization of the age groups should be done this way:

• U5 and U6 – playing in 3 a-side game form without goalkeeper. Small field and small goals. The players that get substituted can enter again in the game. If the FA can organize these competitions to be played in different types of fields (natural grass, synthetic grass, dirt, sand, concrete, pavement roads, parking lots, inside buildings in closed spaces where they can play against the wall and keep playing, …) and with different sizes for the fields, better. This way we create the passion for playing football no matter where and without specific positions (let them play freely, move freely, run a lot with and without ball).

• U7 and U8 – playing in 4 a-side game form (3 field players + 1 goalkeeper). The players that get substituted can enter again in the game. The objectives of this game form is to continue to provide fun for the kids but introducing some new rules (like the goalkeeper and the areas where he can grab the ball). Keep letting the players move freely all over the field. Also go changing all field players to the goalkeeper position.

• U9 – playing 5 a-side game form (4 field players + 1 goalkeeper). The players that get substituted can enter again in the game. Here you can start to define some positions in field (goalkeeper, defender, midfielder, attackers) but keep letting the players move all over the field according to the ball position.

• U10 – playing 6 a-side game form (5 field players + 1 goalkeeper). The players that get substituted can enter again in the game.

• U11 – playing 7 a -side game form (6 field players + 1 goalkeeper). The players that get substituted can enter again in the game.

• U12 – playing 8 a-side game form (7 field players + 1 goalkeeper). The players that get substituted can enter again in the game. Here you can start to put the off-side rule, their maturity allows them to understand it.

• U13 – playing 9 a-side game form (8 field players + 1 goalkeeper) with off-side. The players that get substituted can enter again in the game.

• U14 and above – playing 11 a-side (10 field players + 1 goalkeeper) with off-side. Here you can start to put limitations on the number of substitutions allowed and on the players that got substituted. But always allowing to be more than the normal 3 substitutions (for example, U14/U15 no limitation, U16/U17 limitation of 6 substitutions + gk substitution with only 2 stops to substitute in each half for each team + half time, U18/U19 limitation of 5 substitutions + gk substitution, U23 limitation of 4 substitutions) with all of these age groups being able to have 11 players in the bench.

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For me (and I always say that this is only my opinion based on my experience and not the only way of getting success in forming football players) this provides all that a player (and a coach) needs to develop their skills, their game and their decision making.

It starts with small sided games that provide to the players several moments of having the ball and take decisions, it increases their passion for the game because it has more scoring situations and it also allows them to be free in their decision making, error and try again, try better. All of that without the pressure of coaches and parents always shouting them where to position and what to do.

As they grow older they will have to experience more teammates and more opponents in field, they will have to develop their positioning, their decision making will have to improve, there will be more tactical instructions and more decision to make. And every year adding a new player to the game form will help them (and the coach) to keep their development and have new challenges to face, new ways to approach the game, new decision making.

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Youth football

Youth football has his own particularities apart from base football. It is no longer that moment to create the passion for the game and give the basic notions of how to play it allowing full freedom in the players to express their skills, but a moment where you already have competition, where you have to teach the players that football is a sport of regularity with the objective of performance through an entire season. Where the planning, the constancy of performance and effort, the game intelligence, the strategy and team spirit make the difference in a regular sport.

That moment for me should be around 12/13 years old. In my experience and way of thinking, that is the ideal age where the kids grow their maturity to start to understand these concepts and act according to them. This doesn´t mean that before that age we can’t start to ask those things from the kids (we can and we should), but we can´t also forget that before that age we are coaching kids, not adolescents, and the most important thing for one kid is having fun.

So in these age groups the coach must have in consideration other things apart from the fun, he still has to know that he is coaching young players but the approach to the training must be almost similar to the adult training. If in the base football he was more concerned with the technical and tactical (decision making) approach, in youth football he must pay more attention to the physical, tactical (game philosophy, tactical system, set pieces, …), psychological aspects and opposition team study. The youth teams are a preparation to the professional football, so the players in these age groups must be prepared to the kind of training they will find in professional football. But be aware that the full grown of the physical aspects, the full physical maturity, will only happen after 18 yo…so respect their development and do physical trainings adapted to their age (we all have seen examples of players that at 16 were already having physical training like adults and when they reached 18 they spent more time in the medical station than in trainings).

The main aspects that the coach must concern in these age groups are:

1. The team game philosophy. The way the coach wants his team to play, to attack, to defend, to act in all moments of the game. He must consider the players in order to define:

   1.  Offensive organization (how the team acts when they have the ball possession)

   2.  Defensive organization (how the team acts when they don’t have the ball possession)

   3.  Offensive transition (how the team reacts when they recover the ball possession)

   4.  Defensive transition (how the team reacts when they lose the ball possession)

   5.  Set pieces (offensive and defensive. Positioning, movements, marking, body positioning, …)

2. Physical development of the players. In adolescence is the ideal age to start focusing on the physical aspects. Before that the focus must be on technical and decision-making aspects, but we cannot forget that football is a game, therefore it is based on physical aspects. Factors like general and specific endurance, general and specific strength, speed…must start to be part of the development of the player (according to their physical development).

3. The opponent and the environment (external aspects). Being a game with opposition, we cannot concern only in our own game philosophy, we also must concern in the other team game philosophy, their strengths and their weaknesses, the weather conditions, …and with all of that prepare our team the best way to face all those external aspects, not only to achieve a good score but also as a preparation for professional football.

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Other considerations on youth football

Everyone has his own ideas about how youth football should be organized in order to achieve more and better players. And I might say that everyone is right…every idea can be good or bad depending on the context/environment where it is applied and the objectives that are behind those ideas.

For example, in a conversation with a Belgium coach he told me that in Belgium the base football starts with 5 a side football and evolves straight to 8 a side (here I´m going to trust him because I don´t know if that is really the truth).  The idea behind that way of approaching base football is because that way the kids are always playing in diamond shape style, whether they play 5 a side, 8 a side or 11 a side.

That made real sense in my head, and clearly they are achieving success with that way of doing things once their national team is getting higher in the FIFA ranking and they have achieved great success in developing good players. Yet I have different ideas about how it would be MY way of doing things in youth football.

These are my thoughts about that.

• I believe that the beginning of the formative process must start in a young age with the only purpose of creating the passion for the game in the kids. So by the age of 4/5 is the ideal age to start in the football world. At these ages the objective must be only game…the teaching of the basic objectives and basic rules of the game and letting them play freely and have fun. Enjoy your kids having fun…

• I believe that before U19 all the Age Groups must be mixed. There should be no genders, only quality. If one player has quality to play in a certain age group championship or belong to a certain team there should be no limitations of gender. Only the U19 age group and above should have that kind of limitation.

• Before U13 the competitions should all be mixed, allowing the participation of boys teams, girls teams and mixed teams. These competitions should also be local without level distinction (Divisions), but at the same time they must be selective, ensuring that teams play against other teams of more or less the same level.

• In U13 and above the competitions can start to have different Divisions and be Provincial or National. There can also be a distinction on mixed competitions and competitions only for girls (having worked in women football I could see that girls were more likely to enter football to an only girls team that to a mixed team).

• Like I said in the beginning, all the visions about youth football are right if they fit an objective/idea and a purpose to develop the players. Mine is simple, I believe that currently the technical level of the football players is very similar (with some ETs apart from that), so what makes players be better or worse is their decision making, the way they think by themselves. I believe this way of changing the game form in every age group can be a way to stimulate the players and the coaches to think different every year. In order to adapt to a new reality (new game form, more players, more space, …) I have to adapt my ideas and play in a different way, I have to come up with new solutions for facing the new challenges. Making the kids play always the same way, with the same game form, with the same tactical system can be good because they get to adult football being very competent in the way people in charge want them to play but they can´t fit in other ways of playing, and that is formatting and not formation. The way I see youth football is as a path where we need to show our players new things, new problems, make them go out of their comfort zone and create solutions in order to create a knowledge that will make them competent in every “problem” they will face as professional football players.

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Regarding the use of other disciplines of football in the teaching of the sport, I also believe that that is very important for the development of the young players.

The teaching of futsal and beach soccer is important for them to understand the game. Always making them understand that football, futsal and beach soccer are different sports, because they have different rules, therefore they must be played in different ways. But that will make them improve their technical skills, they will face different problems and have to come up with different solutions to the problems and that will make them improve their decision making, and all of that will make them improve their level in football.

But once again, the players must understand that they are playing different sports with different rules. In cultures used to see those sports in television it is easy to make players understand that, in Countries that the football culture is not so big it becomes hard to explain the players why they can do one thing in one of them and in the others they can’t do the same. I’ll give one example, in some Provinces in China, the players start with futsal and the next step is to play 8 a-side football. Chinese call football to both sports and the players lack of football culture. They spend most of their time studying and not watching sport. Most of the coaches don´t know that futsal is a different sport that football. This makes the players (and sometimes the coaches) don’t understand why in one age group the goalkeeper must do the reposition of the ball with the hands and in the other age group with the foot. They don´t understand why in one age group the kick-in is with the foot and in the other age group the throw-in with the hands. Most of the times we see players, coaches and referees counting the time in football repositions (throw-ins, goal kicks, corner kicks, fouls, …) like they do in futsal.

It is important to give different stimulation (other disciplines of football) to the players, but more important than that, it is important to make them understand that they are different sports with different rules.

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Vision on professional football

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Professional football is all about competition, winning.

This way, from a coach perspective, there isn’t much to say about it. Train all aspects of the game the best you can, gather the best players that you can get, make them perform the best you can and win the most games possible (this is the simple vision on the coach job).

In an organizational perspective there are always considerations to make.

Once again, I won´t say that this is the only approach that can lead to success but this is my way of seeing professional football.

• Any competition must have relegations. There are some closed leagues (for example in the USA) that accept teams only by invitation and once they are in, they never go out. This is only business and has nothing to do with the spirit of football, of competition. A team, the players and anyone that don´t feel stress, fear of failure, will accommodate and won´t try to be better. The same happens in these competitions, you have the top teams fighting for the championship and you have all the others that are just playing without objectives. That leads them to accommodate to it and don´t try their best, and therefore their development and the development of all the other teams that compete against them will slow down or even stop because there is no real competition, there is nothing to lose, there is nothing to fight for, and people don´t try their best to be better.

• The play-offs…in my opinion the problem is the same. The teams spend most of the season knowing that they are in play-off position and it doesn´t matter if they end in 1st or in 8th, they will always have the chance of fighting for the championship. A championship is something that rewards regularity, the team that is more regular during the season must be champion. That is the only way of having good games every weekend, is having teams fighting to be regular. Play-offs bring the opposite, we only have real competition on them, the rest of the season it’s just to have commercial profit. This brings also another problem in the development of players and competition between teams, that is the fact that most times the teams that don´t go to the playoffs end their championships sooner than the teams that go to the playoff. The teams and the players of those teams don´t have as many games per season as the others, creating a gap in their development to the other teams.

• Number of professional players with contract with the club. What we see now in professional football is that the biggest clubs hire a large number of players, and some of them have more than 100 players under contract. That can be a problem, first of all because in a season they will never use in game all players, second because most players are going to be loaned and never play for the team they have contract, and third because most of the hiring have the objective of weaken the other teams and not strengthen their own team. That will lead to a weakening of the league because the medium teams can´t afford to buy those players. There must be a limitation of players under contract, for example 25 players and the others must be released in order to allow them to search for new teams. That will allow the medium teams to reach for those players and make the leagues more competitive and will also allow the youth players have their chances of reaching the first team and have their chances of playing.

• Loan players. The problem here follows the last item. When big teams hire a lot of players, they will need to put some players out of the first team. Loaning players to other teams, especially in the leagues where the loaned players can´t play against the loaning team, will create an unfair league because teams won´t be able to use those players against the loaning teams. We need to create laws where teams can only loan players under 23, the players older than that have to be in first team or have to be released because most of the times they won’t ever get the chance of returning to the team.

• Number of players in the bench. In order to give the chance to youth players to get game time in professional teams we should enlarge the number of players in the bench on professional competitions to 11. This must be followed by regulations on the number of youth players in the games, for example in the 22 players in the game, 5 of them must be U21 and 2 of these must be U19. This way there are more chances of youth players to be substituted in the game.

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Coach education

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One of the main problems of football. We must think for a while and try to discover what can be changed…we can say that we have several types of football training, foundation football, youth football and adult football (professional, semi-professional and amateur). But we only have one path when it comes to coach formative degrees. It starts with the national degrees (Football Associations) and after that the Level B, A and Pro of the Football Confederations.

Whether you have objectives of being a coach in professional adult football or you want your path to be in foundation football, the formative process is the same. If you want to be head coach or goalkeeper coach, the courses are the same (in some football associations they already have courses only for goalkeeper coaches). For me this doesn´t make any sense.

Some coaches are more faded to work in professional football, others in youth football and others in base football. This way there should also be different kinds of education courses to the coaches.

The number of courses I think is well adapted (B, A and Pro by the Football Confederations and the National levels), but there should be a division in specialization in the Confederation courses. The B, A and Pro licences should be divided in Professional, Youth, Base, Goalkeeper, Strength and conditioning and scouting specializations. All of them would have a general part with the same teaching objects and a specialization part where the coaches could choose the branch they wanted. If a coach had, for example, a A licence in youth football and wanted to go to professional football he only had to do the specialization part.

It is important to give coaches formation directed to the age groups they coach. This way it is not good to give them all the same courses knowing they won’t coach the same way in different age groups. I believe all coaches must have Pro licences in all age groups to teach and coach football the best they can. And most of the higher courses are only guided to professional football. It doesn´t make any sense coaches of base football only having National or B licences to teach football (the more education they have the best they can teach the players) and it also doesn´t make any sense for them to have A or Pro licences if those licences are guided to professional football. It makes all sense to have well educated coaches in base and youth football, but only if the education is guided to those age groups.

This way we must give more education guided to all age groups and let the coaches choose the specialization they find more fit to them. This will also end with the growing problem of coaches looking at base and youth football as a starting point for their professional career and looking at scores has a path to reach professional football instead of looking to base/youth football as a path to grow the players.

So, the number of courses must be adjusted, providing the coaches to have more chances to progress in their formative path and their careers by doing 4 or 5 courses a year. The costs of the courses must also be lower in order to incentive coaches to apply for them. The rules on youth teams of professional clubs must also be changed, all the coaches from the base to the top teams must have A or Pro licences (with the specializations in base, youth, professional, goalkeeper and strength and conditioning according to the age group they coach) and all of the coaches must be under professional contract.

This will allow a greater knowledge of the coaches in each formative step and will create better coaches and a better formative process to the players with coaches with structured basis guided to each age group and in the overall a better development of the players.