Watch the video or read the blog below.
As a new season approaches thousands of children across the country will be entering their first year playing organised football. Under 7’s league across the country will be packed with excited children, parents and coaches.
I am still a few years away from this as a parent, in all honesty I am not sure if I am excited about it or dreading it, that is of course if my children want to play football at this age.
In this blog I will share my thoughts for coaches and parents on how to create a great environment for players of that age. I also have a free webinar coming up for coaches of these age groups that you can find out more information and register for here.
We will start, as we always should, with the players.
PLAYERS
We need to create a great environment for players to go and enjoy and express themselves. Players this age are not mini-adults, their version of the game will not look anything like the adult version of the game. They will bunch, they wont spread out, they wont want to pass the ball and the players that are more physically developed will dominate. These things are going to happen, accept it and work on the areas you can develop.
At this age children are psychologically built to focus on themselves and their brains are developing quickly. This is a golden time to work on their individual technique rather than their ‘team play’. Imagine your child at Christmas gets a present, they absolutely love it. What would their reaction be if you said “go give that to your friend to play with now”… most probably a meltdown of some sort. That is what you are asking them to do when you keep telling them to pass the football.
This is a golden age to teach them to manipulate the ball with both feet, with different parts off the feet and to practice how they can move the ball. They should have thousands of touches of the ball in a training session. Coaches often gasp when I say that, but they should and its easily achievable if you mix up a lot of ball each practices with 1v1 and 2v2 games.
Remember they are still children and they will love fun games and stories.
I have also never seen a non competitive game of football, just because there aren’t league tables doesn’t mean children aren’t trying to win. Something I see at games of football at this age is teams getting beaten by big score lines. But if after the game you give the team who have lost a ball after the game, they will usually run off and play with their friends all laughing and joking again. At the same time some parents and coaches are left at the pitch upset about the result.
COACHES
This is not the world cup, I repeat, this is not the world cup.
For me the best coaches at under 7 do the following:
- Are patient
- Are consistent
- Allow children to express themselves
- Allow children to make decisions (video blog on how to do this here)
- Praise rather than criticise
- Use language and sayings the children understand
- Provide equal playing time
- Rotate positions (video blog on why this is important here)
- Create practices that involve the players getting lots of touches of the ball
- Praise characteristics in players such as hard work, teamwork, trying their best, sportsmanship.
- Offer encouragement from the sidelines when needed, but don’t shout and scream.
- Use sayings like “good try”, “what did you enjoy today” and “this player has just shown me this brilliant skill, who else can try it?”
All these behaviours will create a positive environment for children to play in and learn. Creating a lifelong love for the game.
Then the coaches at this age that personally I think need help to improve and be educated:
- Shout and scream
- PlayStation coach (pass, shoot dribble shouts etc)
- Only care about winning
- Work constantly on passing and spreading out
- Don’t rotate positions
- Play the “strongest” players for longer than the “weaker” players
- Play effective football to help win games
- Use phrases like “what are you doing there”, “that’s not good enough”, “they don’t want it enough”.
These are the coaches who believe it’s all about competing and winning, there is nothing wrong with wanting to win, I value it highly, but it’s not the most important thing at this age group. I would always encourage players to give everything you can to try and win, as a I believe that is a good mindset to have. But if a player has tried their best to win and they have fallen short, they need to know that is ok.
Oh and last one on this subject is that’s its not the refs fault, so don’t create a blame culture in children as we need to teach them to take responsibility.
PARENTS
I always tell parents to just enjoy watching their children play, sit back, and watch how happy they are running around and playing with their friends. That’s what this age is about.
Parents often ask me what club to join locally. My answer is always to pick your coach not the club. Go to games at this age group and look at the way the coach acts and behaves, then decide if this is right for your child.
I recently produced a short tik tok video on what makes a good football parent which you can view here.
As parents you should show your children support and encouragement, but always find out why they like playing football. Most players will answer with “I like playing with my friends” and I “like to do skills and score goals”. They rarely mention they play only to win, they will say they like winning of course, but that is not the main reason they play.
After the initial lockdowns during the pandemic most youth teams I went to work with had all missed playing with their friends rather than missed playing games.
WEBINAR
I am running a free coaching webinar on Thursday 29th September for coaches of under 6, 7 and 8 age groups. This will involve advice on:
- How to coach under 7s
- Practices and Sessions
- Dealing with parents
- Q & A
To sign up for the webinar please fill out the form here