If your youth football team are winning every week, are you really “winning”? UEFA A licensed coach, Dan Wright, unpacks the constant search for an appropriate challenge. Almost weekly online I see results that just don’t make sense. Teams winning 22-0 and promoting it, wearing it like a badge of honour, instead of reflecting on who is really benefiting in these one-sided games. I see Tweets about grassroots Under-10s teams going 60 games unbeaten and labelled “invincible”. But as talent developers, we should be looking instead…
player development
Constraints based learning and ecological dynamics are concepts that Player Development Project has promoted for a long time. Football coach and University tutor, Ben Galloway shares his excellent video on the topic around how the concepts can be applied in your coaching environment. The next couple of blog posts that I share via PDP will revolve around some videos that I have produced, stemming from Constraints Based Learning and Ecological Dynamics. Hopefully what these videos will provide is support to previously posted material and a…
Developing talent is a complex journey for both player and coach. Founder of TOVO Institute & regular PDP contributor, Todd Beane discusses the dangers of looking into the past for answers to contemporary coaching challenges. As I write I am reading the introductory pages to Head Strong by Dave Asprey, which explores our capacity to maximize our brain’s potential. Who wouldn’t want to do that? Although my wife suggests from time to time that I do not have considerable substance between the ears, why not take full…
What influence does sporting governance have on player development and the athlete environment? Mark Upton, founder of myfastestmile, discusses how governing and funding bodies are PART of a complex social system – not THE system Previous fragments – #1, #2, #3, #4, #5, #6, #7, #8, #9 In one of the links in fragment #9 it was intimated that innovation in football academies could be hampered by rigid regulations imposed from the governing body of that sport. This is not a sport-specific phenomena…Peter Gray (2014) talks of the same issue in education and the challenges of…
Game sense, how do we develop it? PE Teacher & regular PDP contributor, Sporticus shares his innovative approach to PE and helping his students develop skill and game understanding in cricket through realistic scenarios, interactions and guided discovery. As a department we have over timed moved away from ‘sport as sports technique’ method of teaching sports within our curriculum to ‘sport as tactical concepts’. This is in the belief that: The game sets the context of learning and gives that learning some meaning. Play is…
What would you do to overhaul your national player development pathway if finance was not an issue? Founder of Changing the Game Project, John O’Sullivan discusses the financial position of US Soccer after it was revealed they had $100 million in the bank. What would you do with $100 million to improve the sport you love? It’s kind of a magic wand question, isn’t it? You have enough money to make a significant impact in a sport on every level, how do you spend…
What are team values and how do they influence culture? In the first of a two part feature, International Coach Developer and expert in culture in sport, John Alder discusses the balance of team culture and how often this is an element in team sport where control cannot be exerted and we have to look beyond slogans on walls and team meetings in order to greater understand team dynamics. *John contributed to this article in his personal capacity. The views expressed are his own…
Josh Cullen is a young West Ham player on the rise. PDP Editor, Dave Wright spoke at length with Josh about his long journey through the West Ham Academy, the value of honesty and the challenge of being pushed outside of his comfort zone. Josh Cullen was born in Hackney in 1996. For the first few years of his life, he lived in Bow, East London – a stone’s throw away from the future home of West Ham United, the Queen Elizabeth Stadium. At…
Jon de Souza was appointed Academy Manager at Colchester United in July 2016, after a coaching career that has taken him from club he joined as a schoolboy, Luton Town, to a coach education role at the Football Association and Brentford FC. PDP spoke to Jon about his career, and discussed the importance of coaching the individual. Jon de Souza began his footballing journey at Luton Town, signing for the Hatters as an under-14 player. Despite their fairly lowly status, Luton Town are a…
Are you running ‘static’ sessions? Regular PDP contributor and founder of TOVO International, Todd Beane explains the dangers of static sessions and gives some practical advice for coaches to move towards ‘solution’ based sessions. There are voices from locker rooms of false wisdom suggesting that to train we must we must suffer through some rite of painful passage. It is a very macho and misguided notion of how we must make “suck it up” to stack up. It also tends to justify horribly boring training…
Systems tend to dominate organisational thinking in the modern age. So how do these systems potentially harm player development and participation? Co-founder of myfastestmile & regular PDP contributor, Mark Upton discusses the dangers of a ‘mechanistic’ approach to sport and the risk we run when working to a one-size-fits-all approach. Amongst a long and enjoyable conversation with a colleague involved in rugby last week, there was a somewhat sobering moment. He intimated his love for the game, evident since early childhood, had eroded to the…
Possession has become a huge trend in football coaching. But are we educating our young players to retain the ball well enough? Is our practice design representative of the game? PDP Technical Advisor, Dan Wright discusses how we can help our players master 1v1s and cites Renato Sanches & Alexis Sanchez as examples of players excelling in this area. Most coaches practice 1v1’s but are we doing it right and more importantly are we meeting the demands of the game? Recently I analysed two players,…
The environment surrounding the player must be understood to ensure we help players achieve their potential. PDP Lead Researcher and PhD candidate, James Vaughan discusses the holistic view of player development that the PDP team has been working on as a result of over two years of conversations, interviews, research and experience. Ruben Jongkind is the former Head of Talent Development at Ajax and now works for Cruyff Football. He and Johan Cruyff worked together to implement ‘Plan Cruyff’ at Ajax between 2011 and 2013….
A handshake? How important is it in sport? Sporticus is a PE Teacher, blogger and advocate for positive player development. In this contribution, he discusses the role of the coach to go beyond the game and ensure that values and rituals are respected in the quest to develop better people, and better players. Today’s game turned sour due to a handshake. Or to be more exact, the lack of a handshake. My team had been beaten well in all areas of the game and the opposition had…
PDP Lead Researcher James Vaughan and Research Associate Hanna Eggestrand explore the basic human values that shape coaching sessions and discuss some practical implications for coaches and clubs. Behind everything we do in life, there is a why. Why do people hold certain attitudes and behave in certain ways? Research shows a consistent but often overlooked factor at play here: our values. Essentially, when you ask yourself “why do I coach?” or “why do I coach like that?”, the answer comes from what you value deep down….
Values represent what we believe is important in life. In this article, Research Associate Hanna Eggestrand and PDP Lead Researcher James Vaughan explore basic human values and how they can affect coaching, player development and the world around us. What do you think is important in life? Perhaps not surprisingly, what you value is likely to affect the way you coach, and the way you coach will spread values. Interestingly, research has found that the same values appear in a range of different cultures and…
The creation a “football culture” is key to the long-term growth of football in any setting. The key question for those wanting to develop this culture is – How? Former Aldershot Town academy manager and Cook Islands national team manager Drew Sherman attempts to answer this question by looking at his own professional experiences and discusses the importance of “football culture”. We hear on an increasingly regular basis about the importance of “football culture”, the need to create a “culture of excellence” when we aim…
Is your environment a place of learning? Todd Beane, Founder of TOVO Institute & Co-Founder of Cruyff Football shares his views around how to go about making your club or program a genuine learning environment for developing players. I have had the opportunity to visit many football clubs over the years. Upon arrival, it does not take long to determine what type of club I am visiting. Type 1: Image Centre Type 2: Learning Centre Image Centres Some clubs pay great attention to appearances. These types…