by morecambe mick » Tue Jun 29, 2010 4:28 am
The general idea in Europe is for kids to play in small sided games, on small scale pitches.
that idea is advocated by Trevor Brooking to encourage skills.
In Germany, for example, the 4 and 5 year olds play in competitive leagues in small sides on small pitches. This country do not allow competitive leagues until years later.
Tesco fund an FA lead (through local county level FA centres) the "Tesco Soccer Skills". In our area it was run by the Lancs FA and held in the sports hall at Our Ladys. Lancs FA cancelled the groups because one of their coaches was drafted into the Womens national level game and they weren't allowed/didn't have the funding, to employ another coach. They carried on in Barrow though?
Basically what I'm saying is that there isn't the provision for kids to get skills training at a high level, like clever kids that aren't pushed or challenged in education, they give up.
Want to know why we've got a country full of players who do "an Upson" lumping the ball upfield?
As mentioned earlier, putting 11yr olds onto a full size pitch is the reason for that, and that is happening now!
When looking for a player to go at the back on one of those pitches, who is the coach going to pick? The player, boy/girl - doesn't matter, who can kick the ball a long way with no skill or the player who can pick out a pass but can't get the ball far? By all means pick the strong kicker and teach them some skills - if you've the time. The naturally gifted weaker kicker, at least the weaker kicker at that stage in life, is still neglected.
1 or maybe 2 hours a week at age 11 is too little and too late.
I for one am glad to see that our club are pro active in this, having spent a fair amount of time over the years at community based training sessions, the encouagement to development skills in all kids is refreshing. I believe this will, in the coming years, be rolled out and the club take on a bigger role in the local community. The team known locally as Morecambe Youth FC or Morecambe Youth AFC have been forced to change their name this coming season they'll be known as Morecambe Hawks, which is a return to their original name of some years past.
This would indicate that the club have the intention of stepping into the gap locally and encouraging youth development. This, I would envisage, would be to the benefit of all local youth sides. Who knows in years to come it may be that a local lad can, once again have a chance of making the first team, coming up through the ranks. We are losing lads from the local area evry year, to the likes of Burnley/Preston/Blackpool etc who have good youth set-ups already.