Episode 9 - Understanding the Youth Football Landscape

Grassroots clubs. Development centres. Professional academies.

If you're new to youth football, it can feel like a maze of different pathways and opportunities. But what do they all actually mean?

In this episode of From the Sidelines, I explore the different environments available to young players as the youth football landscape continues to grow and evolve, what each one is designed to do, and why choosing the "best" option isn't always about chasing the biggest setup.

Because every child is different, and the right football journey isn't the same for everyone ⚽.

What helped you decide the right environment for your child? I'd love to hear your thoughts.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:02

One of the questions you hear quite a lot across grassroots football is should my child be in an academy? The more I think about it, I don't actually think that's the first question parents should be asking. Before we answer that, we need to understand that football landscape. In this episode of From the Sidelines, I'm gonna be looking at the understanding of youth football landscape. Let's jump in.

SPEAKER_01 0:41

Let's talk about grassroots football. Thanks for listening to from the sidelines, life lessons, little victories, and honest reflections. All from the sidelines.

SPEAKER_00 1:30

Good to have you all back again. As I said, this episode today is gonna be a little bit different, and I'm gonna be looking at rather than say maybe comparing grassroots with academy football, I wanted to take a step back and look at the bigger picture in my experience of that so far. If you might be new to youth football, it can feel like a whole new world, languages to learn, like the landscape feels like it's ever-changing. You have grassroots clubs, development centres. We're seeing a lot of the JPL teams, private coaching, professional academies, and it's easy to wonder what's the difference, or even am I doing the right thing for my child? So today I simply want to try and help make sense of it, I suppose, and talk about my experience of where I've seen these things across across my grassroots journey so far. So where most journeys will begin, I guess for the vast majority of children, football starts in grassroots, doesn't it? It's your local clubs, your Saturday or Sunday mornings, kicks, isn't it? Is one of the kind of the first ones that people get it get into. But at that time it's all about making friends, you're learning the basics, you're falling in love with the game. And I think that's really important because grassroots isn't simply the first step towards something kettles. For many children, it's exactly like where do they belong, it's about them participating in something. Well, I always say for for my lab being part of it, I just want them to feel part of that community, part of something. Um, and I think that's really important. It helps bring confidence in, and of course, you want to create great memories, you want them to create great memories that they'll always remember and be able to look back on fondly. So for me, I think at the minute, what I'm seeing across the grassroots landscape is there's more opportunities than ever. Um, and I think over the last few years things just continuously evolve, and I imagine they'll continue to evolve and exist for young players. I don't remember at six, seven years old, there was a lot for us at that point, whereas now there's so much stuff going on, and you've got all these different things, yep, your development centres, your private coaching, football schools, you know, JPL clubs, summer camps, all this, and lots of programs that offer additional coaching outside of your grassroots football team. And honestly, you know, that's absolutely a positive thing. You know, the more opportunities children have to play and enjoy football, the better. But maybe it can also be a little bit confusing. This is me as well, trying to understand the labels and the things that you hear and the words that you hear across grassroots football. Sometimes you hear words like elite, academy, development, high performance, and naturally your parents might look at that and think, oh, that must be a pathway. But it isn't always, you know, we played a team in one of our first in our first season that had academy at the end of their name, and we were like, oh wow, this is going to be a really good team because they're an academy, we're just a normal team. But again, you just associated that language with oh, well, actually, this must be something good, but it isn't always that way. You know, some programs are simply offering another training session a week. Some do provide a higher level of competition, absolutely, dependent on the level that your children are playing at. They might be playing in a mixed team that's a mixed ability, and actually, if they go to um one of these uh you know development sessions, they might be getting a higher level of competition where they're playing with higher level players. Um, some are designed to complement grassroots football. Um, and obviously professional academies, I mean, they're they're something completely different again, aren't they? And and none of those environments are wrong, they're just designed for different purposes. Um, and that's absolutely fine. So I guess your higher level football, like taking a look at your really high levels, you know, maybe looking at some of those things where you see JPL pop up a little bit more. Um, these these development academies, they can offer fantastic football, they can do different challenges, maybe higher standards, more competitive environments. But that's not to say that actually grassroots don't have that, because grassroots football absolutely has that. You know, we try to have really high standards within our team, you know, we want to create competitive environments, we want to give our children different challenges. So that's not as well saying that, well, you'll only find that in one of these levels as well, but there is different opportunities, and that sometimes is okay. And for some children, that's exactly what they need. For others, grassroots can be the perfect environment for them, and and neither choice is automatically better. It's just understanding what your child needs, isn't it? Really, not what maybe sounds the most impressive. So, like the question I'd be asking is if somebody said, Should my six or seven-year-old join a you know a development centre, or should they should they move to a higher level team? Your first question shouldn't be how much does that cost? And going to some of these development presenters, you know, it might cost a bit more to join and this, that, and the other, or who's running it, who are your coaches. It would simply be, well, why? Why do I want to do it? Because if the answer is my child absolutely loves football and just wants another opportunity to play and keep developing, fantastic. But if the answer is we're worried that they'll fall behind if they don't, well then that's probably a different conversation, isn't it? And it's following the child, not like the badge or how it's packaged up. And sometimes as adults, you might see that it's packaged up really nicely and everything that comes with it really shiny and fancy, and actually, oh, it's a bigger club. It's you maybe get to play in this higher league. Um, children don't always think like that, do they? They're just thinking, Well, did I enjoy it today? Did I get to play with my mates? And I really can't wait to go back next week. And that's maybe the better question. I've got my lad into some additional um development coaching, where they go into footsall sessions and they love it, absolutely love it. And they say, Can't wait to go again next week. And for me, that's great because that's offering them something else, and actually they continue to want to play football. So, that for me, and in terms of how his journey's developing, that's how he's doing things a little bit differently. Maybe that's a better question, isn't it? Because the best environment isn't always and doesn't always need to be the highest level, it's the one just that where your child develops the best and they enjoy it. So there's no there's no one right path, is there? That's what I'm seeing. One child might thrive in an academy environment, and that's great. Others might flourish playing just once a week with their mates. We've seen that, we've got quite a good mix. We've got some lads that that are doing some things at development centres, and you can see that it's really helping him improve their game. But we have got lads that just play once a week, they come to training with us, um, work really hard in training, and then play our games on a Sunday, but that that they've developed massively, and again, it just shows that actually it's different, different environments, different needs for different people. One might love extra coaching, another might just prefer another hobby alongside football. That's all right, isn't it? That's okay. Not every football journey has to look the same. In fact, it shouldn't, because children have different personalities, different ambitions, different reasons for playing. So it's all about finding that balance. But it can be a confusing little grassroots world out there in youth football, not just grassroots, but that whole youth football setup, and then there's more and more that are appearing. Again, it's not wrong that these places are appearing, but it's kind of just understanding well what's right for my child and what's right for my child right now. So I guess life lesson for me, like in football, just you know, in life, there isn't that one road to success. You know, there are different paths you can do, there are different things that you might want to do, and like the important thing isn't choosing the one thing that maybe looks the most impressive, it's choosing the one that's right for that person walking it. So maybe the question isn't should my child be in an academy? Maybe it's that where's my child happiest? Where are they learning? Where are they developing? Where are they excited to come back next week? That's all the things that we try to encompass in our club, and we want our kids to want to come back. But hey, if they want to do different things to help them develop too, and and just doing things that they enjoy, go for it. Do it, do what's right for you. Because if we get all those right things, everything else has a chance to follow, doesn't it? So, thanks for listening. I hope you enjoyed that, and I'll see you all again from the sidelines.

SPEAKER_01 10:17

Thanks for listening to From the Sidelines. Love lessons, little victories, and honest reflections. Oh, from the touchline.