For me, coaching isn’t about running through exercises and ticking boxes.

It’s about creating the conditions where learning sticks.

So how do we do that? 👇🧵 2/

At the youth level, especially, our job is to build technical fluency and decision–making through purposeful practice.

Not paint–by–numbers sessions where kids follow lines and rules, and never learn to think.

Grassroots Coaches!

Every parent is unique, but across thousands of coaching interactions, I've found that patterns have emerged

Here are my 8 parent types that you may have to deal with when coaching

(Warning! You may recognise yourself in one or two of them!)

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Type 1: The Supportive Parent

The ideal parent who understands development, trusts your expertise, and provides positive support.

Characteristics:

- Asks questions to understand rather than challenge your methods
- Focuses on the child's enjoyment and development over results
- Provides positive sideline support without instruction
- Communicates concerns privately and respectfully
- Volunteers help appropriately without overstepping

Lost count of the number of times I've been at a youth game and heard this phrase:

"🤬We worked on this at training last week "

Why Youth Football Development is like reading a factual book

(Hear me out)

🧵 2/

When you read a factual book:

- Initially, you're just seeing words on a page that may make very little sense

- If you re-read or read on further, the words begin to associate with concepts

- By the end of the book, the words connect to layers and layers of different concepts

My experience

The players who master the ball at 8 become the players who are still playing at 18.

All surfaces of both feet.

Ball Mastery isn't optional. It's the foundation everything else builds on.

Master the ball, stay in the game 🧵 2/

and Ball Mastery can be done anywhere, anytime. Players are freed from only touching a ball at an organised training session

"But, there are no defenders"
"He won't use this in a game"
"His eyes are down"

I despair when I hear these things.

Do you think the Real Madrid kid in the first Tweet just magically happened to be able to manipulate the ball with both feet and 3 different surfaces of both feet in the 1v1 and then 1v2? And could do so in a:

Balanced
Coordinated
Controlled
Comfortable

manner, while retaining the ball with the correct weight of touch?

Technique about everything 💪

So how do players get from mastering the ball in the foundation phase to what you see in the video?

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1/

Can you imagine how many hours of

- Juggling
- Ball Mastery
- Football

These players have had to invest to get to this level?

Thiago and Rodri have spent most of their lives doing this.

"Kids don't want to win."

A huge myth in Youth Football.

They absolutely do.

They just don't want to be DEFINED by the result.

Here's my experience of what adults get wrong about youth competition.

🧵 1/

Kids forget the score 10 minutes after the game.

Some adults obsess about it for days.

Who has the healthier relationship with competition?

Children naturally focus on the experience.

Some of us teach them to focus on the OUTCOME.

"I walked past a session, and this coach was doing an 11v5 rondo. He was clueless"

I read comments like this, and variations of it, regularly on here

Here's why context matters more than 10 seconds of observation 🧵 2/

What you don't know from 10 seconds of observation:

❌ Session objectives
❌ Where players are in their learning journey
❌ What happened before this moment
❌ What comes after
❌ Player capabilities and needs
❌ Their long-term development plan

"My child isn't getting enough game time."

"The coach is useless."

"Other kids are getting special treatment."

"Just have fun"

Are parents causing an issue in grassroots football? 🧵 2/

I've coached a lot of grassroots football and

*Spoiler alert*

The problem isn't always difficult parents.

It's often unclear communication from coaches and clubs.

Last weekend you watched your team play.

You saw them lose the ball 23 times.

You saw your striker missed three clear chances.

You observed that the pressing wasn't coordinated.

You review the footage afterwards

But are you analysing or "consuming" that footage?

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The potential problem with match analysis:

- When you consume football, you see what happened.

- When you analyse football, you can see what "should" have happened next.

The ball is everything in football.

Yet do coaches still skip a crucial first step in player development?

After working with hundreds of youth players, I've learned that Mastering The Ball must come before everything else.

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Here's a harsh truth:

A player who cannot master the ball will ALWAYS be fighting with the ball rather than using it.

Even if they perfectly understand when and how to beat a defender, their poor first touch will let them down.

The ball must become an extension of their body.

16 players. One 1v1 station.

Brutal football mathematics.

Is your 1v1 session focused on developing 1v1 players, or is it focused on developing queuing skills?

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I've run this session. Every coach has.

It looks organised. It feels productive.

It only achieves the following.

- Wasted ball-rolling time
- Reduced reps
- Poor player engagement

Very little

"My team is forever bunching" is something I hear often.

So, how do you fix it? For me, you play small-sided games, and you reward the players who avoid bunching and spread out

The session below encourages players to switch the ball often and gives the coach a chance to talk about the width and depth football principles.

Adapt it for the age and stage of your players.

p.s. If you don't have 8 goals, use 4.

Alternatively, use cone gates. Adapt and overcome!

Why do young footballers struggle to control the ball out of the air these days?

They let it bounce, scramble to collect it, and immediately lose possession to the nearest opponent.

🧵 Mastering the high ball Most ball control training happens on the ground, which can lead to:

• Perfect passes to feet
• Predictable heights and speeds
• No aerial variety or challenge
• Static receiving positions

Young players master ground control, but fear aerial balls.

8 tag game variations 🧵

The best skill development happens when players are too busy enjoying themselves to notice.

These games build football intelligence naturally.

Quick setup, immediate engagement, lasting impact. 2/

Here's why tag games work: they remove the pressure to be perfect.

When a 6-year-old is chasing their mate around a square, they're not worried about their first touch.

They're just moving, reacting, deciding. The skills develop in the background.

As everyone knows, I am a huge fan of small-sided games.

It's fine to set up a 4v4, blow the whistle, and let them play.

But there are some mistakes that I see with a lot of SSG's.

Here's how to fix them: 👇 Mistake #1: Areas Too Small

❌ "Keep it tight for more touches"
✅ Players need space to think

For some players, the area is too tight if they can't lift their heads without being under immediate pressure.

Give them room to make decisions.

When coaching stoppages, do you only focus on the player on the ball?

For example, the player is struggling to win their 1v1. You stop, coach them, and then restart play?

What about looking at the bigger picture?

The player on the ball, the players around the ball, and the players away from the ball.

🧵 2/

To break this example down further:

Your wide player struggles to beat their defender, so you coach them on how to do that.

They then cross, and if your furthest away wide player is standing still instead of making a back post run, do you stop the play again to coach their movement?

And if the type of cross is wrong, do you stop again to coach the cross?

It's a flippant example, but everything is connected in football.

Most coaches can set up a 2v2 exercise.

But when it comes to coaching the technique behind winning small-sided play?

They can explain WHAT a player should do, but many struggle to explain HOW it should be done in teachable technical detail.

Here are some different examples of how to coach attacking technique from 1v1 through 4v4...

@SundayShare #SundayShare

🧵 1v1 Technique: "Explode Away"

How to coach this:

1 - Assess the Space:
"Scan ahead to identify open spaces and potential blockers, such as 2nd or 3rd defenders or the touchline."

2 - Big First Touch into Space:
"Take a larger initial touch with the instep to push the ball into open space (away from the blockers), allowing for quick acceleration."

3 - Accelerate After the Ball:
"Quickly follow your first touch with an explosive burst of speed to gain ground and separation from the defender. Turn on your jetpack"

Most 1v1 sessions stumble before they begin.

There are long lines, too many bored players, and too few reps.

Here are 3 ways to build better 1v1 sessions 👇 1) Use the carousel method to have multiple players working at the same time

At the development stage, formations are often used to help try and win a game of football. However, I was always a big believer in using formations as a further developmental tool.

But how? ⤵ Changing your formation to place your players in different 1v1 and 1v2 scenarios on the pitch will always have a longer-term developmental impact than not doing so.

Here's a handy graphic that helps break down how you can do that

DM me if you would like a PDF version instead

Lots of chat around clubs advertising for youth players to play in a certain position.

but this chat rarely explains why playing one position at youth level can potentially harm a player's development

🧵⤵ At grassroots level, players sometimes get placed in positions based on their physical makeup – the fast kid is a winger or striker, the slow kid is a defender or goalkeeper, and so on.

At a young age, if you label a player as a defender then what's the problem?

🧵 In response to some fans of other teams dismissing Arbroaths season, here's a thread breaking down my take on why it is *the* Scottish Football fairytale.

Dick Campbell, with his staff, was appointed 6 years ago this week. Arbroath were 3rd bottom of league 2. His first game ended in a 3-0 defeat to Berwick Rangers, who leapfrogged Arbroath into 8th.

Kilmarnock, Inverness, Hamilton, & Partick all played in the Scottish Premiership during this season (and the next season).

The financial gap between these leagues must be/is massive.