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So - you have dropped into managing a kids football team. Good luck and enjoy.

Hopefully, you will have some guidance from a club to which you are affiliated - but this page assumes nothing. So, you will need to go through the following steps.

  • Am I the right person to do this?
  • Finding your players
  • How many players do you need?
  • Club and League affiliation
  • What you will need
  • Do you need help?
  • Selection Policies
    •


    Am I the right person?

    Basically - if you are ready, willing, and able then you are the right person (assuming, of course, that you are not some sort of criminal!). There are always kids who want to play football and there are never enough people prepared to put the time and effort in that is needed to let them do it in an organised fashion.

    You dont need any qualifications to start with, however, you should consider getting some coaching qualifications as early as you can. Contact you local Football Asscoiation or your local football club for information about coaching courses. The basic courses from the English FA cover items like First Aid and Child Protection. I assume other FAs are similar.

    Information from the English FA on the Level 1 Coaching Course can be found     here.

    Clearly, some experience of playing football is an advantage - especially if you plan to do your own coaching - but if you are setting up as a manager, with someone else doing the coaching, even this is not essential.


    Finding your players

    This is usually the easy bit ...

    Most people get involved in this because their child wants to play. That is your start point. Does he/she have friends who also want to play?
    Contact your local Football Club or Youth Club ... you can bet they will have a list of people who want to play. If all else fails, place an advert in your local newspaper (although personally I have never come across anyone who has needed to resort to that).

    How many players do you need?

    This is a tough one. There is no right answer here and I have come across teams and clubs who have done this in a myriad of different ways. Essentially, you are trying to create a balance between the time each player will get on the pitch, player ability, team cohesion and an ability to communicate with numbers effectively.

    There are a number of questions you need to answer to determine how many players you need.
      If you are playing in an organised league, how many will be the minimum? If you are running a team of young players, many leagues will play a variant of football called mini-soccer. This has a reduced number of players , but may invovle playing two or more games for any given match. You will at least need the players to match
      How many substitutes do you want for each game? You should have some substitutes to cover injuries, tiredness - and just to give players a chance to play. How many? Well, that is up to you - but I have found that two players per game has been a good compromise over time.
      What is your selection policy? This is a debate that will never end, and I cover it a little later.
      Will you have a rotation policy? Will you have more players than the bare minimum (basic players plus two substitutes), or will you register more players and then rotate players in and out of the team - asking them to miss out on some match days. My advice (for what its worth) is that you do need some flexibility here and you should have some 'spare' players thatwill allow you to rotate players around. This will give you some flexibility when it comes to covering holidays (kids holidays dont tend to be arranged around the football season), injuries etc.
      What will your rotation policy be? This is tied in again to your selection policy. Will you keep your weaker players on the sidelines and only use them when your stronger players are not available? Or, will you rotate around anyway? Will you pick and choose matches to play weaker players based on the strength of the opposition?
      Does the wider Club have a policy? If you are going to be affiliated with a pre-existing club - do they already have a policy?
      Does the league have a policy? Many leagues will have a maximum that can be registered with any given squad. For instacne, the league I am registered with have a maximum squad size of 18 registered players for 11-a-side football
      How many players can you effectively communicate with in training?< Certainly when I started off, I had upwards of 20 players at each training session. There seemed to be a cut-off point at around 20 players where communicating ideas to the young players could be problematic - leading to concentration wavering, and consequently ineffective training sessions.

    Club and League Affiliation

    A football team cannot operate in splendid isolation. It will always need other teams to play against. Your local league structure will provide you with this opportunity. Equally, to play in a league you will need your team to be affiliated with a football club that is a member of the local league. You can either join a pre-existing club (the easy way!) or you can, of course, set up a new club and affiliate it with the local league (the hard way).

    I am not going to cover setting up a new club at this point (it may come later) so will assume that you are going to work through a pre-existing club. This is the most likely scenario.

    So - find your local club (if they haven't found you already!). Speak to the club secretary and find out how to go about getting asscoiated with the club. There will amost certainly be a number of things that need to be arranged. Such as:
    1. Criminal record checks
    2. Club policies
    3. Registration of manager information with the league
    4. Registration of manager information with the FA
    5. Insurance (personal and third party)
    6. Registration of players with the league
    7. Organising training times and schedules
    Consequently, you need to leave significant time before the tsart of a season to get these things arranged. As an example, the league cut-off for the league my team play in is for team information for one season to be available by the end of March in the previous season. So - give yourself time.

    What you will need

    This is just a bit of a list - but here is a good starter set:
    1. Footballs - check the size you need for your age group (younger players will play with sizes 3 and 4), and get plenty (at least one per player)
    2. A Ball bag - to carry all those balls around in
    3. A kit bag
    4. A first aid kit - with basics like plasters, antisceptic cream, swabs, scissors, bandages, disposable gloves
    5. Drinks bottles
    6. Bibs for training - try to get at least four colours (reversible bibs are a good idea)
    7. A kit - your club may be able to help here if you are lucky
    8. A clean water spray bottle (the type used for spraying houseplants is perfect)
    9. A bank account (if this isn't taken care of by your club)
    10. Some cones for marking out areas for training drills

    Do you need help?

    Yes - you do. As much as you can get. Some suggestions:
    1. A treasurer to look after the money and bacnk account
    2. An assistant manager - you need someone to talk to and someone to take over if you are not available
    3. A coach (if you are not planning to do it yourself)
    4. Parental help with setting up and taking down pitches on match days
    5. Parental help with refereeing if referees do not turn up for games

    Selection Policies

    This is an ongoing source of debate on any touchline on any weekend where kids play football. The first thing you need to accept is that whatever policy you implement somebody will not be happy and will think they know better. You will need a thick skin

    The first thing to do is find out if there is a Club policy that you will need to adhere to. If there is - it will make your life easier in terms of having some backup for implementing the policy. If not - you will have to develop your own. I will not tell you what to do it here - I will merely explain some of the thinking that you may want to consider. I will then tell you what I did (for better or for worse!).

    Whatever you decide - make sure you communicate to to the parents and players. If you change or refine your policy as you go along, then again - explain the new policy and why you are implementing it.

    Select by ability?

    Selecting your best players for every game is one option. And I have seen coaches who do this. It will cause dissent in the ranks of parents and players - as everyone has their view of who are the better players - but it can result in a string side. The down-side is that players will get dissillusioned if they are left out every week meaning that players on the edge of the team will leave your team, or - worse - stop playing football altogether. Young girls are less so. At the younger ages, you need to make sure that everybody gets a good amount of pitch time. It is the only way the players will develop. Also, bear in mind that young players do develop at different rates - so this year's weak player may be next year's strong player.

    What about the very weak players?

    There may be some very weak players who come along. Do you play them? There is an argument that all players should get a chance to play - and I would fully endorse that. However, there is a need to strike a balance. I have been in the position where playing a very weak player where if the ball went to him one of our own players would take the ball off him because they knew that if they didn't do it, then the opposition would. The players decided for themselves what was the acceptable standard of play that they were prepared to play with. Does this do the kid any good? Personally, I don't think so.

    A good balance?

    You may want to strike a balance across the team. Remember that a tema is made up of a number of players. So - you can keep some sort of balance in the overall ability of the team by making sure that you don't play all your weakest players at one time. For instance, if you bring your wekest player on - make sure that he/she has a strong player near him/her to cover their mistakes. In this way, you develop the weaker players and maintain a balance with team strength.

    Find out what your opposition are doing?

    If you play a weak team against a strong team they will get beaten - at the younger ages they could get beaten quite badly. Does this do them any good? Probably not. During the week leading up to the game speak to the opposition manager and agree a selection policy. I can assure you that they have the same dilemas as you. At the younger ages (say up to Under 11s) most managers are amenable to a certain flexibility. Maybe you could agree that you will play your weakest teams for a particular game. If they always play their strongest team, then you may want to do the same.

    Make changes when you can

    You probably want to keep all your players happy (at least - you should want to). So - make changes when you can. If the result of the game is effectively decided (becasue your team are several goals up or several goals down) then take the opportunity to play the weaker players. If you are 4-0 down in a game, with 10 minutes to play, the realistically even with your strongest team playing it will be tough to bring it back - so forget the result, and play the players. Equally, if you are 4-0 up in a game, there is little chance that even the weaker players will cause that result to be reversed - so again, play the players.

    Do results matter?

    Well - yes. If the result doesn't matter, the you are invovled in the wrong sport. Football is a competitive sport, and as such - the result matters. The question is 'How Much?'.

    First, for the younger age groups it shouldn't matter too much. Once the game is over - it should really be forgotten. Most leagues do not run a competetive league for the younger age groups, and the FA actively discourage it. The kids will soon forget about a defeat (or a win), so the only thing that is really lost is pride. Again, mostly the players won't worry - so the only pride lost is either your or the player's parents. If that is why you are coaching young players - then you are doing this for the wrong reasons.

    As the players get older, results matter more. Competitions will become competitive, with season-long leagues and cup competitions. However, even within this there is scope to be flexible. Be realistic in your ambition for the team. If you are not going to win the league, and you are equally not going to be relegated, then actually - the results dont matter too much. So once you are clearly safe from relegation, or there are clearly better and worse teams than you in the league you can be flexible. As an example, on the 2005/2006 season we had a good cup run but were pretty weak in the league. Within four or five weeks at the start of the season it was already obvious that we weren't going to win the league, and equally obvious that we were not going to be relegated. So - in the end, league results were not too important and we were able to be flexible in selection.

    An Example

    So - what was my policy?

    The first thing to say is that I beleive that everyone has the right to play football. However, my personal belief is that players should play with, and against, players of a similar standard. If you put 22 strong players on a pitch, they will have a great game. If you put 22 weak players on a pitch, they will also have a great game. If you mix them up too much - none of them will enjoy it as much. If you put weak players out against a strong team it wont do them any good to get heavily beaten. Eually, it wont do the strong team any good either to win games too easily. Every player should have the chance to play - but play at the right level.

    So, our polilcy was based on:
    • A squad of players with a wide variety of ability, but none that were too weak to get acceptance from the rest of the squad
    • Up to Under 11s, we implemented a policy of equal pitch-time on any given match day. We played two mini-soccer games in a morning, and every player who came down got at least two-thirds of a game. To facilitate this we had two substitutes for each of the two games, with the substitutes balanced in such a way as to allow all positions to be covered.
    • From Under 11s to Under 13s, we implemented a policy of 'at least half a game' meaning that if a player was selected for a game, then they would get at least half the game
      • on the pitch. We did not, however, guarantee equal pitch time - meaning that some players were more likely to get only half a game than others
    • Up to Under 13s we started with a mix of strong and weak players for every game. Nobody was substitute every week.
    • From Under 14s onwards, we have been starting with our best 11 each week, but have made sure we can play the substitutes once a result is settled
    Within all of the above, we have maintained flexibility based on how the result was going within the match itself. Meaning that, for instance if we were losing or winning heavily, we have taken the opportunity to make changes we may not have made in a close game.

    However, even within this kind of policy we had players who were not happy. Some werent happy because they wanted us to start with the strongest eleven every week. Some weren't happy becasue they thought they were getting less football than others. Parents complained that their children were not ebing fairly treated. Bear in mind that, as parents, some come to watch their child play - and do not come to watch the team play. Therefore, they notice when their child is not on the pitch - but do not notice when other children are substituted. We got into a habit of recording the times that players were on the pitch. It could often come as a big surprise to some parents to see that their children were playing more football than others!