The majority of youth coaches have damaged so many talented players through different attitudes or behavior on the game side line because
The secret to raising creative footballers isn’t more training but freedom of expression of gifts.
The research is carried out by two kids with the same level of technical ability.
One spent their development age in structured sessions, endless drills, a coach controlling every decision.
The other did that too, but also spent hours on the field or park with mates, training and playing games with fewer instruction and less controllable by a coach.
Then, whenever he is playing matches or games, his coaches are on the sideline telling him what to do without giving him chances to express himself, while the other one of his coaches believes in watching him play and making corrections at the end of each halftime.
Years later, both were technically good. But one had the creative spark, they saw passes others didn’t and made things happen out of nothing.
Guess which one?
It was the one who played more in a free environment while growing up.
A study on how creative players develop found exactly that. The more creative players had built up significantly more hours of informal, unstructured free play in the developmental stage, particularly between the ages of 6 and 14.
Not involved in too much direction by coaches
Free play is where children experiment, make their own decisions and solve their own problems, the very things that build creativity.
Coaches’ personal interests most win, has changed a lot in developmental stages and those natural free play opportunities have quietly disappeared.
Which is exactly why it matters so much that coaches should deliberately allow kids to enjoy playing the game before being given instructions.
Don’t control every decision the kids make, because some of the most important learning happens when they’re left to figure it out themselves.
For the age grade mentioned above, let less instruction, less pressure and encouraged freedom in their games give us as a coach to discover the special gift of each player remember Rory Delap was known for Long-Throw, Ronaldinho who turned dribbling into an art form, Xavi Hernandez with pass etc
This isn’t anti-coaching, but we only want us to give our best to the development of young people and our country, like my own country, Nigeria. Our youth categories u17 and u 20 performance graphs in the world are coming down.
