Within my environment we look to continually push the players to be better on a daily basis. Whether thats in attitude, focus, accountability, technical, tactical or emotionally. To me, the parents and the educational environment it is just as important that we are producing great people who are learning life lessons as well as football development.

It is easy to get so involved in what is occurring and what planning is required for the future that you hardly ever look back and reflect on what’s been happening to date.

We had 2 new players get accepted into the group this week. They are both year 7 players (11 years old) and immediately started to work with their playing peers. Towards the end of the morning session I walked over to their parents, who had stayed to watch, to discuss moving forward etc.

As an aside of the 70 boys who work in the environment only a couple of their parents stay to watch and thats generally because they are waiting to head off to work in the morning. This be default has created a learning environment that is almost completely player centric and they are accountable to each other within the sessions.

Before we had got too far into the conversation about what was going to happen for the two new boys one of the parents asked me, “how long has it taken for that to occur?”

“That” was my group of year 8 players (12 years old) who had just been working in their session for 60 minutes. Within that 60 minutes they had received 4 coaching points. A session for the year 8s is a mix of coaching feedback, questions and answers and either a change within the constraints of the session or further development on the technique focus within the session topic.

Generally within a session I will only step in a maximum of 4 times so they have a lot of opportunity to explore within the topic and find their own answers as part of their development. It also means that they need to continually bring the enthusiasm and high energy training that is required without any external person driving it.

Often a question is asked of them: “who brings and owns the enthusiasm and energy in training?” When asked the first time of the entire group there were lots of different answers as they tried to give me the right answer. I received “the coach”, “you” and only a few “we do”. Now they all know that regardless of how they are feeling or what’s going on in their life that they are responsible for themselves and how their energy and work rate impacts on them and others around them. Its by no means perfect and it does need to be continually refreshed in their minds.

Getting back to “that” was the year 8s had been training at a high level of engagement, passes were being moved accurately, the movement in support of the ball and player was continual and the overall level was very good for their age range. The biggest impact was that when I wasn’t near the group the enthusiasm didn’t diminish or drop off and they were training without any direct coaching supervision.

“That” had taken a year to develop. Those boys had each done approximately 140 sessions within the group over a 12 month period. Being taught and reminded constantly to be accountable and take ownership of their own learning has taken nearly as long. Its been a patient and gradual improvement and some days are a lot better than others due to the environment that continually challenges them. Thinking about that group, when they started to now, is when I can truly reflect on the huge changes that have occurred almost by stealth.

Fresh eyes from parents, who have seen 11 and 12 year old boys train and play football, with a simple question resounded with me. It reminded me that following a consistent plan of development, aligned with a strong vision and set of core values is vital to any programme. Of more importance is remembering that nothing lasting is created quickly and that your timeframe isn’t as important as the timeframe of the players and where there are on each of their individual learning curves.

Rome wasn’t built in a day