Local Junior/youth football

[thegaffa]

My kid plays junior football and many others do around Leicestershire and they love it.

 

We all appreciate all the volunteers at the clubs, from coaches to secretaries etc.. in providing a platform for kids to play.

 

Now here is my negatives, managers stock pile players and it doesn’t help the kids with having enough game time.

 

at 7v7 I see so many sides with around 14 players and possibly more, even with friendlies and league matches, you can’t give the kids enough game time.

 

This stock piling of players is not for the benefit of the kids.

 

you see and hear of too many clubs folding as they can’t field a team, yet a lot of clubs will have more subs than a club that is having to fold.

 

I believe all coaches of local youth teams should support one another, if you can’t guarantee enough game time for some of your players try and speak to teams that could give them game time (with the parents and child’s permission of course), speak to the clubs which are struggling with player numbers and see how you can support.

 

Thank you though to all those volunteers who give up their free time, just to give the kids a platform to play our beautiful game.

 

 

[Saxondale]

As somebody who helps out at a youth team:

 

• The stockpiling of players tends to be because you can never be sure how many kids will actually turn up. The league rules limit how many players you can have in a match day squad. Is the problem you’re speaking about specific to your son’s club maybe?
• I can only speak for my team, but we rotate the players evenly.

[thegaffa]

Not specific to my sons team, just an observation that there are many teams stock piling players.

 

I get that you may have 11 players for 7 a side as 2 maybe unavailable but over that for 7 a side is too many in my opinion.

[syston_fox]

I'm assistant coach for an U10 team so play at 7 a side. We have 11 players registered with us and most of those turn up week in and week out for training. We would take another couple potentially but no more than that.  

 

For matches, we say that 9 is the magic number for a squad as that way all players who are there are going to get a decent amount of game time rather than having to keep stopping and starting to try and get everyone on in some form. We've therefore started rotating the matchday squad a little so kids get a sunday off every now and then and when you are playing, you're going to get to play most of the game. 

 

Love doing it and happy to just assist rather than be responsible for it all! 

 

Worst thing though is trying to find someone to ref the games - parents just refuse to help out. We had a situation the other week where all the parents stayed in their cars until right at kick off to avoid being asked!