Learn A Bit More About What We Do

Our Mission

To change the focus of coaching in the participation domain (grass roots) away from a coach centred approach to holding the needs of the athlete at the centre, better known as the athlete centred approach.  To use sport and in particular futsal to allow children to be creative and to provide the freedom to express themselves without fear of failure. Most of all to allow them to be independent thinkers and self regulating people which will transfer into other areas of their lives.

To instill a love of competitive sport and in particular futsal and football so that each person has lifelong participation.

It is simple for any organisation to state they are the best for the development of your child. But we believe the only way to really find this out is to try it first and as a result of this we always offer our clients the opportunity to come and offer two sessions totally free of charge.

Coaches undergo months of training not just a week or two’s course

Our coaches are professionals, this is their main source of income and they are truly passionate about player development over anything else. Prior to employing them they must go through interview stage, watching them practice not knowing we are there and then taking a number of sessions with our children. We then ask the children what they think of the coaches before selecting them. Once selected they will undergo between 1-3 months of training before being allowed to take their own sessions. We do not simply ask coaches to have a desired FA Certificate and then let them loose.

All of our coaches must hold the statutory requirements but on top of this must all hold FA Coaching Licenses at a minimum Level 2 as well as a coaching degree or working towards it.  All coaches must log at least 10 hours per week of learning generally through non and informal methods together with compulsory training days every 6-8 weeks.  On top of this all coaches must provide voluntary work in the community.

The use of objective measuring systems: The PRO Scheme and EBAT Tool

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, this is never so true as to selecting gifted athletes. So often, especially with children, the largest/fastest/strongest child is selected as gifted rather than the most technically able. As children develop so differently and in a totally non linear manner it is almost impossible to keep track through the 'coaches eye', although many would have you believe differently. Despite the top clubs in the world spending hundreds of millions of pounds on talent identification schemes none have yet to have been truly successful.

Through both our PRO scheme and our newly designed Football Competence Scale (EBAT, due to be published this year) we constantly record the children’s progress and can adapt our programmes accordingly. Through the PRO Scheme in particular we track where children need work and can provide on request training diaries to help.