Hi everyone, this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project podcast. Firstly, Happy New Year. We hope you had a fantastic Christmas in New Year break with your family and you got a chance to recharge. If you're heading into pre-season good luck and for those in the Northern Hemisphere, you're probably halfway through the season and really hope things are going well with your players.
We're excited to be back in 2020 and bringing you a huge amount of new content as well as some new features on the website soon, so keep an eye out for those. Over the last couple of weeks, we've still been pushing out some great coaching content to keep you occupied over the break, and that includes a brilliant research review from Professor William A. Harper on Creativity, which I'd highly recommend, as well as a new Q&A discussion and blog host with PDP Coaching Advisor James Coates on position-specific coaching. James will be contributing more to the site in the coming months via the podcast and other new content.
We've also been fortunate to share a new article by motivational researcher and rugby coach Johnny McMurtry called How Do You Coach. Johnny discusses how we interact with our players and the environments we can create and this is a great read. Our latest piece of content is our first Masterclass discussion of the year. In today's podcast, we will share a portion of that conversation.
It was an absolute pleasure to host Mark Lyons, pre-academy coordinator and lead coach at Leicester City Football Club, and I was fortunate enough to meet Mark on our UAF A license course a few years ago. Now he's a top coach and a top man as you'll hear from this conversation. Mark shares some insights into his experience coaching at all ages, but today we dive into working with very young players, particularly in that five to 11 age group, the importance of creating top environments for them, your coaching approach with that age group, as well as the value of varied experiences with young players. For the full discussion, you can head over to Play on 10.
If you get time today, leave us a review via your podcast app and I really hope you enjoy the discussion. Hi everyone, my name's Dave Wright and welcome to another Play Development Project Masterclass discussion. Today I'm delighted to be joined by pre-academy coordinator and head coach of the pre-academy phase over there at Leicester City Football Club, Mark Lyons. Mark, how are you?
I'm good, thank you Dave, how are you? I'm good, I'm good. Now how do I go on the job spec because I know the titles are a bit of a mouthful. Can I get that right?
It is a little bit, but yeah, you did really well. Well, mate, it's great to see you and for those who are tuning in, Mark and I met through the UAF A license process a few years ago, spent a lot of time together at St. George's department, lots of good banter with some great people on that course and really excited to get Mark on a call and talk about his experience. Mark, to kick things off, you've worked, I guess, in a number of roles and been at different clubs, but can you give us a bit of a background and to your own coaching journey?
Yes, so my coaching journey started before I was a uni. I realised I enjoyed taking too much of the play football. They started to get into some coaching with my dad down at the local clubs and it just took off now went to university, worked with a great coach who does some scouting in and around for the East of West Crystal Palace, a guy called Tim Coe who really opened my eyes at Birmingham University, did a sport science degree as well and really got into the psychology side of it and it just took off from there, started my business when I came out uni and doing some coaching in schools, got into Northampton town and then stayed there for about 10 years doing a number of different roles, ended up going full time, the each will be massively helped me get full time with the foundation phase, the professional development phase and then the opportunity to let it come up and it's something I've been loving ever since. Really interesting journey and having worked across the ages will dive into that but obviously we'll try and focus a little bit on the younger players for this particular conversation.
But during your time at Northampton, outside of taking a worldy of a touch which we'd viral on social media for a few weeks, I know you worked in a few different roles. I did say that, I've seen it too. But we might have to put it on the website as well just to match your own season. During your time you worked in a number of roles and got into those sort of academy manager roles and different senior roles in the club as well as your coaching positions.
But can you give us a bit of an insight as to how the club worked in some of the variety you had in terms of experience there? I think anyone who's working in the Catholic League of the Lower Staff numbers has always got a great opportunity to broaden their coaching knowledge, because you do get called on to do different things and you do get called on to work across different age groups and it actually helps you. But it just evolves. I think any coach they have a preference of who they work with and I'll probably get into a conversation later.
But any young coach should just not see themselves as this is, I work best at this age group. They're just a coach, they're an uncoated group, an uncoated group in particular. And yeah, it just evolved really in Northampton. It was always trying to drive myself to do something a bit better and do something a bit different.
So once I've got into Northampton at the foundation phase, it linked him with what I was doing and then it evolved and I wanted to try some coaching with the 18th. So I got to work with Craig Hinton, who now works for the FA, who's a fantastic guy, really, really supportive of coaches and developing. So I got into watching a few sessions and then it evolved at Craig left with the FA so it kind of helped there and I got to work with some coach at the Allen Hill and Matt Press Region, Chris Wilder at Northampton and that was really, really supportive of Rob Page. I was just complaining for a short period of time and I got to work with him and Patti Kenny so that was really good as well.
And then it just evolves and then you're doing more of an interview yourself because you have to do the admin side, there's no, there's not a staff to do that. So you have to do all the admin side, you have to do all the structural side of it and I got involved in that from my business background. So it just evolves into what you're interested in. I find you, if you're interested in stuff, you kind of look into it a little bit more and then at Capri close you get the opportunities to give it a go.
Yeah. It's a bold, effectively. Yeah, it's really interesting. I think that kind of story and other coaches were spoken to, it's really testament to getting experience with different environments, different players and so on.
The value of that can be enormous in terms of where it leads. So you've sort of gone from working at the Cat3clav as you say where it's all hands on deck and everybody's chipping in. So now being in a category one environment where there's obviously a lot more resources as a result of the E-triple P category status and how that sort of looks from an audit perspective. But you've also rewound a little bit in terms of working with older players to now going back to what's really your passion, working with foundation phase and pre-academy age players and that seven to 12.
So age group, what do you find most rewarding about this particular age group? It's just not a job, is it? It's just that you can be having the worst day in the world. You can have all sorts of stuff going on in your personal life and you've got this one little energy, this seven year old kid who just wants to go out there and express himself, wants to go and try new things, wants to challenge her, wants to say and do stupid stuff and I'm about a four year old at heart.
You've seen my band on the A-Lites since it's about a five year old. So all my jokes work and they find them funny. You've found your audience. Yeah, I found my audience.
So it just brings a bit of passion back and they've still got that innocence about them where I think when you get through to the older players, I've gone through the system and maybe we as coaches create that, I don't know, but they've gone through the system and they've got that. Do we really have to go out and train in the afternoon? Yeah, because it's fun and you're painful and you could be working in the warehouse not to call it. It could be different.
So they've got that innocence about them and that's what I love because you could be having the worst day in the world when you just turn up a culture. Yeah, your passion certainly comes through when it comes to talking about this particular age group. If we dive into the practical side of working with this age group, there's a lot of talk around skill acquisition of all mastery and the coaching spectrum and who believes what to be true and to games based versus isolated and all of these kind of redundant debates. But what for you as somebody who's got a lot of experience in this age group are the key focal points when working with players of this age outside of obviously the fun factor which you've touched on?
To be honest with you, I think too early we try and make the people, the one thing I think people make is they try and turn them into professional footballers and they try and they try and go, oh, we need to develop them to come professional footballers. No, you don't. You're not trying to develop them. They've got 10 years, a minimum of 10 years before they get anywhere near the first thing, unless there are special special talent.
In order for them to carry on our job is just to make sure they love what they do because we've got to be in there for long term development and for them to develop long term, they need to play long term and not fall out of love with a game at 14, 15. And you know from your background in the academy, they're going to be stuck in a car, they're going to be long trips, long games, sometimes they'll travel further than the actual time that they play and they need to love what they do. And I think that, look, I don't class it as fun because at the same time it's not a soccer school, it's not a keeping sweet or anything like that, but it is develop a passion for what they do and they've got to enjoy the constant practices, they've got to enjoy the random practices, they've got to enjoy the kicking of all against the wall back and forth, they've got to enjoy being better at football and that for me, that should be about anything else. They've got to come with a smile on the face, they've got to leave feeling the top of the world and that doesn't mean you can't tell them that they're doing something wrong, but it's how you pitch it in their language.
I think if you do that as a forefront, you're never on to a loser with age group. I think you can then marry up with developing them and making them one be one dominant, I'm a big believer in that because at the same point, whilst they need to continue to play in ten years, no one can sit here and say this is what the game is going to look like in ten years. And with a hand on the heart, the game's got more physical, and I don't mean physical from a power point, I mean physical from a move point. You've got players being able to play in a number of different positions, you've now got centre arms should be out of place, centimetres and right wing and right wing and left with the arms as an adaptation of a cent half.
It wouldn't have been around ten years ago. And you're getting a lot of different players, obviously, playing in the middle of the park in English probably wouldn't have happened ten years ago. That's probably an exaggeration. But what I mean is we don't know what the game is going to look like in ten years.
So if you make the one be one dominant, that's the thing that's going to be able to always stay in the game. Is that me, the you battle? Yeah. Yeah.
And I guess a part of it is also giving them that variety in terms of exposing them to different things. So you've talked a lot about creating adaptable players, in order to do that. What for you would be some of the practical steps outside of obviously the one-one focus which you've mentioned. I think the session is honestly really clear, but people talk about ten thousand hours of practice.
I think I like to coin phrase, I think I've been coaching for most of us and robbed it from somebody. I can't remember where it is. I apologise for somebody who's probably got a good second week video. It's ten thousand experiences.
I think it might be right, mate. It might have even given me that. So ten thousand experiences have put in different situations where they're underloaded, where they're in games which have balanced or unbalanced, whether they're strong games or whether they're where they should be quite poor in, and games where they might struggle and games where they might strive. So there's a lot of different experiences and supporting through those experiences to say this, you know, and reflecting on them and getting their views on it will just allow them to be able to call on memories when they're older.
I think if you can match up the technical detail of the coaching with giving them experiences and not coaching within those experiences, not doing too much tactical work, but coaching the technical detail that they'll need, but allowing them to gain those experiences, that for me is the big melted part that we try and encompass in that phase. Yeah, look, I was actually listening to a podcast on this very conversation around the, I guess, the redundancy of the ten thousand-hour model and how that research came about through Ericsson and how it was put out there through Malcolm Gladwell's work. And it's been misinterpreted a lot. I love the ten thousand experience on here.
I think that is absolutely fantastic for coaches tuning in and listening to that. I think how can I create an amazing experience for young players who are falling in love with the game just to dive into the technical a little bit more. Areas like ball mastery and being on the ball are so crucial in that age and to have a spinning time on the ball, whether that's ball in a wall away from training or whether that's interference based ball mastery or opposed one of the ones and so on at training. How do you sort of go with blending that time on the ball and that ability to manipulate and love the ball and be confident on it as well as some of the team principles that go with the game?
It's interesting because team principles for me aren't team principles, they're live principles. And I think that's the thing is what I would speak to no matter what level of coach, no matter what group I've got. I always, if a parent's always asking me and I try and engage with the players because they're in around the boys 24-7. So you need to get them on side.
But the big part of me is I'm not just developing a player, you're developing a person. They're very selfish people inherently, they don't want to share toys, they don't want to play their room, they want to do anything apart from playing her phone. So try and get them to understand that passing is a part of it. The ball is there, that's all they're very selfish, so we're doing all that through it it's easy.
But when it's about sharing that ball with other players on the team and it's about team skills, it's about working hard, which isn't just a team skills, it's a large skill. Listening skills, so coach, listening to the coach following instructions, being able to listen to their team mates and being able to work on a team isn't it? They're all team skills, I'm getting wrong, but they're large skills that are more important to develop that in a live environment I think that will then inherit, which will inherently help the team in the long run than actually class it as I'm going to coach you just football. It helps them understand it a little bit more in a sense of football, the thing they're going to coach me is football, but they're working on me as a person outside of that and they buy in a little bit more.
And you're building those bonds, you're building those bonds where they realise that you've got the best interest at heart, so I think that's obviously a crucial part of that, isn't it? 100%. I think you've got to establish a hook with anybody, no matter who you coach. Sometimes the big thing for coaches is establishing a hook is taking the arrogance away from I need to be the ones with that.
It might be if I'm working with you Dave, you're the best person to get the hook with that player, I'll use you and we work with this with that player on this because you get you know, it doesn't take to me. I think that's also a big thing of being able to sense that. Yeah, you're certainly preaching with the converter when it comes to putting your egos aside in coaching, so I've never understood that track so culture and that I guess at times arrogance that can come with coaching, I just don't get it because you're working with kids. An area just to touch on, we've talked a little bit about some of the practical ideas and the common language which I think you've referred to in terms of finding the most age appropriate language with this young age group.
When it comes to session design, if you've got coaches tuning into this and they're thinking well, I'm working with under 7s to 12s, what practical advice would you give them in terms of some, I guess non-negotiable areas of session design that you think are critical for the Sager. So it's funny enough I've just been trying to discuss it with our coaches and there's a great guy who's on my aid license with, you know, quite well down the right place for hours. But I had a lot of good conversations around him and some aspects with the session design trying to put it in ways to coach. I would set a session up to bring out tactical elements because I think it's got to look like again.
The kids do it, it's got to look like again. And this is the majority of it. I'm not saying I'm doing constant practices because I'm not about that. But the majority of the session has to look like the games.
It's got to have two goals. It's got to have opposition. The numbers on the pitch, the amount of players going up against each other can vary so it could be 1v1 to 2v2 to 3v4. I wouldn't ever go up to sort of past 6v6 with under 8 downwards because I think you're watering down the touches of the ball.
And then the session itself has to develop a tactical focus. However, I think all of your information and your detail within the coaching session has to be technical based. Looking at touches, looking at movements, looking at before, during and after they get on the ball, looking at scaling skills, what they're doing as a player, as an individual should then be all the coaching focus, the session itself should give them experiences. We go back to that word of making decisions, of developing tactics within the game and allowing them to come up with their own ways of doing that.
Yeah, it's really interesting. The other thing to consider here is that you're in a position where you've probably got a live context per week with the players, whether it's 3-4-5 sessions may not always be the best case. Those ideas that you're sort of talking about in terms of the game looking like the game and then maybe manipulating the task within that, I think is critical for that age group. Are there other areas that you think, whether it's accounting for more of the psych social elements as well as the technical tactical stuff that you think are crucial, I guess, focuses for this age group that coaches should be considering?
Yeah, I think I'll go back to enjoyment at the heart of it. But I think the social and psych side is good. And I'd try and work quite heavily in that and finding those bonds and getting them to establish a bond with whatever club they're playing at and whatever and the game itself is trying to try to find a problem with the government at the bottom of the game. And then they're doing the two-week thing.
And they do that if they're on the move, because I think for me movement skills and 1v1 governance are big indicators of long-term development as well. If you can move, you can pick up coordination skills and you can pick up techniques as they get an older one. I think that's a big key one for me. So if your session is hitting those sorts of marks and in order to do that, the movement skills can't be run through a hole, don't play with a hurdle, run into a straight line.
It's got to be random. So there's got to be seconds and games where they're trying to evade and escape and things like that. If your session's hitting those sorts of key elements, for me, you want to win all the time. And from my own personal life, it's quite nice because my nephew's nine is starting to play football.
And my granddad's actually his coach, he's picked my brains. I keep going down and watching him. I keep saying to him, there's nothing wrong. If you don't know what you're doing or you're preparing and picking up for the help in your kids out, I think it's brilliant.
There's nothing wrong with just playing games and just putting different rules for the game. So for example, I saw a piece of dirty, one the other side of my head and the other side of my head. He can't play backwards. Brilliant.
Fantastic session. But the kids will love it. And it's nothing, you're not trying to over coach, you're not trying to overdo it. The session itself will help develop the kids.
And there buzzing off it, their movement skills, their decisions, their techniques, everything is in it. And you don't have to over complicate it at times. I think that's what we see. We can't feel like we have to because a coaching session is a turn up, they'll do a session and then they'll play a game again.
They'll turn up, play a game. And then do a little bit and then play a game again. There's nothing wrong with mixing up a little bit. Yeah, really sound advice.
And I think the idea of just maximizing the ball rolling time and these kind of things again when you're in that parent volunteer or grassroots sitting is really important. Now, a question again, just around the age group particularly, are you guys working with a curriculum or a structured framework in terms of topics or is it very much just working to adapt to the players' needs and you sort of ramping up maybe more 1v1s ball mastery elements or game space throughout the week? How does this sort of week look for you guys in that group? That is a really, really good question.
We don't work to a topic. I suppose because in the seven to eight academies, you have to sort of blend coaching with recruitment. So when you bring a new place in all the time, if you're working to a curriculum and week four says you're doing passing and week one, two, three, you're doing dribbling and you bring a play in a week four, you've missed out all the elements that you want to see in a player. Yeah.
So it's very hard to work to a curriculum in the seven to eight. So we have principles. We want to see movement skills. We want to see 1v1.
There has to be lots of 1v1 stuff in there and we have to develop technique. And they're the main sort of key principle of our coaching programme, so to speak. And then we sit down every sort of six weeks, ten weeks and sort of go right to the players' needs. So this group, so this year's underage group that we've got will be not be the same as last, as next year's underage group.
We'll not be the same as the year after that's underage. So we need to work with what they need at the time. And I think it's hard to go. The coaching curriculum looks like this because it has to meet the needs of the players.
And it's great with all the ILPs that Academy has and the individual learning plans that Academy have now that you're always going to tick off those. But for me, if you meet every, we sit down with coaches very well, that's one of the next block. That's one of the next block because it'll be the needs of what the players need and it might be the continuous thing. But it has to go off the needs of the players for me.
Yeah, look, I think it's a great idea. And I've heard people say, you know, you used the player as a syllabus, for example. And we've talked a lot at PDP about the individual approach. I remember talking to Dan Machichia years ago where he sat there and said, look, these days I don't think I could write an under-taught curriculum because he'd moved away from that.
And I guess in my own coaching as well, I can relate to that. Because as adults, the traditional educational paradigm is that we come in, we do this at the time, we deliver that. And we know that it's nonlinear. We know that there is a messy process, particularly again with young players, men of the game.
And structure has always been suited to adults as opposed to what's best with players, right? 100%. But I do also think that has to be some sort of structure. So there has to be some principle of what the coaches deliver because otherwise you're going to get each age group.
You're going to get the under-lines doing one of the ones, maybe, but the under-tends doing loads of tatles stuff and then the under-elevens doing some different stuff. And I think that has to be a flow. So I think it has to be, if you have a goal for your foundation base and you work to that goal. So for example, when I was at Northampton, we always spoke about, and this was Lee Garlic who's over at West Brom now.
Fantastic guy, really knowledgeable. Hits the gym too much. He came up with an idea of, develop the player. Develop a player in any team and then develop a player in your team.
Sure. And I'll come to the next foundation base with just about the players. So they had to make the technically excellent by the time they hit the end of the foundation base. So all the coaches could then work individually with their group but to that goal.
Sure. And I think as long as you've got that and everyone working in the same direction, you're on to a winner. So the overall principle is key as well because otherwise people go off and get the tangents and that would be difficult and also half the players. Thanks for joining us on the Play Development Project Podcast.
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