Hi everyone, this is Dave Wright and welcome to the Play Development Project podcast. I hope you're enjoying a great week working with your team, reviewing your tuning in. In the last week, we published a brand new Masterclass discussion with top Academy coach, Arthur Bremmer. If you haven't seen the full version of the discussion, it's available on the website now via the Masterclass discussion section.
We also published a portion of that conversation on the podcast earlier this week, so I highly recommend you tune in for that one. We've also published two Q&A discussions in the last week or so, including today's podcast episode. Today's Q&A is a really nice discussion around when players are ready to have a set playing position. Dan and I discuss some of the key considerations, how you can use positions for individual development and targets, what changes with different ages and stages, as well as ensuring balance in your approach to this challenge.
We have some more great content coming out next week and Dan Wright is also working on the exciting new initiative for the PDP community, which should be launched this month, so watch this space. As usual, a quick reminder that if you haven't signed up to become a PDP member, we have highly affordable monthly or annual membership options at Play Development Project.com, so you can sign up and access all of our top coaching content. I hope you enjoy today's conversation. Hi everyone, my name is Dave Wright and welcome to another Play Development Project Q&A.
As usual, I'm delighted to be joined by PDP technical advisor Dan Wright. Dan, how are you getting on? Very well, what's going on with you? Well, we're in the middle of the season here in Melbourne, Australia, and it's pretty chilly.
Winter is upon us and right in the thick of the season, plenty of good outcomes with the players, and lots of time on the grass lately as well, so join the coaching and as always trying to continually improve PDP, so lots going on there content-wise as well. Dan, we've got a really interesting question this week, it's coming from Mark via Facebook. And Mark's asked us, when should we give players a set position? Now, to provide a little bit of context, he's sort of, he's working with younger players, but he's really interested in what age we should potentially continue to rotate or stop rotating players around different positions and when they might seal into a position or a unit.
So have you got any thoughts on this one? Yeah, it's a fantastic question, isn't it? What I'd like to start with, which is a bit off-beast, is why does this happen? So if you coach kind of six, seven, eight-year-olds, all of them can do every job on the pitch, everybody wants to go and go, everybody wants to score goals, tackle each other, they run around.
If you did put them into sort of shape, they would find a way to change that shape to your person to the ball. But then when you get to them, maybe a certain age, and I reckon in the UK, that's about 11, 12, players become kind of very aware and very sure of where they're playing and get conversations like I'm a cam and I'm five and I can think of a left side of the window and all these kind of things. And so I think it'd be a good place to start with challenging that addition of why does that happen? And is it adults kind of put in their thoughts into kids' football?
Or where does it come from, basically? Where does that kind of being a set position at 10 or 11 come from? Yeah, well, I think if I had the answer to that, they might be a book in it, or at least some serious uptake on that information. But I think a few thoughts would be that perhaps it's a physical thing, you know, kids come in all shapes and sizes and maybe the taller kid gets thrown in goal or maybe the taller kid gets played at center back because that's where we think they look like they would play.
I think players will start to show certain attributes even from young ages or certain areas where they're strong. That might be as simple as running with the ball or showing a bit more ability to dribble versus pass. And perhaps that lends itself to coaches with a consciously or unconsciously, then putting them into a position which they then start to become defined by as they work their way through the ages. And of course as they become more conscious and learn more of the game, by the time they hit that 10 or 11, 12, then they sort of start thinking, well, that's what I am.
And I think we dive into a few sort of famous stories of players moving around different positions. But this is something that I think we need to be fluid with based on what individuals need and based on what the outcomes are for our players. So perhaps we can start on talking about the different phases, I guess, in terms of ages and ages in terms of coaching is really important, age-appropriate learning and something we've covered before. So how would you look at this if you were to talk about foundation-phase players, those who are perhaps in that sort of 8 to 12 bracket?
I think so what would probably be common here in the UK as well as the road-taped positions. So in a game of you play four quarters or in grassroots football sometimes they play two or three games and a Sunday morning, kids to play or experience different things in each game. So somebody might spend time in the middle and then at wide or up front and run tight in those rounds. I think that's probably what you might start to see traits of people that are better or more comfortable, I suppose, in certain positions.
I think the benefits of doing that is you're going to see different stuff from the kids, but you're also going to put them in situations where they're going to see different pitches. So if I play at the back all the time every single Sunday, I'm going to be used to receiving the ball from the goalkeeper and playing forwards. I'm not going to be used to receiving under pressure from 360 degrees. I'm not going to be used to creating and scoring goals.
I'm probably going to get it and pass forward and get it and pass forward in that position to defend and stop players. So it would be kind of showing or giving those guys opportunities to see different parts of the game. That would be kind of how it would work in definitely kind of 8 to 10 at 11s and 12s might be slightly different. Would that be a similar experience to what you've seen?
Yeah, I think so. I think there's a couple of things to consider here. So first of all, if you've got a game and outside of injuries and those kind of things which come up, I think one policy that I've seen before at the club said that within a game a player won't play more than two positions. I think there's a danger of overloading them.
You start at Cinebak, you end up at the left wing and then you play in up front. How do you really get the time to get into any state of flow and learn what's required? So it might be that a player has an individual plan. Now that plan may be around passing and receiving, let's say.
A player might need to get lots of repetition of forward passing. I remember a player that you and I worked with a number of years ago who was exactly working on exactly that. And wanted to get lots of forward passing. This player was particularly quick, a good dribbler.
So we played him at Fallback in order to get lots and lots of repetition of just seeing those forward passes. And then from there, maybe the progression is to say, okay, we've spent a couple of weeks playing in the Fallback role in the games in front of you and you've got the outcome there. Now we're going to throw you into the middle of the park and we're going to give you a chance to be under more pressure, where there's an option you need to play forward backwards sideways and the game's going to be a little bit more 360. So I think if you're communicating that with the player and as to why you're doing it, that's a good thing.
I certainly think regarding those foundation phase ages, they need to be exposed to different parts of the game, attacking and defending and all the bits in between. And I think that will start to bring out the love of what the child wants to do. You know, there are some kids you coach who are just love to defend. They hate getting beat 1v1v1 and they love to get in the fight in the duel.
And I think that's something that can lend itself to being a really good quality in any position. And I think that's something that's going to be actually naturally maybe they'll start falling back. With the 11s and 12s, I think you've got to be careful again that if you're working through a couple of positions, maybe it's for a period of time, maybe you give the player an opportunity just to play in one role for a little while, but then they get a chance to move around. I would certainly advocate exposing players for as long as possible to as many positions as possible, but trying to be mindful of that overload.
I think that's what I'm trying to get out there. And I think as you move into kind of that youth development phase, whether that starts at 12 or 13, kind of the secondary school ages here, happens at kind of 15, 16, I think that's when kids tend to sort of nail down one or two positions. I'm a right back and a right winger or a set of mid and a set of back. And you would start to see considerations of players playing in one or two positions.
I think one of the things that we've seen in the UK is that there's a lot in that youth development phase tied into kind of growth and matrices. So what you hinted earlier about the biggest stronger kids, generally the early maturing kids, the biggest strongest fastest play in the middle of the team. So they have set of back, set of mid and set of forwards and later maturing players get kind of pushed and squashed out to fall back and win because they're not going to hurt you in terms of concealing goals. So I think there's a real nice development angle here.
We've had a piece, I've seen a slide from you about Damari Gray before about how Birmingham City kind of played him in a different position. So it would be nice to maybe to share that story around how that would tie in with winning the game versus developing the individual. I think that's quite a nice story going to share that one. Yeah, and we're very fortunate to interview Christian Speakman, who's obviously the Academy Manager up there at Birmingham City in a club.
We've been doing a little bit of work with lately. And essentially the story was that going to a game in Damari Gray's journey, I think it was under 21 game from memory, it may be wrong, but it's an issue nine of the PDP magazine. It's a great article called Build on Trust. The decision for the coaches on the day that Christian spoke about was, well, do we play Damari Gray in an area where we're going to win the game and the best for the team?
Well, do we play Damari Gray in an area which is going to help him in terms of his development? And the answer was the second one. So they played him in a sort of deep central midfield role where he got an opportunity to learn how to defend and learn how to do sort of a more protecting role, which longer term is going to add some tools to his toolkit to go and become a professional footballer. Now again, we're talking about a professional example, but if we take it back to grassroots, then I think we've got an obligation as coaches when ensuring that kids have a great experience, but they get exposed to those different parts of the game and we can justify why they're doing it.
You know, we're there to teach and facilitate environments where they get to learn about whatever sport they're playing, obviously football in this example. And therefore we've got to expose them to parts of the game and not let that kind of, I guess, sort of unconscious bias or even that sort of confirmation bias, you know, we're seeing the big kid he should be a defender or he should be this. And just let them sort of dip in and be exposed to different things. So I think that's a great example around how you can actually use different positions according to somebody's individual plan.
And often in these Q&A people kind of throughout the argument of development versus winning, and it isn't really a discussion a lot of the time, like they're not separate conversations, although sometimes you'll be doing things that are making it harder to win. So the best or the easiest thing or the most comfortable to win a game would be to marry Greg, to marry Greg, probably 7 or 11 and give him the ball in the 1-1. But essentially what those coaches decided was that we know he can already do that stuff and what's the stuff that he needs to drag up to a certain standard so he can play first in football. Now, kind of grassroots for all and 8-9-10-11-12 is all that might sound a bit crazy, but essentially you might be putting kids in positions to get repetitions of things I need to work on.
So if I need to work on my left foot and the best situations to put me left side of the back or left wing where I'm receiving the ball on that left side over and over and over, I have to pass on my left foot, rather than just having it as a target but always playing me in my position so I can sneak away using my right foot, I might control my left foot here and there but I'll do every single action with my right foot. So that is a good example of how you could kind of use it at every level, if you've got individual, if it's truly focused and passionate about developing those individuals, it's the way you can use the game as an extension of training, I think it's kind of the message we're harping on here. Certainly is, and I think if we sort of move forward to older players, so we sort of talked a little bit about foundation phases, with that skill acquisition phases that's called in some countries. We've talked about the challenges that go with youth development phase, that teenage years when they're all at different stages of maturation, with different shapes and sizes.
When we start to sort of wind up and talk about those players who are potentially at the end of their teenage years, they're heading towards senior football, they're heading towards professional football if they're in those kind of environments, then I think we've got to consider how that looks. Have you got any experience from your time in terms of coaching with players at that age group and how it looks in terms of positional profiles? Yeah, I think the probably the benefit there is that you're seeing more of what you're going to see at the end, so if you're working with players kind of 17 to 20, they're probably done a lot of their growing, so physically what you're seeing is similar to what you're going to see at the end of that kind of pathway. So then physically can you start to put them in positions that will help them get success.
Hopefully by then they should have an outstanding attribute, whether that's passing or receiving, ball striking, dribbling, stopping goals, scoring goals, whatever it is, that play should have a clear kind of tag of what they do well. And then it might be blending those two things together, so we've made a very quick list of a few players that have come through a system as certain types of players who are now playing at the very highest level. So virtual event, back was one, was playing as a big set, a big target man, and wasn't converted to a set back until he's late teenage years, so that's one of the best offenders in the world. So that's a good example.
I'm reading in the S's autobiography at the moment, where he came to the system as kind of a number eight, and then made his first team training, first team debut as a holding player at a four or six, so that's, you know, that's tough ones, and they have one of the best teams in the world, and they're going to be in a different position. In that book is what it talks about, Paul Yale, he was a wide right, because he was an early maturing player who's quick and strong, but then when he got to the academy, there were other right wingers that were better than him. He moved into a position to get success. We've got really good examples of Ashley Cole and James Milner, people that were playing in certain positions, and Milner's a good one.
And then I think another kind of angle, and this could be a whole set for Q&A, he's a goalkeeper, so some of the best goalkeepers to ever play the game didn't specialise until very late, so Buffon, Noyak, Schmeichel, those guys were out for the players until very late in the journey, and then Brots into goal and didn't have back career. So it's quickly as well as going from where we started with the foundation phase of identifying nine year olds that are playing in certain positions and actually what's it going to look like during the journey, and keeping that door and that pathway open as long as possible so that kids can get experience with doing different stuff. So that at 18, 19 we could say, might be actually defending those kind of games you did when you were 14, let's have another go at that. It's a real fascinating conversation, but I think a lot of it is driven by a kind of tradition and culture of what we expect football to look like at the adult end and how that's driving coaches expectations of dealing with young players.
Yeah, and I think we've talked about it previously, but we shouldn't necessarily be in a rush to get there. I think that sometimes even at 13's, 14's, there's still this rush to get to 11-11 to get to what the game looks like for 23-24-year-olds when you're still dealing with kids learning the game. There's been various interviews and a lot of content on the side around mixed experiences and variety of game formats and these kind of things. Even recently, there were Premier League academies out in Singapore and a 7-0 side tournament with their under 15 teams because they're playing 11-0 side week in week out, but those sort of clubs at that caliber are recognizing the need for variety in their games program and going to play 7-0 side or going to foots out tournaments in Germany and these kind of things.
So I think that's really important. I mean, I'm working with older players at the moment in the sort of under 28 group and whilst most of our players generally have a preferred position, there's one or two that can still play in different roles. And then there's a couple where there's conversations as to where they may still end up and that decision remains sort of the jury's out a little bit because there is still time for some of these players when they're 16, 17, 18 working in that age group to potentially fall back. I think that happens more often than players going forward, but I think in terms of the defensive side of the game, there's opportunity I think to educate players around defending, perhaps more so at that late stage than there is around teaching somebody to be an unbelievable goalscorer, for example.
I think that's something that's shown that potentially has shown at a younger age, went through those teenage years, and it may be more natural for players to fall back down the pitch over time as opposed to step forward. But of course, you know, anomalies like James Milner, he's that squad player that every character wants, and you can just put it just about anywhere and do a job for you. And I think having players that are versatile also adds value, and there are players that can do that. So Dan, it's a really interesting topic.
Any sort of final thoughts based on the conversation and advice for Mark? Yeah, I think just to kind of recap, I'd be very careful of getting kids to early. I think when you get to kind of 13, 14, they should still probably have two positions. I think something we haven't touched on, which might be good just to give 30 seconds, is how you communicate this with players.
So kind of having some transparency around your approach to play development rather than rocking up and guiding things to another 9, he's playing right back. It shouldn't be a surprise. If it's a norm and it's done throughout the club and it's done as soon as they come in, then probably don't get to a conversation about it. But if it's a new approach for the year, or it's a new approach for that player, it might be worth just sitting down with him, explaining why you're doing what you're doing and what the kind of logic is behind that athlete, because I think you could damage kind of rapport and trust if you said, you know, if you're coming in expected to be a right winger and then you play left back, you need to have a conversation about that because don't expect the player to always take it with the grace that you'd like.
Fantastic advice. And we definitely advocate for that sort of open, honest communication and also doing that with parents. It's important that everybody's aware and giving people the courtesy of what they should expect on game day. Dan, thank you again for your time.
Hopefully we've helped Mark there. It was a really interesting conversation. Yeah, fascinating question. Be interesting to get some feedback on kind of the social channels of what people are doing in their clubs and how they specialize, including the goalkeepers.
I know we've touched on that before, but be an interesting debate to start. Definitely. As Dan says, feel free to tweet at player.dpp and send us a message via the Facebook page if you like. Dan, thanks again for your time.
We will look forward to another player development project Q&A very soon. Thanks for joining us on the Play Development Project podcast. You can follow us on Twitter and Instagram at player.dpp or find us on Facebook. Don't forget to head over to player.gov where you can sign up for our progressive coaching community and gain access to our wide variety of resources to help your coaching.