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From grass roots up – sports coaching and the FA Commission

Bdaily are looking at the business of sport in this, our latest focus week. Here, Sarah Louise Dean, head of social media at Dynamis, the company that owns BusinessesForSale.com, checks out the new FA Commission.

Before it has even come to session the franchising industry is absorbed by the formation of the FA Commission, a group set up football’s governing body which aims to “find a way of delivering long-term success for the England men’s senior team.”

While sports business owners wait for it to codify its scope, the Commission is already expected to focus on making passage easier for junior level footballers to the senior game. Lest the FA forget - as well as a weekly passion - football is a lucrative business from the ground up.

One of the rumoured discussion topics is improving the football coaching profession. Football and sports coaching in general is an increasingly popular small business, particularly in the franchise arena, with many opportunities available for those who want to be part of the grass roots approach to developing talent.

The owner of a sports coaching franchise will act as someone who can spot and feed raw talent and help youngsters become part of a well-oiled, home-grown system that, hopefully, will development up through the league and age ranks.

Coaching, parenting and schools

One way that the Commission could improve the effectiveness of coaching is to improve the relationship between coaches and schools. For footballing prodigies, this means ensuring that school work and training are both undertaken seriously, without one impinging upon the other.

For parents, coaching franchises enable them to become involved in coaching by helping out, running a franchise themselves or improving their sons’ talent prior to pitching them to elite football academies.

The FA Commission will undoubtedly champion the role of parents in setting a healthy, sports-focussed example to their children, as being coached when young can instil good habits that will keep kids fit for the rest of their lives, whether or not they become professional footballers. Coaching also enables children to develop skills that can be applied to life away from the pitch, like discipline and organisation.

European guidance

Although strong developments in sports coaching continue, the FA Commission might conclude that the clear division between the skills of the England football team and their world counterparts is due to different attitudes to coaching.

The latest sensational product from a European coaching academy is Belgian winger, Adnan Januzaj, who made his Manchester United first team debut last month. Januzaj is a product of the highly successful Anderlecht Academy, which he joined at ten years old before making the move to Manchester United aged 16.

Promising Belgian Footballers are found by the academy, with their talent nurtured by professional training from a technical, tactical and mental perspective. Anderlecht Youth takes youth coaching seriously, using the mantra: ‘Turning passion into a profession.’ Players often concentrate on education and their youth team first, before turning professional in their very late teens.

This is a system that has been replicated across Belgium, and has been so successful that many pundits believe the current squad - with an average age of 25, and only 2 players over the age of 30 - have a legitimate shot at winning the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.

Many European football academies start players at a very young age – with six-year-olds training up to three times a week and playing in competitive matches. There is also a focus on statistical data, something that is part of the modern professional game – utilising the web to help learn about the competition.

Coaching is revered as a business providing education on nutrition, psychology and endurance, and European sports coaches are particularly goal-oriented, a skill they share with successful entrepreneurs.

It seems that the Commission would be well-advised to look to these European academies to help English sports coaches benefit from their combined skills and expertise.

The FA Commission hasn’t even begun its task, yet it has cast a spotlight on sports coaching, but a focus on steady improvements together with a rise in coaching franchises can only be a good thing for the beautiful game.

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by BusinessesForSale .