A little something I wrote in 2013/14 about football coaching in the UK. Totally forgot about & couldn’t think of a way to end it. Will definitely be coming back to it, as I have a different view on it now


Something that has been talked about throughout the years in the footballing world, is the lack of quality players that the country is producing. Compared to that of Spain, Germany & sometimes Belgium. 
The thought of putting a cap on the amount of foreign players in each team has also been discussed. Even though these players are the ones that makes the Premiere League what it is today. The best in the world.

From my point of view I don’t believe a cap of some sort is needed. I believe that the issue lies with the quality of players coming though the grassroots system. A lot of kids are not getting to the quality that teams in this country would like. Hence those looking abroad most of the time for players to strengthen their academies, and in turn their 1st team in future.

The mediocrity of the players being produced needs to change in order for those kind of discussions to stop.

For that to happen, the calibre of coaches needs to be much better at the grassroots level. The FA would need to set a good amount of money aside that will be used for the sole purpose of teaching & training aspiring football coaches, rather than wasting money on other things.

Having been in and around the “coaching scene” for over a year now, I have met many people that really want to be football coaches. But there has been a lot of things that has stopped them from really wanting to pursue the career of being a football coach. Lack of funds tends to be the main one with people. Or they have hit an imaginary brick wall, a brick wall in the ? of not being recommended for the further courses. 
This tends to be because they were not ex footballers. It seems that you have to be an ex-footballer to go further in some aspects of coaching. Like being one gives you more of that push to being recommended for UEFA courses. When in truth being an ex-footballer does not make you automatically a good football coach.

The obvious answer to me would be to fund coaches, as I see it to be very essential. The more quality football coaches that they are at grassroots level, the better calibre of players that will be produced. And having great calibre of players will be good for these top clubs to snap up, as they would be home-grown as well.

I had recently read up that the FA had invested £30m into grassroots. Hearing that would make you feel reassured that they are trying to change the way things are. About the drop in numbers of kids playing football at that level. But what does the money actually go towards? Like, what are they actually investing in? And more importantly, how much of that money is going towards helping aspiring football coaches? 
These are all questions that one would like to know the answer to, as I have yet to see a breakdown of what & how that heap sum of money will be spent.