Last week I needed to do something in my front garden so I took my iPad out with me and watched a live game while I was out there. About halfway through the first half it stuck me how times had changed.
Growing up I looked forward to the FA Cup Final all week because there would be a live game on the telly. A live game was a really big deal. The whole family would be watching no matter who made it that year.
It prompted me to think how my football viewing experience has changed enormously since I was young. I can watch a live game just about any time. It is so unremarkable I even watch one while I am doing the gardening.
I won’t bore you with going through a list of things that have changed since my childhood but needless to say if I was a 12 year old now then my life with football would be a completely different experience from what it was.
What is strange is that I can chat with Coaches about this and everyone will agree and come up with their own story about how football has changed but as soon as you mention maybe we should train our young players differently from the way we were trained ourselves the majority seem to need huge amounts of convincing.
It seems that we are happy to acknowledge that our whole experience of football is completely different but at the same time feel this has little impact on how we train our young players.
Last week’s blog
A Most Fascinating Player…… http://wp.me/p5aQfW-2K
prompted many discussions with Coaches and after a while I began to realise all I was doing was trying to convince Coaches not to do things in a very similar fashion to the way they were trained when they were younger.
I feel I should flip this argument and ask Coaches to convince me that since a young player’s life with football is a completely different experience nowadays why is training in a similar fashion to the way we were trained as children still relevant.
Love to hear what you think.
Please leave a comment or email me seanthecoach@icloud.com
Or if possible leave a comment on Twitter @SeanDArcy66
Till next time
Right Back on the Bench 
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